Canada’s Role in the World

By almost any measure, Canada is a minor power. Never seen as a threat to anyone, most people around the world view us favorably. Despite the winters. But there are some very real cracks appearing in our veneer and we are starting to lose our shine. How dull and unattractive our cloak might become is still not predictable but Stephen Harper is doing his best to accelerate Canada’s depreciation.

It is generally recognized that, although Canada fought well above its weight class in two world wars, our strongest role has been that of the peacemaker – an honest broker far more interested in talking through disputes than reaching for weapons. We have operated what is sometimes called a ‘3D foreign policy’ – diplomacy, development, and defense – with the clear emphasis on the first ‘D’. In that regard, we have often seemed like a very distant neighbour to the United States, despite having such a wide range of common interests.

Over the years, we have provided peacekeepers in numerous places around the globe where our task was to keep the warring factions apart long enough for dialogue and cooler heads to prevail. In fact, one of our previous prime ministers, Lester Pearson, is often considered to be the father of peacekeeping, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize.

There has always been a strong voice for avoiding military endeavours within Canada, even during the two world wars. But there has usually been a recognition that our peacekeeping has been a good and honourable and decent service to the world.

How do we explain, then, our present military forays in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Back in 2001, when George W. Bush hectored the world to support his military assault in Afghanistan, Canada demurred. We neither condemned nor approved although at the outset of the Afghanistan assault, Bush really had no concern about whether any other country would stand with him. He knew he had sympathy on his side because of the September 11 events and he knew that toppling the feeble régime in Kabul would be a cakewalk.

Bush isn’t smart enough to have considered what should or could come next, but it was certainly obvious to all but the feeble-minded that Afghanistan would be a mess when the government fell. While a ‘Marshall Plan’ style of post-invasion work might have sufficed to let Afghanistan rebuild, the US was not, and still is not, interested in letting the Afghanis form their own government in their own way. Frankly, neither is Canada.

Bush had other plans anyway. He wanted to forget about Afghanistan almost before the first bomb hit the ground so he could concentrate on invading Iraq, a far bigger prize for his backers in the petroleum industry. When he tried to build international support for his escapades in Iraq, we were the closest and strongest ally of the United States to say no. Canadian politicians stood tough and proud and refused to participate in the Iraq invasion, despite some vigorous arm-twisting from Washington. Truth to tell, though, that was only political bluster for domestic consumption – Canadian troops have been in Iraq from the beginning. And we have subsequently whined that we aren’t getting a big piece of the post-invasion contract work that is enriching so many US and British firms. Pity.

But while Canadian troops are playing a minor role at best in Iraq, the same cannot be said of Afghanistan, despite an initial refusal to have any part of it in 2001.

So why is Canada in Afghanistan now? Why are we willing to jeopardize a generally positive reputation by conducting a nasty – and unwinnable – war of aggression? Why are we willing to give the opponents of the West someone else to target?

Hiding the Truth in Kandahar

Canadian troops were committed to the Afghanistan misadventure by Paul Martin’s government but the present administration is completely behind the effort. In fact, the Harper government has dropped all pretense that the mission of our troops is ‘peacekeeping’. Now, it is ‘peacemaking’ – and that includes beating into submission those who are unwilling to behave the way our invading forces dictate.

We are not operating alone in Afghanistan; we’re the leaders of a NATO invasion of the volatile southern region, Kandahar province. A few months following the Canada/NATO invasion (late 2005), then prime minister Martin spoke to Canadian troops in Kandahar and told them the goal of the occupation was to “create a democratic, prosperous, modern country that can be a model in this part of the world.” In fact, the occupying forces have brought widespread misery, death, and destruction to the area where they claimed they planned to ‘paint schools and drill water wells’.

Support at home for our military presence in Afghanistan has been mixed at best. Depending on whose polls you believe, either a slim majority of Canadians oppose it, or a large majority does. Either way, the support that is given is generally on the understanding that the Canadian troops are performing our customary peacekeeping duties, or at least behaving ourselves and doing good work. But the government and a compliant media have been careful to hide the real motives for Canada’s presence in Afghanistan: toadying up to the United States. This venture has nothing to do with creating democracy, or rebuilding a shattered nation, or human rights; it is a simple effort to convince Washington that Canada is one of the good guys and to ensure that Canadian corporations get in on the lucrative action. A sort of ‘Halliburton North’.

A Fine Mess

Canada’s history shows, over and again, that Canadians have a talent for compromise, for moral persuasion, for amicably settling disputes. If we were truly interested in helping out in Afghanistan, we would have sent diplomats instead of soldiers.

But we aren’t there to help the Afghani people get back on their feet. Our mission is not designed to rebuild Afghanistan, it is meant to subdue it.

The sham elections that placed Hamid Karzai into the presidency in Afghanistan, along with installing a cadre of warlords and war criminals in parliament, did nothing to persuade ordinary Afghanis that NATO troops were really there to help.

Our government and media have also hidden from Canadians the reality of what is transpiring on the ground.

Consider this: the World Bank estimates that rebuilding Afghanistan’s shattered social and physical infrastructure will cost around $28 billion. But the aid that flowed to the country in the 2002-2006 period was only $7.3 billion (give or take a few billion, depending on who’s doing the counting). During that same interval NATO’s military expenditures were $82 billion.

To be sure, some structures have been rebuilt, some bridges have been restored, some schools have been reopened. But even in Kabul, electricity still flows for only about 4 hours per day and the streets are lawless. Outside of the capital, things could not be much worse than they are. Five years after the mightiest thugs on the planet crushed this backward nation because of something done by a group of Saudis, all the promises of restoring civility have proven to be what most thinking people always knew they would be: a chimera.

What is different this time is that the world’s traditional ‘good guys’, we Canadians, are now in the forefront of the butchery.

There has been some limited achievement in Afghanistan, and these are frequently touted by Western media, especially ours. But the achievements are so minimal as to have no significant value, they are largely confined to Kabul, and they don’t alter the fact that the Afghani government is increasingly irrelevant to the people.

Meeting Resistance

The Afghani government is deeply resented by the Afghani people. They all know it is a puppet of Washington, that it is rife with corruption and abuse, that it is comprised of criminals and warlords in complete mockery of the alleged NATO goal of democratization. And they know it is us who are propping it up.

The US has all but abandoned Afghanistan at this point, despite their promises to rebuild what they destroyed, owing to their realization that they are defeated by a Vietnam-style resistance that they cannot overcome. So they passed the buck to Canada and NATO, who are now mired in the ‘mess that has no ending’.

Historically, the Afghanis have resisted foreign invaders and this time is no different. In the Canadian media, Afghani resistance is called an ‘insurgency’ when it is, in fact, just the local people telling foreign invaders to get the hell out. If Canadian or other troops take casualties, who’s to blame? There is no justification for the gnashing of teeth or national mourning every time one of our soldiers dies — it is wholly unreasonable to expect that any nation will calmly submit to an invading force and its attempted imposition of government, social structure, societal rules, and so on that are utterly foreign to the local population. And we have to expect that if we try to kill them, they’ll try to kill us in return, using whatever methods they can muster.

Canada and NATO have met some serious opposition in Afghanistan and evidence suggests that the resistance is growing. At the same time, for Canadian troops, resistance is mounting at home.

Support the Troops, Hate the War

Canadians are not asking enough questions and our leaders are answering even less. The government of Canada still claims that it sent troops to Afghanistan to promote democracy but we are, in fact, propping up the local criminal class and the US-installed puppet government, a government that is utterly indifferent to the social and economic crisis in the country. Local villagers have in many areas turned to the Taliban for support to protect them against the central government’s brutality, and against Canadian brutality.

In Canada, there was almost universal criticism of the United States when the details of abuse in the Afghani prison system, especially at Abu Grhaib, became public. But earlier this year, it was announced that Canada does not adhere to the Geneva conventions regarding treatment of prisoners. Since Canadians were quick to accuse US troops of war crimes for this very thing, it is disconcerting to see that Canadian soldiers admit to complicity in war crimes without public outcry.

Every thinking man or woman in Canada knows the Afghanistan mission cannot be won. It was sold to us in the first place as a ‘peacekeeping’ mission even though most understood this was a US venture and that entering Afghanistan was nothing more than an effort to clean up a US mess.

But, increasingly, even slow-witted people have realized this fight cannot be won and a movement to bring Canadian troops home is growing. Unfortunately, the main thrust behind the demands for a troop withdrawal are directly linked to the number of Canadians dying in Afghanistan rather than for the moral reason that the war had no justification in the first place. This war was wrong in 2001, it is still wrong today.

Instead of securing its place in the world as a model of decency, Canada has chosen to sink to the level of its nearest neighbour. We have abandoned our position as a moral authority and we can only hope that we don’t suffer retribution by people who have shown themselves quite capable of using whatever weapons they can muster.