No more troops for Afghanistan: Canada tells Obama

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Source: Hindu/India

Toronto (IANS): Canada has reiterated that it is committed to leaving Afghanistan and will not respond to U.S. President Barack Obama's call for more troops.

With the new U.S. President planning to double the number of troops in Afghanistan, Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay said on Wednesday that Obama will have to request other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies.

With a majority of Canadians against the Afghan mission, the defence minister said Canada was firm on leaving the insurgency-wracked country by the end of 2011.

The Canadian Parliament has already voted to end the mission by December 2011.

Read more: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200901221314.htm

[babylonsister]

1. I don't blame them. Hopefully we'll also rethink our role there. nt

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2. I would not prejudge what Obama will do about Afganistan.

I imagine that he is studying the problem, now that he has full information. It may take a while. Then we will see.

[John Q. Citizen]

3. It's tragic. Prior to the US going in, scholars and experts from around the world

stressed the importance of building something that would serve a war weary population in terms of long term stability and civil society.

Instead we wasted our opportunity.

Instead of rebuilding the country after the Taliban were driven from power, we ignored Afghanistan for george's Iraq adventure.

So now, in my mind, the question is has our window of opportunity in Afghanistan shut?

If the window isn't completely closed and if it's still open a crack, what is it going to cost in terms of blood and treasure to reverse the decline and actually eventually leave Afghanistan better than when we invaded?

This has to be asked and it needs to be answered accurately if we are going to move forward.

[nyy1998]

4. I couldn't agree more

Very sensible post. A lot of ppl here seem to think that we should leave using the same rationale as Iraq. I view them as two separate situations and Afghanistan as very important especially since it serves very well as launching point towards Pakistan. I'm actually comfortable with Obama increasing the size of the military presence in Afghanistan as long as he decreases troop levels proportionally in Iraq, and get rid of the stop-loss policy and has a sound strategy to get the job done in Afghanistan. Hopefully by the end of his 1st term he would be able to finally finish the job in Afghanistan(and Iraq).

[EFerrari]

9. Afghanistan needs a surge of economic opportunity, not a troop surge.

We need an international force in there, not an occupying army that only creates violence and tension.

I trust Obama to make a good decision but if he escalates the "war" in Afghanistan, I will oppose him because there is no military solution to poverty and underdevelopment.

[Posteritatis]

5. Lost opportunities

The handling of Aghanistan's the main thing that pissed me off about the Bush administration. In the first several weeks after 9/11, Bush had the support of more or less the entire planet. The way folks in the states were rallying around the presidency after the attack? That was going on in Canada, in Britain, in France, in Russia(!), in Iran(!!), pretty much everywhere.

He said "we're going to get rid of the Taliban and take a crack at al-Qaeda too," and everyone pretty much went "Okay!" Fair enough given the attitude of the time.

If he'd said "and after that we're going to start rebuilding some countries so they don't have the environment that leads to this kind of thing anymore," the entire world would still have said "Okay!"

Hell, at least until early October 2001, if he'd said "we're going to eliminate all instances of the color orange from Afghanistan for the good of humanity!" I'm convinced most of the world would blink at the plan, but they'd still say "Uhhh... okay!"

No person in history had quite so much goodwill, power and authority as he did at that time. The guy was practically Hegemon in the Orson Scott Card sense of the word and could've gone damn near anywhere with what he had at the time. But he had to go and fritter it away on politics, on declaring much of the world his enemy, on pursuing irrelevant grudges, on seemingly making sure he didn't have that kind of authority anymore. He really could have built a finer world from that moment, instead of getting down into the mud and hauling everyone else with him.

If he'd actually gone and used it instead of baseplaying rah-rah-USA crap, we wouldn't have wound up in Iraq, Afghanistan would be, well, far from a paradise, but it'd be a much safer and healthier country than it's been in decades, we wouldn't be skirting around the edges of one or more new cold wars, etc etc etc.

I dunno if people at the time recognized that moment for what it was. Hindsight's 20/20, after all. But it was unique in history, a kind of opportunity that I don't think will be repeated anytime soon, he blew it, and the entire planet's far worse off because of it. I've got considerably more faith in someone like Obama being able to handle that sort of thing, but that kind of moment is rare - the euphoria over the election's great, but I think it's just a shadow of that. (Though that kind of moment being rare might be a good thing; I shudder to think of where a hypothetical competent President Cheney or something like that could take it.)

[John Q. Citizen]

6. I had a proffessor who talked about Afghanistan before, during and after

the invasion who explicitly talked about the strategic importance of getting Afghanistan right in terms of rebuilding civil society after 20 years of war, war in part prompted and supplied by America through our material creation and support of the Taliban to fight the Soviets.

If we could have built a government to replace the war lords, mine-swept and rebuilt services, and focused enough time energy and resources into healing, then we might have been successful. My professor said this before we went in, and talked about it later when we went into Iraq. So some people thought it through in terms of risks and opportunities.

She said she could kinda see going in IF there was a concerted and long term commitment to take some responsibility for ourselves in terms of our relationships with other countries, in this case specifically Afghanistan. She also predicted it could turn out very badly without enough attention.

So it's not like "Who could have known?" is applicable.

[provis99]

7. I think just about any professor could have told Bush that

I heard the same thing. But Bush was never big on school; he was too busy getting blitzed at frat parties and playing dirty at rugby.

[Posteritatis]

8. Yeah, the "who could've known?" bit I meant was on a broader scale

Anyone whose IQ was higher than the room temperature of a typical metric country would know that that was the opportunity to (A) get rid of some really really bad people and (B) rebuild a really really hosed country with (C) the overwhelming unconditional support of the world community. But if he decided throw the US' weight behind rebuilding hypothetical-other-hosed-country-in-a-different-regionland as well, or maybe even instead if there was a fluffy enough justification, folks would've still gone "sure!" I think.

Anyone could've seen the opportunity in Afghanistan, but I really do think Bush could've told the world to jump any which way and they'd ask how high, at least for a few weeks. That's his big screwup there, not to belittle how botched Afghanistan (or Iraq!) turned out.

[JCMach1]

10. Afghanistan is lost- the sooner we realize it the better

for us anyway...