Afghanistan: many questions, no answers

[tuvor]

Having not gone to Iraq with the U.S., we've snapped to attention anyway — and just at the moment when military action against terrorism is proving spectacularly counterproductive.

What are we doing in Afghanistan? Do we know? Are we afraid to ask? The lack of public debate over this indicates that we are. It's not a good sign.

Parents and children are seen on TV bidding tearful farewells to their soldier husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, as military authorities warn that the Kandahar region, which Canada has taken over from the Americans, is the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and that the public must know “there will be casualties.” There have been already.

In order to send soldiers off to risk their lives, the cause must be great. What is it? As explanation, what we have mainly is General Rick Hillier, head of the Armed Forces, telling us that “we have to fight them over there so we won't have to fight them over here.” This echo of a failed Vietnam War era slogan (“If we don't fight them in Hanoi, we'll have to fight them in San Diego”) is as hollow now as it was then, although it is more coherent than his offering of last summer about having to fight “scumbags.”

http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=d0d3c925bba2154dee3f89668b95025d&rXn=1&

[Spazito]

1. Hillier strikes me as a gung-ho guy who would readily get

our troops involved in dangerous situations that would have little to do with peacekeeping. I don't trust him at all. He is chock full of empty rhetoric that is, indeed, very similar to that heard across the border.

[Name removed]

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[Spazito]

3. Hmmm, welcome to DU

The mission in Afghanistan has changed from the original mission under NATO, that is the point. Canada was supportive of PEACEKEEPING and reconstruction duties for our troops NOT combat under US command.

Tell me, are you upset that the US pulled most of their troops OUT of Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq? Shouldn't the focus of the US be on Afghanistan instead of Iraq seeing as it was their "two towers" that were attacked? Should Canada help the US pull out even more troops so they can attack Iran or some other country? Should our soldiers be sacrificed for bush's wet dream?

Hillier was war-mongering, it is as simple as that.

Canada is not much of a target seeing as we serve as peacekeepers, at least we did until recently, thanks to the change in mission.

I supported the original mission in Afghanistan, the peace-keeping and reconstruction one, I do NOT support the change in their mission.