Once again the editorial staff of Canada's self-proclaimed "newspaper of record" have shown that there are not many great minds wasted in the newsroom of this paper. This time, they claimed that the NATO mission in Afghanistan, "...is a sensible use of the Right to Protect, a United Nations policy pushed by Canada.
I don't know what, if anything, these people had in mind but there is no "right to protect" policy and the actual policy, the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine, has no application to the Afghan situation. Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, is narrowly aimed at preventing two horrors: ethnic cleansing and genocide. That's it. Afghanistan's many troubles do not, fortunately, include genocide or ethnic cleansing. Surely the senior editorial bosses of Canada's newspaper of record ought to understand that.
The editorial, addressing yesterday's story about 13-year olds being traded like cattle by their fathers and being thrown into prison if they refuse, then says, "..it's fair to ask: Is this the new Afghanistan that Canadians are dying for?"
That, of course, is the fundamental question. That also explains why the editors threw it out as a closing line without making any attempt at answering it. They don't want the answer because they know it totally undermines their paper's wholehearted endorsement of Canada's mission to Afghanistan.
President Karzai's government doesn't actually govern. His countrymen remain in the grip of a feudal state ruled by tribal custom. Karzai's government, police and military are so shot through with corruption that they oppress rather than protect the tribesmen. This enables the Taliban to recruit from the same fields our troops patrol. Karzai's government is fueling the very insurgency that we have to battle to defend Karzai's government.
It's good to ask these important questions. It's completely disingenuous to then close one's eyes to the obvious answers.
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