Taking the Measure of The Mission

In the greater scheme of things, just how important is Canada's mission to Afghanistan? Ask our politicians and generals and they'll drive you deaf screaming about how the fate of our Western society is at stake, our much cherished liberal democracy. Sounds compelling but are they pulling our collective leg? How is the average schmoe to tell?

This might help. We're constantly told that Afghanistan is Canada's biggest war since Korea. Okay, let's look at Korea and see how Afghanistan stacks up.

We were a country of just over 14-million back then. We're two and a half times that now.

Back then we were still trying to recover from the strains and losses of six years of war. We were damned near broke. Today we're richer than we could have imagined in 1950 and we're not living with the scars of any recent wars.

To fight in Korea, Canada recruited a brigade of 5,000 soldiers. Destroyers and aircraft were also sent. In Afghanistan we're limited to 2,500 soldiers.

In Korea we knew who we were fighting and where they were. Although we were normally heavily outnumbered, time and again we held our own and sent the Chinese forces packing.

In Afghanistan we are fighting an insurgency in which the harmless villager you see one minute may come at you with automatic weapons and rockets as soon as your back's turned. In Afghanistan we're also having to combat warlords, drug lords and common criminals.

In Korea were were fighting to defend a legitimate government that had the support of its people. In Afghanistan we're propping up an unviable regime whose corrupt officials are hated by its people.

So, let's see, where are we? We've taken on a big mission in Kandahar province and assigned that task to a force that is vastly too small for the job we've given them. There is growing evidence of a big offensive by the insurgents coming in just a few months and yet we expect the same small force of soldiers to take the brunt of it.

We took the Korean conflict much more seriously than we are the Afghan mission. We're trying to do everything on the cheap and that means scrimping at the expense of our soldiers over there.

We'll know Stephen Harper is serious, that he genuinely supports our troops, when he begins demanding concrete assurances from George Bush that America will begin taking its legitimate war as seriously as it has his sandbox adventure in Iraq.

We need to know that if this rumoured spring offensive by the Taliban materializes, America stands ready, able and absolutely resolved to pour divisions of American soldiers into Afghanistan in short order.

Afghanistan isn't floating in oil but that doesn't mean we should allow George Bush to continue treating this war as some sort of sideshow. Afghanistan is America's primary responsibility, not Iraq. Harper had better make sure that Bush understands that.