Stuck In the Kandahar Mud

What is a quagmire but a bog from which getting out is impossible? That's increasingly coming to look like Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Harper has been blindsiding the Canadian people on "the mission" in Afghanistan since he took office. He supposedly told his pal Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO secretary general, that Canadian troops wouldn't be available beyond late 2009, but that was playing for time. Then he got John Manley to be his waterboy and let the clock run down for another several months preparing a virtually inconsequential report that will neither inform nor direct the issue.

The real issue isn't the sideshow Manley is wasting all our time on, "the mission," but how we're ever supposed to get out of "the mission" when our commitment expires - lapses - finishes - terminates - concludes in 2009. That issue is entirely beyond Manley's feeble remit. It's an issue between the Prime Minister of Canada and the Secretary General of NATO and that's an issue that neither one of those men has any intention of addressing.

The con game that is/was the Manley Report is apparent from a headline in today's National Spot, "Already Too Late for 2009 Afghan Pullout, Experts Say." Now that may come as a shocking surprise to you but it sure as hell comes as no surprise whatsoever to Harper or Hillier or Scheffer. It's what they've been quietly counting on while they've done absolutely nothing to muster a replacement force from other NATO forces.

Oh sure, Scheffer has been bleating endlessly about getting reinforcements but I've not seen him once acknowledge that Canada's committment is truly up in 2009. He's done absolutely nothing that reflects that reality. Not once has he publicly demanded other NATO forces be provided to relieve Canada.

When was the last time you heard Harper demand that Scheffer find replacements for our forces? Better yet, when was the first time? If our Furious Leader was even remotely genuine about ending Canada's combat mission in Kandahar, he'd been all over Scheffer months ago for doing - squat.

This has been a greasy con game from the start. You've been conned, I was conned, the whole country has been conned. Manley was just an all too willing dupe to enable Harper to avoid completely cratering in the polls.

The way out of Afghanistan runs straight through Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. Unless and until that pompous ass is dealt with, we're not going anywhere. Scheffer knows it, so does Harper and, now, so do you.