Muddling Along Meaninglessly

It looks as though Harper and Dion have found a compromise on Afghanistan - stay until 2011 and then out.

Excuse me while I wretch.

What these clowns have compromised on is a big bag of nothingness. It is less than a joke, darker than a farce. Where to begin?

Let's start with the absence of the most important players at the negotiating table - NATO and Washington. Harper and Dion can agree to anything they like. Without the agreement and binding committment of NATO and Washington, it's as meaningless as the previous agreement to extend "the mission" to 2009.

When we said "out in 2009" what did that comedian de Hoop Scheffer do in recognition of our offer to extend our nation's committment, to sustain further losses? He did nothing. The Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took it as a freebie and gave absolutely nothing in return. He didn't begin pestering other NATO members to have replacements ready to take over in early 2009. Neither did Washington which, after all, intends to maintain permanent garrison forces in Iraq and needs NATO soldiers to make that possible by carrying America's baggage in Afghanistan.

Surprise, surprise - here we are long after the deadline has passed to muster a replacement force and Brussels and Washington have done SFA. So, now we'll draw another line in the sand, this one two years further down the road, 2011, and - naturally - we'll neither demand nor obtain any committment from the US or NATO.

So let's flash forward to 2010. That's the year the Dutch say they're pulling out of Afghanistan. What are the chances Scheffer is going to be bothered with Canada's deadline in 2010? We've shown him what Canada's deadlines mean - nothing. Ignore us and we'll bitch and then roll over.

Better yet, what does 2011 mean to the Taliban? Two years is essentially meaningless to a nationalist insurgency. "We have all the watches, they have all the time," remember?

And what of Afghanistan's New Government, Karzai's Kabul Klan? There'll be elections next year and word has it that the Americans want to get rid of the hapless Karzai in favour of a more reliable water boy. But power in Afghanistan has already passed into the hands of the warlords who have ensured the countryside is safely contained in fundamentalist feudalism. If we don't have even a small fraction of the soldiers needed to combat the Taliban, just how are we to wrest power from the iron fists of the warlords and drug barons?

And what of Pakistan? Now that the Pakistani army has been "militarily defeated" in the autonomous Tribal Lands and the Northwest Frontier to the point where it has again negotiated a ceasefire with al-Qaeda and the Taliban forces, what will staying until 2011 do to ease that threat? Is it A: Nothing, B: Nothing or C: Nothing. Full points if you chose "Nothing."

So, if staying until 2011 isn't likely to result in any significant change on the ground in Afghanistan, then why stay at all? Of course if you're interested in fighting a political war at home and indifferent to the military war abroad, you can duck that question entirely.

By the way, who do you think will be leading the Liberals and the Conservative parties when 2010 rolls around and we find ourselves still stuck firmly in Afghanistan and playing politics over whether to stay or leave?