Moving the Goalposts

I love it when rightwing nutjobs stage a tactical retreat. It's always so obvious.

Peter Worthington had a typically gung-ho piece on Afghanistan in today's Edmonton Sun that had a hilarious title like "Damn Straight, Brigadier" in which he did his best to spin the warning earlier this week by British general that we're not going to defeat the Taliban and, at best, can only hope to dampen the insurgency to the point the Afghans can handle it.

Of course, Worthington notes, that's precisely the same objective our military leaders had in going into Afghanistan in the first place. It's the old, "we'll stand down when they stand up" line.

But Peter, this isn't the rightwing nutland of your dreams. We call this a democracy. In a democracy it's the politicians, not the generals, who set the objectives when they unleash their military forces. The politicians decide what we're going to be fighting for and they define the parameters of our success or failure.

The objectives Mr. Harper used to go on about included a stable, democratic government for Afghanistan and a few other things like human rights and the liberation of Afghan women and girls. If we accomplish that, we win Peter. If we don't accomplish those things - it's that other option, oh yeah - we lose. Now that we've given up on those defining objectives - and we surely have, we've lost the war we went to fight.

But even if I'm wrong, even if Harper was just screwing with us when he talked about democracy and women's rights, even if the goal was just to train an Afghan army - we've still failed.

Seven years Pete, seven years to raise an army from one of the world's genuine warrior societies and all we've managed is to hobble together about 70,000 soldiers which we now think is only half of what Afghanistan needs. Seven years! If that had been our goal and if we ever truly meant to achieve it, we would have had that 150,000 strong army in place long before now.

Canada, Britain and the United States, we've fought and won entire wars, including training and equipping our armies, against real enemies like Germany and Japan in less time than it's taken us so far to hobble together half an army for the Afghans. We know that we can train, equip and field an army in under a year, we've done it - more than once. But, in Afghanistan, we've had seven years to get maybe halfway to building their army while the Taliban have returned, resurgent.

So, don't give us your "damn straight" BS, Mr. Worthington. You can't move the goalposts that far without hauling them right out of the stadium.