It's time to say "no" to Stephen Harper. There's a move afoot to send a squadron of CF-18 fighter-bombers to Afghanistan.
Air strikes have proven the greatest disaster in our self-defeating war in Afghanistan. We have to rely on airpower because we have only a small fraction of the ground force we need there. Air strikes routinely kill Afghan civilians. The insurgents have become expert at making us do just that. They're using our aerial bombs to win their war, the war for Afghan hearts and minds, for them.
It's not just that air strikes are ill-suited to this sort of war, it's the way we're forced to use them that's makes the carnage even more disastrous for the Afghan people and for us.
Ceasefire.ca has an online petition to say "no" to Stephen Harper. I urge you to send your own message to the p.m. Follow this link:
http://www.ceasefire.ca/?page_id=1274
It just goes from bad to worse. This MUST be stopped. I'll be signing - after I post this.
ReplyDeleteActually, while I think it's important to send this petition to Harper, I don't think he'd have the guts to send the fighters to Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteWhy would he? When an Afghan wedding party gets wiped out, it's almost always the United States Air Force that takes the heat.
The political fallout from Canadian fighters wiping out innocent villagers would be more than poor Harper could bear. Anyone in the mid-30s in the polls hasn't got enough support to survive even one bombing mishap. We'd crucify him for the deaths of innocents and for ordering Canadian airmen to do it.
One wonders who is advising Obama in Afghanistan... seems like the same old that does not work...
ReplyDeleteCherniak_WTF, when a political leader changes civil service remains the same. It takes time to change the direction. I will give Obama few more months. However, after that it will be obvious that he is an anaemic leader.
ReplyDeleteCWTF, LD, don't fall into the trap of judging Obama as though he was a Canadian prime minister.
ReplyDeleteHe's somewhat bound by the circumstances left for him by the Bushies. I think the American people will support him in getting out of Iraq (and he'll be lucky to do that before the place explodes) but there's a greater dynamic that kicks in when it comes to Afghanistan.
A lot fewer Americans would abide Obama pulling their troops out of Iraq AND Afghanistan. I think that would throw the country into the defeatest funk they fell into after Vietnam was conquered by the North. If he could track down and kill bin Laden he might be able to get out of Afghanistan. To leave with bin Laden alive would mean more disgrace than any American can stomach.
Bush/Cheney kicked the walls in on a broad, regional geopolitical hornets' nest. These morons really believed their nation all powerful. They acted with hubris unrivalled since Hitler plotted to invade the Soviet Union.
I suspect Obama knows that the exit door lies in finding and killing bin Laden and Mullah Omar and then handing Afghanistan back to a national army big enough to handle a resumption of the civil war that was interrupted inconclusively in 2001.
MoS,
ReplyDeleteI made a link to this post of yours from a post I just did at my place. You might want to go read it.