Garth Turner has posted the Conservative motion on extending the mission in Afghanistan to 2011 at his blogsite and asked for comments on whether his readers would vote Yea or Nay, and why.
This is what I left over there, and what I will re-post here:
I’m an obvious no to this motion. We’ve already had 1 extension of this (3 years) and the Cons. propose to have another. If they were still (God forbid) in power then, what would stop them from extending it further when 2011 rolled around, short of a total victory, which even the NATO commander over there says wouldn’t be possible without 400 000 troops? (and that amount of troops isn’t going to happen).
The Cons. motion is a recipe for indefinite endless war, and endless casualties. We’ve done our tour of duty, and we’ve done it honourably. It’s time for all those other NATO countries who give lip-service to how important Afghanistan is but then supply no troops or keep them out of harm’s way to step up to the plate. And when I say, step up, I don’t mean supplying the token 1000 troops that the Manley Report calls for and which the Harperites have seized upon. I’m talking the principle of rotation, where a country will rotate their troops in, while we rotate our troops out.
If the NATO countries refuse to do it, the consequences will be on their and NATO’s heads, not Canada’s. I say no to the Cons. motion - pull them out of combat operations on schedule in 2009.
Further to that, if the Liberals want to articulate their policy better to the public on what their position is (since some Con. cabinet ministers are going around either distorting the Liberal position or claiming they don’t have one, or saying it’s changing all the time) they could do worse then use the points that the Toronto Star’s Haroon Sidddiqui put forth at his op-ed today:
The Liberal way forward, therefore, is clear: Support a limited extension of the mission on specific conditions (along the lines of what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is already pursuing).
- A concomitant push on aid and development in the safer areas where such work hasn’t been done due to a lack of co-ordination between Ottawa and the field offices, and between Afghanistan and NATO. Insist on the appointment of a UN co-ordinator.
- A major push for a political settlement in Afghanistan — opening negotiations with elements of the Taliban, and a separate concerted campaign to increase civilian Pushtun representation in Kabul. Iraq’s turnaround has been achieved by a troop surge and, mainly, by bringing the Sunnis/Baathists into the fold. If doing deals with them is good, why is trying something similar with the spurned Afghans bad?
- A co-ordinated effort with Pakistan, even while insisting that President Pervez Musharraf move toward a transparent democracy.
Such a comprehensive approach, clearly spelled out, would give Stéphane Dion the confidence to take on Harper, even on the election trail, and let Canadians decide.
I think Dion and the Liberals should be taking those and spreading them far and wide across the land. If their position needs clarifying, stating as listed above will certainly do that.
Sounds just like the liberal way, lets do a half a job. What ever happened to the notion that when you take on a job you do it until it is complete? Image if you could graduate university by convincing your professors that you have only started your projects. TISK TISK, Canadian liberalism - as in the Liberal party - is destroying societal values.