Plowing the sea in Afghanistan

What a depressing weekend. Grey, cold and wet. And the news couldn't have been more bleak. Four more dead soldiers in Afghanistan. And maybe signs of more trouble to come. If we alienate the civilian population we can forget about winning the war. As some Globe reader wrote this weekend. We might as well plow the sea.

Then there was this latest chapter in Iran's campaign to provoke a U.S. nuclear strike. Coupled with this disturbing report that Chimp Bush may be predisposed to do something crazy like nuke Iran.

Then there was Osama Bin Fruitcake's call to Jihad in Sudan That reminded me that he spent years there staring at the empty tomb of the Mad Mahdi. I love that story. It's got so many what ifs. Just like our mission to Afghanistan.

What if Gordon had left before it was too late? What if the relief column had arrived in time. What if Kitchener hadn't sacked the tomb? What if the Mahdi had been a generous victor? Or had succumbed to food and concubines before he took Khartoum?

But of course none of that happened. Gordon ended up with his head on a pike. The Mahdi won, but had his bones thrown into the Nile, and his skull almost made into an inkwell. Kitchener met his end torpedoed by a World War I German sub. The Mahdi's Tomb was rebuilt even bigger and more splendid than before. And Bin Laden spent five years staring at it. Dreaming of a jihad of his own. Sometimes when you try to do something about a problem, you end up worse than before.

And then to make my weekend even more gloomy there was what happened on an Italian racing car track. When Michel Schumacher not only won the San Marino Grand Prix. But finally broke Ayrton Senna's record for most pole positions. On the track where Senna died.











Ayrton Senna was one of my boyhood heroes. I love Formula One and he was the most exciting driver I ever saw race. I met him several times. I'll never forget the day I watched him die. Formula One was never quite the same for me. After that it was mostly the Michael Show.

Michael Schumacher is a brilliant driver. He deserves his due. But it took him 12 years to beat Senna's record. What if Ayrton hadn't died? Wouldn't he have been the king of the track?

I'll always believe that. Although of course I'll never know. And soon it won't matter. History will simply note Schumacher's record and declare him the best racing car driver who ever lived. All those what ifs will be forgotten. Senna will only be remembered by those who saw him drive. History is cruel like that.

I just hope than in twelve years we can look back on our mission to Afghanistan and still believe that the Canadian losses there were sad but worthwhile. And that we're not still arguing whether things would have been different if we had done this or if we had done that. Long after it was too late to do anything.

Let's hope that history will declare that our brave soldiers died for something.

That some good came of it. That we knew what we were doing.

And we weren't just plowing the sea....