General Blowhard's Visit to Kandahar

What bad timing. Another Canadian soldier dies in Afganistan. Just on the day that General Blowhard flies in to Kandahar. To rally the troops and blow some more.

Although he wasn't blowing quite as hard today. He was practically subdued. Maybe it was the death of the soldier. Or maybe he was thinking of all that driving he's going to have to do. I hear that going for a weekend drive in Afghanistan these days can be dangerous.

Hmmm..... maybe Blowhard better take a helicopter when he goes into Kandahar to visit the Provincial Reconstruction Team he was blathering on about today.

"Now, there is a major effort going forward to get that reconstruction accelerated again."

Huh? Do you think he means this reconstruction effort? Surely not? That team is too busy fighting to reconstruct anything. But don't you love all those buckets we gave the Kandahar fire department? Doesn't that kind of sum up our mission? Well intentioned, but completely inadequate, and hopelessly naive.








You see the one thing that General Blowhard won't talk about is that we don't have nearly enough troops to do the job. The NATO coalition doesn't have them. It's not going to get them.

And because of that we're forced to fight the wrong kind of war. And rely too heavily on air power. That's the dirty little secret of the war in Afghanistan.

An officer added: "We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, locally or from across the border. We have used B1 bombers, Harriers and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles, they have fired so many..."

But at least the Brits have some of their own planes over there. We depend on the Americans. They circle like hawks over Afghanistan. We may find the Taliban. But they kill them. They've got the toys. Boys will be boys.

The only problem is that it's NOT the way to win a counter-insurgency war. You can't save villages by destroying them. You can't use that kind of airpower on people and hope to win their hearts and minds. That's why we're winning every battle we fight. And losing the war. Just like they're losing the war in Iraq.






But General Blowhard doesn't want to talk about that. And he's made sure none of our soldiers do either. He talked big to get us into this mess. Then he talked big to get the pathetic nerd chickenhawk Stephen Harper to sign us up for two more years. Now he's in full cover-up mode.

The Americans now admit they don't have enough troops. And that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fragging their army. The Brits now admit the same thing. But our gung ho generals are still strangely silent. While our troops keep dying in a war that can't be won. No wonder Scott Taylor accused them of acting like the gorillas in the Planet of the Apes.

You know if people really want to support the troops they should forget about wearing those stupid red t-shirts every Friday.

They should just ask General Blowhard to cut out the cheap jingoism. Level with Canadians.

And start blowing some truth for a change....