Running the Bar in Afghanistan

It's been almost five years since we moved into the darkness of a post-911 world. We're still trying to get our bearings. Figure out what we're doing or where we're going. But at least in Afghanistan we know exactly where we are. Right back at the beginning. And not going anywhere.

"Given the level of resources NATO has at the moment, and the strategy we are pursuing, we simply cannot win. The forces there can't achieve the objectives they have been given."

If General Sir Michael Rose believes that, I figure our gungho generals and politicians better listen up. And level with Canadians. I mean what are we supposed to believe? One moment we're winning. The next moment we can't.

Maybe NATO will be able to find the 2500 extra troops it now says it badly needs. But with every country trying to keep its soldiers out of harms way what are we going to end up with? A Swedish cooking brigade? Lobbing pork meatballs at the Taliban. And then what?

We're likely to get more helicopters which will be good. And maybe more ground attack planes, which will only make a bad situation worse. You see when you don't have enough soldiers on the ground, you don't only take more casualties, you are forced to rely even more heavily on air strikes. And you end up bombing the shit out of everything like the Americans like to do. Destroying villages and villagers to save them just like they did in that other crazy war. And if you do that you can win battle after battle. But you'll never win the war.

If you don't believe me ask this guy.

"We've been grotesquely clumsy -- we've said that we'll be different to the Americans who were bombing and strafing villages, then behaved exactly like them."

And if we are not careful so will we. What a mess. But at least we know more about the road to Kandahar. How a group of Liberal politicos decided to change Canada's traditional peacekeeping role, to please the Bush administration. Without even a thought of what it might cost the country and our troops.

According to the Toronto Star here's what Scottie "Beer and Popcorn"Reid had to say about that:

"It was a question of...after having shown up all those years with a six-pack, whether we were finally going to tend bar..."

Wow. What a great reason to go to war.

What a gang. What a bar.

Remind me to buy a round for the dead...