POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DAVID BERCUSSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
"The West should set an objective, not seek a way out, which would mean defeat..."
Sorry, but that is an absolutely fatuous statement.
Why are forces in Afghanistan in the first place if they have no objective?
War is a pretty damned serious and costly thing - no project society ever does normally compares to its consumption of resources to say nothing of lives - and you really should have a sound idea of what you are doing before you set off on one.
The United States never understood what it was doing there, and it still does not. Yet it continues to pressure others to commit more resources to its pointless and destructive campaign.
Second, there is nothing wrong in government or world affairs in admitting you've made a mistake and correcting it.
Indeed, to do the opposite is sheer lunacy. Lives and treasure are being squandered every day to no purpose. Canada made a ghastly mistake committing to Afghanistan, and I think most ordinary Canadians understand that.
Defeat? That concept is not even relevant in Afghanistan. Emphasizing that blowhard term is just what the brutal pride of the American establishment emphasizes. Keep killing and bombing for pride.
When you undertake a wrong-headed project, "defeat," as it were, is implicit from the beginning.
Thus was the American holocaust in Vietnam. Thus was the American intrusion into Somalia. And thus was America's crusade for vengeance in Afghanistan.
By the way, the thought here is so unimaginative, it just makes me wonder about the University of Calgary in any area but the hard sciences. Of course, it's home too of Tom Flanagan, a tiresomely regular idiot-savant on the Globe's pages.
