POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ROLAND PARIS IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
The final chapter of our Afghan mission?
And just what was our "mission"?
I doubt anyone in Canada can give a coherent definition of that so-called mission.
The government has blubbered again and again, as have some of its supporters, about making the purpose clearer to people, but they never have.
That is simply because there is no purpose, at least in the conventional meaning of the word.
The United States went there for vengeance and to kill as many people it regards as hostile as it can. It dragged along all the “help” its vast resources of finance, aid, and military could extract from the world, hoping to make the business look like something other than it is.
Even then, most countries, except for Tony Blair’s Britain, sent only token help to this supposedly world-important “mission.”
There never has been any other meaning, except in the columns of propagandists.
Canada's only purpose was to placate a mindlessly angry and paranoid United States with the knowledge that we'll help hold your overcoat while you're busy doing all that killing. We accidentally got assigned to a place where our troops suffered disproportionately
No other definition of our "mission" fits the facts. It is a dark and brutal and pointless chapter in our history.
________________
"...should have realized that the mission since the German Conference was to rebuilt Afghanistan and provide the necessary security for its people."
It doesn't get more unthinking and uninformed than that.
Afghanistan is not being "rebuilt."
The place was never a country in the sense that we understand it. It is simply a remote place which is the home to a number of tribes. There is traditionally no central government - and there effectively still is not - and there are no roads to speak of, and relationships are governed by a set of ancient tribal rules.
You cannot undo that in even a lifetime.
Because the economy is so primitive, it is little more than window dressing to build a lot more schools too. There is no employment for more educated people in a tribal society like that.
If we could by a wave of the hand, suddenly educate all the people of Afghanistan, all we would achieve is producing a lot of people who want to go somewhere else. The primitive economy cannot absorb them.
The "German Conference" was just one more in a long line of American tools to manipulate world opinion.
Had America cared the least about developing Afghanistan, it would have dropped dollar bills, not bombs.
How few people are even aware that the Taleban originally was created to provide clean government, at a time when the country was under the warlords of the Northern Alliance, who in their internecine fights were killing tens of thousands of people after the Russians left.
The Taleban’s original purpose had absolutely nothing to do with fighting the West.
Yes, they granted Osama's people a place to stay, but Osama had before that been someone who served American purposes, indeed, someone who visited the United States and received assistance.
After 9/11, the Taleban would have extradited Osama's people had the US offered one shred of evidence concerning his guilt, something they refused, and to this day, we've still not seen any.
America has managed the feat of making an enemy of the Taleban. Pointless because, whether we like it or not, they are part of the fabric of that country.
America’s total achievement, apart from killing tens of thousands more, includes the poppies, which the Taleban had suppressed, now blooming like wildflowers, and the Northern Alliance warlords rule their respective areas with all the corruption and violence and anti-progressive behavior as always.
A total disaster.
