The Toronto Star - september 21, 2009
By Colin Kenny
Last week I published a statement arguing that Canada’s mission to Afghanistan is failing, and that it is time for the Canadian government to make every effort to pull troops out of harm’s way and prepare to take an initiative that is always dispiriting, but sometimes intelligent: retreat.
After my statement was published, still another Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan – the 131st Canadian to die on this mission. Private Patrick Lormand was 21, and, in the words of his commander, “a really good guy.”
In eulogizing Pte. Lormand in Kandahar, Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance had this to say:
“Neither [Pte. Lormand] nor his family benefit from uninformed opinions about what his goals were and the techniques he used to achieve them . . . the thousands of young, clear, determined eyes that remain wide open here in Kandahar are working hard every day to protect and stabilize the population – not an impossible mission, as some might suggest.”
I know Gen. Vance personally. His remarks may well have been directed at me. If so, I appreciate that he is a fine soldier with a job to do. If he had said anything less, I would have been disappointed.
I made my statement about withdrawing from Afghanistan for two reasons. The first is that I genuinely believe that it is time to acknowledge that the mission is failing. I know this has disappointed a lot of people, because I am and always have been an outspoken supporter of the Canadian Forces, and an advocate for getting them more personnel and better equipment so they can back up their bravery with capacity.
I had some hope, in the beginning, that we were doing the right thing in confronting radical Islam in Afghanistan, and in making it a less terrible place for Afghans – particularly women. With other members of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I visited Afghanistan three times, and participated in the writing of two reports. Each report contained suggestions for strengthening the mission, but each report also outlined the overwhelming challenges it faced.
The second reason I published my statement is this: after a long summer of reflection as I visited our naval base in Halifax, our Maritime helicopter base in Shearwater, our air force base at Greenwood, our army base at Gagetown, the veterans affairs headquarters in PEI, I became increasingly disturbed that a national dialogue on Afghanistan has never really gotten underway.
There is a great hush in the country, as though the war weren’t going on. My sense is that we Canadians very much want to honour those who have died or been injured, as well as their families, but that we don’t really want to think too much about whether it all makes sense.
The Prime Minister should be leading this dialogue, but he is not, despite the fact that our committee has all but begged him to. He issues the odd platitude, but is largely mute on what seems to be going so terribly wrong, and what he thinks we can do about it.
Similarly, if Michael Ignatieff ¬– who has in the past voiced his strong belief in the role of the noble western warrior – believes that we should dig in and continue to try to play that role in Afghanistan, I would like to hear his arguments. Let the dialogue begin.
The argument I put forward is this: If we had lost 131 Canadians in Afghanistan . . . in addition to funnelling more than 10 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money into the mission . . . in addition to exhausting the strength of the Canadian Forces to contribute in other places . . . in addition to skewing Canada’s foreign aid budget to favour a country we have no traditional interest in . . . if all these bad things had happened but there were significant signs of progress in Afghanistan, then maybe our huge investment there would make sense.
But that isn’t the case. In the beginning the Taliban were strong only in the southern provinces. Now they are everywhere. We used to think a few thousand extra NATO troops would do the trick, but NATO now has more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, and we’re losing ground. The government’s quarterly report on the mission came out Tuesday, and it acknowledged that Kandahar province – where Canadian troops have focused their efforts – is becoming more violent and less stable by the day, with Taliban attacks across the country at an unprecedented level.
We thought we were helping to liberalize the country – especially its attitude toward women – but that attitude persists and huge volumes of aid money don’t seem to be getting many schools built. We thought we could convince the government of Harmid Karzai to treat women better and eschew corruption, but Karzai permitted a Draconian law allowing marital rape to pass through parliament recently, and cabinet ministers are still getting rich on the drug trade, which flourishes despite our best efforts.
Afghans keep telling us that collateral damage caused by western air raids has turned many Afghans against us. Do they prefer us and warfare? Or the Taliban and oppression? It’s hard to be sure, but the longer we stay, the less popular we seem to be.
Am I wrong to say that we should get started on minimizing the involvement of our troops, restricting them largely to training Afghan soldiers? Many of the hundreds of e-mails that I have received support me, but many others call me a turncoat.
A police officer who supervises the military funeral processions along highways in the Toronto area asks me: “Would you stand in front of any of the parents, wives, husbands or children of those who have been killed in Afghanistan and make such comment as ‘Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is futile.’?”
The mother of a 19-year-old serving in Afghanistan says “He asked to go so he could help make a difference in this world. Has he been able to make a difference? I do not know. I do know that your support would be greatly appreciated.”
An ex-military man takes offence at the way I have undermined “the greatest show of Canadian pride, combat power or show of force and capability of the Canadian Forces since Korea.”
But another ex-soldier takes a different view: “Senator, your remarks are long over-due. We have been fed a huge barrel of crap and each time the Government gets involved they tell the world that those of us who are against this war are against the Canadian Forces and those who have died in this cause.”
That isn’t the most encouraging e-mail I received. The most encouraging e-mail came from a retired lieutenant-general who shared it with many of his military colleagues:
“The mission, the Canadian Forces, [our] capabilities and defence and security in general need to be part of the political discussion so that Canadians can choose their political leadership en connaissance de cause [understanding the issues]. For that reason . . . it is good that Sen. Kenny wrote his controversial piece.”
That works for me. There is very little we can do about the 131 Canadians who have died in Afghanistan. But let’s make absolutely sure that this number doesn’t keep climbing for a cause that has stopped making sense.
[Senator Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca]