Tories under fire for denying vote on Afghan mission
NDP Defense Critic Ms. Black said the decision to avoid a vote, or even a take-note debate (a debate with no vote), is clearly at odds with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise during the election campaign to put all serious issues before Parliament. "I'm shocked that the minister [Mr. O'Connor] has contradicted that commitment," she said.
And the Tory arrogance is begining to match that of their Liberal predecesors.
Canadians Too Thick to Support Afghanistan Mission: Defence Minister
"The population out there doesn't really understand right now why we're there and what we're doing. You have to say the thing five, six, seven, eight times before it really gets through to a large number of people." - Defence Minister O'Connor instructs the foreign press.
And Harper is a liar. In the parlimentary debates around Afghanistan the Official Oppostion, the Conservatives demanded that the PMO not unilateraly send troops to Afghanistan without a non-voting debate in the house. Exactly what they are denying parliment now.
Cdns should support vital Afghan mission: Harper
But Harper said the previous government made the commitment to Afghanistan, and his party has every intention of following through on it. "This is a critical mission," Harper said. "It's important for global security. The party I lead strongly supported the previous government in its commitment and we believe that the success of this mission is important not just in terms of Canada's objectives but important in terms of the contribution we are making to the world community and global security."
Ok so why are we there?Canada's mission in Afghanistan lacks purpose (by Mohamed Elmasry ...
But Canada's involvement in Afghanistan is not, and has never been, peacekeeping. Canada joined the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) coalition in 2001 "in order to destroy the Taliban shield that was protecting Al Qaeda's infrastructure in Afghanistan." And then, Canadians were being killed by American "friendly fire."
OEF underwent a name change to the International Security Assistance Force, whose mandate was to protect the Afghani interim government from its "enemies," but it was essentially the same old operation. Canada contributed to both OEF and ISAF.
More recently, the name has changed again -- this time at the insistence of the new Afghani government -- to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). The term "Reconstruction" is blatantly inappropriate, however, as there is nothing in Afghanistan to be re-constructed.
For example, how many new universities, schools, libraries, hospitals, roads, factories, training centres, clean water plants, sewage treatment facilities, etc. are on the PRT agenda? And what plans has the PRT developed to help Afghani farmers switch from opium cultivation to more beneficial crops?
The U.S. bombed and invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban government because the latter refused to hand over Al Qaeda leaders. Now Afghanistan has a president with no grass roots support in most of the country, and who barely controls even its capital city of Kabul. As a former American CEO, the only support Hamid Karzai gets is from Afghanis who can personally and materially benefit from his American connections.
Meanwhile, the Americans are leaving Afghanistan because there is no oil; because it is one of the poorest countries in the world; and because the Afghanis are a hard-headed people who fiercely resist foreign occupation -- they dug in their heels against the British and Russians and in the end demoralized them both. As well, the Americans believe that Al Qaeda's operations there have been sufficiently disrupted. But above all, America is not at all interested in the human development of Afghanis, not one bit.
Of course, many will remember an early spate of propaganda about invading Afghanistan to free "burqa-clad women cowering in their houses" and give them education and jobs, as well as vague promises to help starving children and train youth to find jobs instead of joining up with the Taliban. But none of this was ever achieved, or even seriously attempted, because there was simply no political will to push the U.S. into providing adequate resources. One in six Afghani women still dies in childbirth, and the female literacy rate is still a mere 14 per cent.
Yep no good reasons to be there.Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
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