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Afghanistan: Why we should be there (or not), how to conduct the mission (or not) & when to leave

Now after reading a piece by Brennan Cruse from the link on the first page of this thread, I'm now at 95% he didn't author this piece on Afghanistan. Take a read of his story on the joy of discovering reading and you can tell the difference is grammer, scentence structure and punctuation.....
 
...there may be a ghost writer OR a Brennan Cruse Sr lurking in the background
 
The Kid probably sat infront of someone from the Associated Press or something and just said "My uncle is over there.... and everyday we wonder if he'll live to see the next." Then, Mr/Mrs. Associated Press adds in all kinds of BS that they usually do to attract attention.

...a peacekeeping mission.
  >:(

It's funny seeing veterans and current CF members cringe when they hear the Media call them and their missions Peacekeepers/Peacekeeping when they're not.
 
Latest PM statement on mission, from the Globe & Mail:
....Asked if he would reject such a request from America's new president, Barack Obama, who has just ordered more than 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan and has vowed to defeat the insurgency, Mr. Harper ducked the question, responding instead by saying: "If President Obama were to ask me that question, I would have a question back for him. And that question would be: 'What is your plan to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.' " Mr. Harper said the paramount issue for Canadians was not "whether we stay or whether we go," but rather "are we being successful?"....
 
I really don't think that this kid wrote this.  I figure someone put the name into google, and that was the first article to pop up.  This sounds like someone from the Peace front or anti war movement.  Anyone with kids 10-11 should be able to tell you tha tthis is not something that concerns them, nor is it somehting they would ever write about.

Read the article on the kid, he is happy he can read so he can view Ebay to look for coins for his collection.  He doesn't denounce the application of force in far off places.
 
Are we being successful?

Umm... what have we done to make the mission(s) successful ?
excluding those great photo op eventsL How effective have CIDA & our reconstruction projects been...
 
geo said:
Are we being successful?

Umm... what have we done to make the mission(s) successful ?
excluding those great photo op eventsL How effective have CIDA & our reconstruction projects been...

I'm not a blonde, but you're making me feel like one.
 
T'was a rhetorical question... more aimed at the very politicians that asked the question.

(Vern - you're a copper top - definitively not a blonde)
 
Just got through reading Fiasco and The Gamble by Thomas E.Ricks.
Both great books, and recognized as so by American military leaders, that speak to the mistakes the US Bush administration made by going into Iraq and their post "victory" plan or lack of.
Ricks details how their was a lack of a strategic goal, lots of tactical effort but without a clear overall strategic objective the best effort and sacrifice at the lower officer and NCM level was just marking time.
The Obama administration appears to have learned this lesson. Re-evaluating the Afghanistan mission, seeing the big picture, Pakistan, diplomacy and the military all as necessary parts to reach a clearly defined mission objective.
 
Three headlines March 2:

NATO can't defeat Afghan insurgency, PM says
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/594902

Canada, allies will never defeat Taliban, PM says
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090301.wPOLharperafghan0301/BNStory/International/

Afghan insurgency will never be defeated: Harper
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/fp/Afghan+insurgency+will+never+defeated+Harper/1342421/story.html

Harper really did, for reasons I don't understand, accentuate the negative.  And then he put it all on the US (and everyone blamed Bush for being unilateral!):

The United States must come up with a viable Afghan exit strategy before asking Canada to rethink its plan to pull out of the country in 2011, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says. [Star story]

In fact though what Harper said is essentially the same as Obama (Globe story):

Although Mr. Obama has made clear that he regards military success as only one dimension of eventual success in Afghanistan, he has never suggested defeating the insurgency can't be done. Rather he has exhorted allies to do more militarily.

“We must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said during his major foreign-policy speech in Berlin during the election campaign. “The Afghan people need our troops and your troops, our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”

And just before his trip to Ottawa and the announcement he was sending 17,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said the war in “Afghanistan is still winnable,” although he made clear that solving “the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism” cannot be accomplished “solely through military means [emphasis added].”

However, with a NATO summit next month and Mr. Obama keen to secure more military commitments from increasingly reluctant European allies, Mr. Harper's assessment that defeating the insurgency is impossible may reinforce the split in the alliance.

It's the bloody emphasis.  Hardly the way to keep up support for the mission here.  Maybe Harper is playing some deep strategic Canadian political game, but it beats me.

And he seems to be using "we" to refer only to foreign forces.  Surely the Afghan gov't forces are also part of the "we"--and if large enough and capable enough can eventually contain and roll back the Taliban (if not completely "defeat" them).  The exit strategy (along with strengthening that gov't generally), in which military victory as such is irrelevant.

Mark
Ottawa
 
I think that someone should shoot the PMs speach writer...

Realy and truly screws / skews how the public will see justification for sending our troops into harms way.  Will also make our troops think twice about why we are going to Afghanistan every 12 to 24 months.
 
Not an encouraging 21 page "fragility" report from Carleton U:

March 1, 2009

Country Indicators for Foreign Policy

Fragile States Country Report No. 20 for Afghanistan


http://www.carleton.ca/cifp/app/serve.php/1208.pdf
 
My response, in the online Barrie Examiner:

Afghanistan Facts
http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1458541

Dear Editor,

Brennan Cruse has a very thin grip on recent history ("Life as a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan", Feb. 27). He claims that after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that "the president of the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan". But there was no "invasion" of Afghanistan.

Before the fall of Kabul to the insurgent Afghan Northern Alliance in November 2001, and the consequent collapse of the Taliban regime, no significant numbers of foreign troops entered Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance did receive air support and assistance from special forces (both U.S. and British); that however is not an invasion. Substantial foreign ground combat forces only arrived after the Taliban had already deposed by indigenous Afghan forces.

Mr Cruse also writes that "...in January of 2002, Canadian troops were sent to Afghanistan to perform a peacekeeping mission...They thought it would all be over in two months."

Hardly. Canadian troops were deployed to Kandahar province for six months in early 2002 on a mission that clearly involved combat. Canadian soldiers then left. They returned to Afghanistan in large numbers in the summer of 2003 in an essentially peacekeeping role at Kabul. That mission ended in the fall of 2005.

Meanwhile, in August 2005, a fairly small Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team was installed at Kandahar. Then, in early 2006, the Canadian Forces took on a new, major, mission at Kandahar that had a serious combat role, that continues to this day.

In sum: the United States did not invade Afghanistan; the Canadian Forces did not first go into the country on a peacekeeping mission; and there never was any indication that any of the various Canadian missions would be over in two months.

I suspect Mr Cruse's uncle Casey, now serving in Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces, knows these basic facts. I'm rather amazed that his nephew does not know, and has not bothered to learn, them.

Mark Collins

Ottawa

References:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/13/afghanistan.terrorism15

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/news-nouvelles/view-news-afficher-nouvelles-eng.asp?id=1661

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050804/cda_afghanistan_050804?s_name=Autos&no_ads=

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb0719-e.htm

Mark
Ottawa
 
geo said:
Realy and truly screws / skews how the public will see justification for sending our troops into harms way.  Will also make our troops think twice about why we are going to Afghanistan every 12 to 24 months.

Well someone should be thinking about it.  At this point, it looks more like a two-way live fire exercise with heaps of money being poured into the sand.  Someone needs to call "End Ex" at some point.  Since the US is going to be the biggest dog in the park, and will be wasting spending money on a far grander scale, it should fall to them to come up with a cohesive plan and then bring us on board (starting with governance would be thrilling). 
Lots of players, lots of talent, no game book, no coach.  Something has to give. 
 
There’s a lot of buzz on this topic today.
Afghanistan - When even modest goals are ambitious
GLOBE AND MAIL
Pg:  A14
03 Mar 2009

The notion that Prime Minister Stephen Harper would abruptly announce lowered expectations for Canada's mission in Afghanistan, to an international audience on CNN no less, has provided fodder for his critics. Certainly, his blunt words sound shocking enough. If "we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency," as Mr. Harper told interviewer Fareed Zakaria, why have we spent most of this decade in combat there, losing more than 100 Canadian troops? And why did Mr. Harper - or the Liberal government that committed us to our current role, for that matter - take so long to recognize its futility? In fact, what Mr. Harper said should have been familiar to his Canadian audience, if not his American one. The thrust of his assessment - that a realistic goal is to have in place "an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance," which he acknowledged remains some distance away - was consistent with Canada's recent outlook on the prospects for its mission.

On a few previous occasions, Mr. Harper has gotten carried away and hinted at wiping out the Taliban altogether. ("There are still the remnants of terrorism and if you leave with the job half-done ... they will re-emerge to haunt you at home," he said while visiting Kabul in May, 2007.) But for the most part, he has presented - to both Canada and its allies - the aim of preparing Afghanistan to take control of its own security needs.

That was his message at last year's NATO summit in Bucharest.

While the January, 2008 report by the commission headed by John Manley rejected the idea of imminently shifting away from combat (as the opposition Liberals were then calling for), it too recognized that the focus must gradually shift to training, and did not pretend that the total defeat of insurgents was on the horizon. Neither did the parliamentary motion that extended the mission until 2011.

The question that will soon need to be considered is not whether Canada's goals for Afghanistan are too modest, but when and how those relatively modest goals will be achievable.

Mr. Harper has been inconsistent on whether he intends to stick to the 2011 pullout, at times seeming to close the door to an extension, at others leaving it open. "If President Obama were to ask me [to extend the Canadian commitment further], I would have a question back for him," he said in his CNN interview. "And that question would be: What is your plan to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans, so they can govern it?" With a welcome shift in American attention - and manpower - from Iraq to Afghanistan, U.S. policies will of course play a major part in determining Canada's future involvement. But with Canada's wealth of experience in Afghanistan, particularly in the volatile Kandahar province, it should not be taking a passive role in determining what comes next.

2011 is not as far away as it seems. CNN studios may be a more comfortable environment, but it is in Parliament where the future of the mission will soon need to be addressed once more.

PM's Afghan comments on target: Manley
Richard Foot, with Peter O'Neill Files
The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Pg: B6
03 Mar 2009

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's candid statement that the Taliban cannot be defeated -- and that responsibility for the war must instead be given to Afghans -- was endorsed on Monday by John Manley, who chaired an authoritative 2008 investigation into Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

But others are asking why the Canadian government has taken so long to admit NATO's military efforts are not working.

"Why has it taken so many years for politicians to start talking honestly about the reality in Afghanistan?" asked Jorrit Kamminga, an official with the International Council on Security and Development, a London-based think-tank with years of experience in Afghanistan.

"Why is Harper only finding out about this now, after all those sacrifices of so many Canadian soldiers? Have all their sacrifices been in vain?"

Manley's Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan called on Ottawa 15 months ago for honest talk about the mission. In a CNN interview televised Sunday, Harper did exactly that.

Asked if Canada would extend its military mission to Kandahar past the 2011 deadline, Harper said that depends on whether U.S. President Barack Obama could offer a clear "strategy for success, and for an eventual departure" of coalition forces.

"We're not going to win this war just by staying," Harper said. "My own judgment is quite frankly we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency.

"What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance."

Neither Obama nor former president George W. Bush have ever said the Afghan war could not be won. Among NATO nations, only the Dutch government has expressed sentiments similar to Harper's.

Manley said years of "rhetoric around democracy" had raised false hopes in Canada that NATO could build a modern country "out of a very poor, highly dysfunctional state."

Instead, he said NATO must focus on more basic goals of economic development, and of building up Afghan institutions.

"The prime minister is right that the objective should be to 'Afghanize' security, by training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces, army and police, so that they take it over," said Manley in an e-mail on Monday.

"Canada should fulfil its military commitment without flinching through 2011, and expect to make continuing contributions to development and governance thereafter."

A NATO official said Harper's comments echoed the view of Canada's allies.

"I think NATO shares the view that there can be no exclusively military solution to this insurgency," said NATO spokesperson James Appathurai. "The idea of eliminating every last Taliban and other extremist is illusory. That's not possible and that's not the point."

Opposition accuses PM of Afghan mission reversal
Steve Rennie (CP)
The Calgary Sun
Pg:  8
03 Mar 2009

Opposition critics are accusing Stephen Harper of an about-face on the Afghan mission, noting the prime minister who once dismissed them as defeatists now acknowledges western forces alone can never beat the Taliban insurgency.

Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois MPs said Harper's remarks are in sharp contrast to his previous assertion that Canada would never "cut and run" in Afghanistan. Harper told the U.S. television network the Afghan government needs to be able to manage the persistent Taliban insurgency that rages across swaths of the country.

"We're not going to win this war just by staying," Harper said.

"Quite frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency. Afghanistan has probably had -- my reading of Afghanistan history (is) it's probably had an insurgency forever of some kind.

"What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency."

Opposition MPs attacked Harper in the House of Commons yesterday for what they claim is a 180-degree turn on the Afghan mission.

"I think to state categorically that we're not going to defeat the insurgency, and then not to say what the rest of strategy is as a result of that determination, is frankly a little strange," said Liberal MP Bob Rae.

The Conservatives, however, say Harper's comments are in line with the government's position in Afghanistan.

The Opposition parties questioned whether Harper is leaving the door open to another extension of the Afghan mission.

I think anyone suggesting this is new or a reversal of position has not been paying attention.  It has been clearly stated for years now (by government & the military): the military is an essential enabler of the solution, but it is not the solution itself.
 
And here, straight from the respective horses' mouths, was the discussion in the House of Commons yesterday - Bloc asking questions, Liberals asking questions and NDP asking questions.
 
Here's an excellent post by Brian Platt at his The Canada-Afghanistan Blog:

A Short Rant On Harper, Afghanistan, And Pathetic Progressives
http://canada-afghanistan.blogspot.com/2009/03/short-rant-on-harper-afghanistan-and.html

Mark
Ottawa
 
Two more good posts:

1) Damian Penny:

Lowering expectations on Afghanistan
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/012764.html

2) Raphael Alexander:

The Schadenfreude Of The Left On Afghanistan
http://unambig.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/the-schadenfreude-of-the-left-on-afghanistan/

Mark
Ottawa
 
''my uncle, Casey, is one of those soldiers over in Afghanistan. Every day for him is like a lottery ticket, you never know what's going to happen, whether you're going to win or lose, live, or die. My uncle's military vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb two weeks ago. His Afghan interpreter was blown to bits, he said it was like raining body parts''

Does this sound like something you would tell your family, especially a 10 year old, while you were still posted overseas? My guess is that this is either made up, or Uncle Casey is a KAFer who is making up stories to spice things up and make his family think he is hardcore. During my tour I never met a single soldier who said their life was like a lottery ticket, or who relayed information like this to their family.

Also, I dont recall hearing about this IED that went off two weeks ago and rained body parts all over the place.
 
wack-in-iraq there are a lot of things we don't hear about so I wouldn't discount that story.  "Need to know" exists for a reason. 

I have, to the surprise of many people I tell the story to, described my IED attack as "awesome" though to the others I was with it might be something they would describe in a different way.

As for the peacekeeping term being used on this mission.  It might be due to the association that anything UN is a peacekeeping tour?  This is a UN mandated mission if I am not mistaken?

"The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was authorized by the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1386 on December 20, 2001, with a mandate to assist the Afghan Transitional Authority (ATA). "
 
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