Because they are obviously sympathetic to murdering scum like that viewed through their supposedly educated eyes
That's way too simplistic and jingoistic. You're falling into the same trap of an anti-war protestor claiming that we're all just tools of the imperialist Americans and baby-killers to boot.
There is no black and white in the world. Everything is shades of grey. And the problems you see depend a lot on the direction you took as you approched the problem. It is entirely possible for two completely reasonable people to approach a situation from two different angles and come to entirely reasonable, but completely opposite, conclusions.
Take Iraq. Saddam Hussain was/is a bona fide asshole, who did horrible things to the people inside his own country - this is undisputed fact. I don't think you'll find a single reasonable person that would stand up and claim that Saddam was a good person.
So OK, I can come into this problem for the direction that "removing a government that abused its own citizens (really, a sub-population of its own citizens) to that degree is a Good act" and thus declare that the American invasion of Iraq was a Good thing. That's an entirely reasonable conclusion to arrive at, and more than a few people on this board have expressed it.
But you can also come into the problem from this angle: "Different cultures have different standards for what constitutes "abuse of its own citizens" and no country should be allowed to be able to invade any other and force it to adopt a different culture's standards against their will" or in other words "keep out of my bedroom, and I'll keep out of yours" or perhaps "what you do inside your own borders is none of my business". That too is a reasonable conclusion to arrive at.
Now with those two positions on the opposite ends of the scale, we can start looking at shades of grey:
One could generally support the idea that sovereign nations have control over what goes on inside their borders and what they do to their citizens, until some threshold is reached, upon which other nations would be called in to stop the abuses that have surpassed the threshold. Given that defining that threshold is both difficult and subject to culteral interpretation (define "pornography" for an example), one might inist that there be a world body formed where such cases could be discussed, voted on, and in the case of sufficient agreement on a particular case, an international, sanctioned military intervention could be staged to solve the problem - and that any military action that happened without this sanction would be considered illegal.
One could also have the opinion that "all fighting - except explicit self defence when invaded - is de facto wrong, that all problems can be solved without resort to military action, and thus any non-self-defence military operation is by its very existance immoral. (OK, this is less a shade of grey than an orthagonal extreme, but it is still a valid point of view. Not one that *I* share, personally, but I can see the point of view of someone who might hold it)
I could go on and on... the point being, there are lots of completely reasonable and valid ways to look at these situations that can wind up arriving at completely different conclusions than your own.
Here's how I see Afganistan and Iraq:
1) Sept 11 2001, an organization carried out attacks on the USA, a long-time ally of Canada
2) The people who carried out these attacks hit one military (and thus valid) target, and one civillian (and thus invalid) target, plus failed to hit a third target that is unspecified.
3) The attackers chose a method that was effctively the same as an airstrike, except that they strapped innocent civillians to their ordinance. That is barbaric, immoral, and wrong, and "cultural differences" be damned. No civillized society straps innocents to weapons.
4) By virtue of the attack itself, plus by virtue of both the fact that a civiliian target was (purposefully) hit and by virtue of point #3, the US was legally and morally entitled to retaliate.
5) By virtue of our being allied with the US, plus by virtue of point #3, it was right and good for Canada to assist the US in this retaliation.
6) The attackers themselves were not sanctioned by any state, nor were they the agents of any state. They were, however, at the least allowed to operate within the bounderies of a state, and perhaps were even supported by the ruling body of the state. That made that state a legitimate military target as wel.
7) That state ruling body also happened to be a regime that imposed some brutal conditions on its citizens, particularly women. "Cultural differences" starts to rear its head here... but given that point #6 opened the door, I wouldn't shed any tears at this regime being deposed.
8) This part of the world has been ravaged in the last 20 years, some of it in no small part due to being caught up as a pawn in the cold war struggles of years previous. That means we in the West bear some responsibility for Afganistan being the way it is. We didn't create the Taliban or Al-Quaida, but we did help create the conditions that let them take power. As such, we in the West owe a debt to the Afgan people.
9) The Marshall Plan after WW2 has demonstrated the wisdom of rebuilding your enemies' homelands after a war; that the best way to ultimately defeat an enemy is to make him your friend. So there is a strategic advantage to rebuilding Afganistan and attempting to make it into the garden spot of the middle east.
10) So from this, I conclude that the invasion of Afganistan, and the subsequent efforts to rebuild the nation and put it back on its feet is right, just, and good. It is right for Canada to be participating, and I at least intend to put my money where my mouth is by putting in a tour there myself once I am able to.
Is that a reasonable conclusion? I think it is.
Now Iraq:
1) No evidence has surfaced to show that Iraq had any part whatsoever in the 9/11 attacks, so there is no moral or legal justification for attacking Iraq in retaliation for 9/11, any more that there would be for invading (say) Sweden.
2) Given that Iraq had been contained (by UN decree) for over 10 years, it posed no threat to anyone outside its own borders.
3) Although it had both stockpiled and used them in the past, there was no evidence that Iraq posessed any weapons of mass destruction, and UN inspectors were on the ground enforcing this.
4) The actual employment of (in particular) chemical weapons without access to mass delivery systems is far more problematic than the lethality of the agents themselves would suggest. It takes tanker truck quantities of agent to carry out successful strikes, not milk carton quantities (the failed sarin attack in the Tokyo subway makes for a very instructive case study)
5) Iraq was a mostly secular country run by a secular dictator whose worldview was exactly the opposite of the worldview of the people who carried out the 9/11 attacks. This both made co-operation between the two groups unlikely at best, and given that this secular dictator was unlikely to reliquish power anytime soon, his presence denied the resources of his country to people alligned with those who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
6) Iraq has large oil reserves.
7) There is personal history between Saddam and the American president, so an element of personal vendetta is present.
8) The US unilaterally invaded Iraq on false pretenses over the objections of the UN and most of the world, apparently because it could. This is more than a little disturbing, especially if one is a ciitizen of a country with a lot of oil, a solid financial footing, a penchant for asserting its own soverignty, and intent on following its own political path in the face of opposition from the US (legaizing gay marriage, moving towards the legaliation of pot, insisting that the US adhere to the court rulings on softwood lumber under NAFTA and threatening to restrict access to power, water, and oil if the US keeps cheating on the NAFTA terms)
9) By invading Iraq, the US has re-enforced the prevailing view in that part of the world of the US and the West in general as being imperialist bullies who trample on the rights of Arabs at will to get what they want, particularly oil, but also as a foe of their religion (shades of the Crusades - the fact that Bush is an evangelical Christian is NOT lost on them) This creates fertile ground for the creation of more organizations aligned with Al-Quaida, and overshadows the very good work being done in Afganistan.
10) So from this, I conclude that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, morally wrong, and produced results counter to the safety and security of the world as a whole - and I am happy and proud of my government in seeing the wisdom of staying out of it.
Which I also see as being an entirely reasonable position - one that is shared by a large number of my fellow citizens.
Now, one failing I see is that we (the governmental and CF "we") haven't done a very good job of getting the message on Afganistan out, especially as Iraq gets all the press. It would be very easy for someone to assume that Afganistan was just like Iraq, and to draw the conclusion that our involvement in Afganistan was just American puppetry. WE all know that isn't the case, but THEY do not. This needs to be addressed.
I don't for a second think that student protests are the result of AQ fifth columnists. They ain't that organized or influential.
One final point - we, as memebers of the CF and as citizens of Canada, are allowed (and indeed EXPECTED) to speak our minds on political issues that affect the country. It is the duty of all citizens in a democracy to participate in government and to let our elected officials know how we feel. As such, I COMPLETELY and EMPHATICALLY agree with the statement that "opposition is not disloyalty". "Her Magesty's Loyal Opposition", right?
Where we DO need to be careful is that we do not confuse our duty as citizens with our duties as soldiers. None of use should be trying to put forward our personal opinions as the official policy of the CF, nor should we be seeking to stifle political discussion (especially where there is potential for that to me misinterpreted as CF policy) When the uniform goes on, we all become politically neuter. Politics is put aside, and we carry out the mission we are given
DG
