Michael Ignatieff: A Liberal Idealist With Neo-Conservative Impulses?

It being a slow news day, I have nothing to offer but this article on Iggy's foreign policy from Embassy Magazine. It offers nothing in the way of new information, but does go some way to explaining why many within the Liberal party view Ignatieff with discomfort.

Incidentally, of all the reasons to criticize Iggy's support the invasion of Iraq, one that doesn't get alot of play is the fact that he had already seen several years of things going wrong in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Empire Lite is an extended bitch against the same kind of mismanagement (nation building "on the cheap", he calls it) that has afflicted the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

One might argue that: fool me once, shame on you; fool me thrice, shame on me.

(Although as fodder for attack ads I think this stuff is mostly water lone gone under the bridge. I suspect now the line of attack will be his "installation" as Lib Leader, which won't work, and his status as an "intellectual", which might cut a little more sharply.)

Hillier Bails, Urges Nation to Fight On

Give him his gold watch and tell him bye bye.

3rd Verse, Same As The 1st

How can you tell when the NATO Forces are bullshitting you?

Headline for October 31st: Afghans and NATO kill 50 Taliban and surround 200.
From today's (November 1st) story, Taliban 'Arghandab' offensive halted: Canada:

"Other Afghan sources tell us that most of the Taliban fighters slipped out of the area overnight, which often happens under the cover of darkness."

But wait, I'm getting a sense of deja-vu here. There was operation Baaz Tsuka in December 2006:

HOWZ-E MADAD, Afghanistan - There is no place to hide, and nowhere to run for the 700 to 900 Taliban insurgents now squeezed into a box near here by NATO forces.

...which fizzled out when the surrounded Taliban fighters "moved elsewhere".

And there was Operation Medusa, in which NATO claimed to have another 700 fighters surrounded and then, when they slipped out the back way, claimed to have them "psychologically surrounded".

What an utterly pointless exercise.

Stockwell Speaks

Stockwell Day's Penticton Western News column is up, and its all about the detainee situation around Kandahar. Frankly, the Tories changing story has me confused, so I can't really tell how much of this is on the up-and-up. If you find any egregious falsehoods, let me know.

7:00 update: as Darren notes in the comments, Stockwell accuses "Stephan" Dion of wanting to build a prison for Taliban in Canada. Is he just stupid, or deliberately Anglicizing the name to make Dion sound more "white" for his readers?

$38,000 For Sweet F.A.

That's the damage from Wiji Khan's first Mid-East Trip back in September of 2006. And for that princely sum, the Canadian taxpayer apparently got a report written on transparent paper in invisible ink.

Although Wiji did manage to uncover the startling truth that torture is a "fact of life over there", which I could have done via a google search for the price of a couple of TTC tokens and a bowl of soup.

The NDP is WHAT?

From The NY Times:

After the recent deaths, the opposition Liberal Party, which was in power when Canada first sent troops to Afghanistan, introduced a motion in Parliament calling on the government to withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan when the current commitment expires in February 2009.

[...]

The Liberal and separatist Bloc Québécois parties are expected to support the nonbinding motion, but without the support of the third opposition party, the New Democratic Party, it is expected to fail.

I must have missed this, but if true its a real puker. Now, it looks like the Dippers will try to cover the fact that they're propping up the Harper regime by demanding an immediate withdrawal, and claiming that anything less is unacceptable. But of course, since an immediate withdrawal is impractical, dishonorable and just generally ain't gonna happen, this choice is entirely illusory. 2009 is the first realistic date, and Jack Layton is ready to reject it to, what, spare Stephen Harper some embarrassment?

God these guys have become a disappointment under Layton. Anyone for a "draft Ed Broadbent again" movement? How about a "draft Alexa' movement? Anything but what we have now.

Afghani Army ‘May Not Be Ready' In 2009

...according to Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, the commander of Canadian forces in that country.

In fact, I think we can say with 99.9999% certainty that they won't be. And that they won't be ready in 2019 either, nor 2029. You know when they'll be ready? After the sun goes supernova!
If Canada waits until the Afghanis are able to stand up before we stand down (to paraphrase Bush Jr.), we will be spilling Canadian blood and money over there forever. And in just three to five more years all of our army's equipment will be worn down from the desert sand and nobody that isn't blood-thirsty, mongoloid, or insane will want to join up. Gen. Hillier's scheme to get our army some practise for the real wars of the future will have wound up breaking it instead. Something similar is happening RIGHT NOW South of the border, something that even the most right wing of the right wing crazies are beginning to realize.

Dion is right to want to call this stupid thing off by 2009, and you know he's read the nation correctly (and the pundits and the blo-vators in the blogosphere have not) by the fact that Harper is too chickenshit to make this issue a matter of confidence. He'd be crazy to fight an election on Canadian participation in the Afghanistan campaign, and he knows it.

Two More Dead Canucks In Afghanistan

...according to CTV, very likely from a roadside bomb.But of course casualties make for a better fighting force, as Stephen Harper once said.

Stockwell Spills To The Taliban

Right after saying he can't give out sensitive information, Stockwell Day does just that in his latest Western Penticton News column:

The full moon was lighting up the desert floor and the lookout towers on the walls at each corner of the large compound were casting long shadows across the camp.

I could make out the silent silhouettes of two guards in each turret.

[...]

As I pulled myself up through the trap door I was greeted curiously by the two armed guards, machine guns and all.

Memo to Johnny Jihadi: two Canucks in each turret, armed with machine-guns.

Stockwell also throws in a bit of product placement this time out, name-checking Tim Horton's and mentioning their contribution to the war effort.

Not A Bad Compromise

...considering our guys are effectively stuck there until 2009 anyway:

Split between hawks and doves, Stéphane Dion's opposition party has hammered out its long-promised common-ground position that includes signalling to allies that Canada will give up the leadership of the Kandahar-based NATO mission at the end of its current tour, two years from now.

An agreement is an agreement, even if its a bad one, and to leave beforehand would be, as Mr. Dion has said, dishonorable.

Also, it seems that, as Mr. Bush sees Iraq go down the crapper and desperately casts about for some kind of positive legacy, he is recommitting to the Afghanistan mission. I doubt that 3,000 extra bodies will have any lasting effect, but at least it doesn't look so much like America is fobbing off this particular disaster on its NATO allies, Canada included, and heading for the hills.

And, finally, this story merits watching.