A question for Harper, O'Connor and MacKay.

Dear Steve, Gord and Flipper,

The three of you should be doing some serious thinking right about now. You've just been snookered by your hero.

We should never forget that both you, Steve, and you, Flipper, when in opposition, were both banging your toy war-drums to accompany the moron into the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Kristol/Perle/etc. conquest of Iraq. You swallowed whole, everything they offered. Gordo, we can assume that you too supported the idea of going to Iraq. Let's face it, you were working for "the industry" and they wanted it.

I know: the situation in Iraq is different now. You wouldn't have done it. It would have been a mistake. Right?

Wrong.

The situation in Iraq is just as thousands of very vocal people described it would become. You had no idea what would happen because all of you have the forethought of a butter-clam. You would have done it and then you would have spent the subsequent years trying to cover your collective asses and give us Bush-style guarantees that all would turn out wonderfully if we'd just support the troops, trust your strategic acumen and believe that if we pull out we'll be fighting Islamofascist terrorists at the doors of Tim Horton's.

I'm projecting. Let's get on with something real.

You guys have us tied up in a hot military engagement in Afghanistan. If there is a reason to toss fault on anybody for that, I'll happily give you a pass. You inherited that mission. Then, you extended it.

Now, before you start to read this in an inappropriate sense, understand that I actually believe Afghanistan needed to be pummeled. Then it needed a massive occupation force to provide security for a massive rebuild. I had expected that the US led mission would go in exactly that direction - until Bush started talking nonsense about Iraq.

Afghanistan became a sideshow and the outfit carrying all the wood ended up being NATO. And it was shortly after NATO took over, and Canada's troops were committed to one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, that it became apparent that Bush and his psychopathic administration had left the place in chaos, had failed to secure a peace and had neglected the population. Worse, the Bush administration had so "shorted" US forces that they were incapable of neutralizing the Taliban.

Bush had abandoned his righteous war in favour of his illegal invasion of Iraq. But, he couldn't do that without putting somebody else's army on the ground. We can all be excused for taking time to try and sort out his lies. Who would have thought that nothing he was telling us was the truth?

But, now we do know. You all now know.

All of you have gone to NATO pleading for more troops in Afghanistan. Hell, you all stood by in Latvia while Bush himself called for more troops from NATO. He was speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

We might have safely assumed that the reason the three of you were beating the Brussels table for more commitment from NATO was to support the Canadian position. That, we could all probably accept, even if there are those who do not support this country's involvement in Afghanistan.

Now, we cannot be certain. There is good cause for suspicion that the three of you knew Bush's future plans for Cheney's war. We could not be faulted for believing that all of you, Harper, O'Connor and MacKay, were acting as nothing more than Bush water-carriers to assist him in the pursuit of his Iraq agenda.

When this became known, whether you knew of a US troop reduction in Afghanistan before it became public or not, you should have expressed outrage at the actions of the Bush administration. For all of your calls for more troops, the elimination of national caveats on rules of engagement and a more flexible ground force, to sit idly by while major components of an already strained combat force are withdrawn, is contemptuous.

On Wednesday George Bush, leading the worst US presidential administration ever seen, laid out his latest plan for success in Iraq. It is bound to fail. Even your Pattonesque Chief of Defence Staff should be able tell you that. Short of a massive escalation of force, there is no military solution in Iraq. Adding 21,500 troops to the Iraq quagmire is like adding a feather-duster to a snow blower in a blizzard. To extract some of those troops from Afghanistan is an abomination. Just when you were apparently calling for more, Bush is removing them.

Today we also know that Bush has no regard whatsoever for diplomatic missions of any kind. The raid on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Irbil was a blatant violation of international law and intended to provoke Iran. If the residents of that diplomatic mission were a problem it was contingent upon the Iraqi government to simply expel them. Bush has now endangered every diplomatic post in the world.

It is at this point that everyone should be questioning what it is you think the Afghanistan mission is all about. Do you truly believe in the mission to develop a stable Afghanistan able to peacefully join a community of nations? If you do then you must take action and condemn the Bush administration.

Or, is the mission to Afghanistan simply a means to give you some form of euphoria? A sense that Canada can kick people in the nuts: The acquisition of prestige allowing all of you to go to NATO and point fingers at those who are reticent to provide more than their people will accept. If that is the reason, then your incessant ranting that Afghanistan is important is interpreted as nothing, more or less, than support for the decisions of George Bush and his latest act of folly.

Harper, you have made it no secret that you want Canada and, by extension, yourself, to be a major player on the world stage. Now is your real opportunity.

If you believe our mission in Afghanistan has value beyond your self-aggrandizing rhetoric then you have no choice but to crawl up on that world stage and start screaming. You have no choice but to condemn the Bush administration for turning its collective back on Afghanistan, on NATO and on our troops. You have to do it publicly and with conviction. You have to stand up for Canada.

Time is running out. You've already let too much time pass. Do anything less and we will know exactly what you are all about. You can either be a world player or a Bush sycophant.