"If the Canadian government does terminate the deployment in 2009 as Harper has indicated, our top commanders will be given a new set of orders. If the objective becomes the safe and efficient repatriation of our troops and equipment with a minimum of disruption to our NATO allies, then I have no doubt whatsoever our army will achieve that goal in a professional, capable manner.
If at that junction a journalist asks a Canadian soldier whether he agrees with the withdrawal, he will dutifully reply, "Yes, I believe in my mission."
Soldiers follow orders and serve their country. It is imperative that we as Canadians ensure that self-sacrificing spirit is not employed in vain."
We and our allies fought WW2 for 6 years. In early '08 we will have been engaged, with NATO, in Afghanistan for an equal number of years.
In WW2 we were fighting 3 fully militarized nation states.
In Afghanistan we're fighting...well, no one seems to be able to say with any consistency.
NATO has become little more than a front for the execution of US foreign policy. NATO is there because the US wants NATO there.
NATO strategies and tactics are determined and directed by the US. Each of the NATO nations participating are doing so as a proxy for the US. Most of them know it and are growing increasingly uncomfortable with it.
Yet we stay.
We are culpable in the deaths of our own citizens who serve in Canada's military as well as the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Afghanis. All in the service of US foreign policy.
We, you and I, have their blood on our hands.
A tail dragging romp through the swamps of the world
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