I watched our federal parliamentarians debate on the Canadian military
presence in Afghanistan last night, expecting some enlightenment on why our
soldiers are there. I got nothing out of it and had to conclude that most
members of Parliament, at least those that spoke, didn’t really know what they
were talking about. It all seemed to boil down to the question of whether
individuals supported our troops or not. Not to support them would prove
unpatriotic and no MP would want to be labelled as that.
What bothered me most about the debate is that it didn’t even come close to
asking the real questions such as why, when we went in under NATO have we
become part of the American’s Operation Enduring Freedom or what the strategic
implications of trying to pacify Afghanistan were (see my posting of March
26, http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/newblog.htm).
Some of the discussion sounded very American – like if we don’t fight
terrorism over there we’ll have to fight it over here – suggesting a very
wrong understanding of terrorism. It’s as though terrorism was a country like
prewar Iraq complete with a hostile dictator. I think we should have learned
enough to know that it isn’t really like that at all. It’s a whole bunch of
little groups or cells in many parts of the world, many connected but others
not, each with their own grievances arising out of interactions between rich
countries and poor countries, exploiting people and exploited peoples, and
those who gain and those who have little left to lose. Of course,
fundamentalist religion plays a role in it, supporting and providing a moral
armament to those who believe they must destroy the infidel. There are
also those who, like the "black widows" of Chechnya, having lost everything
and in deep grief, feel that their only remaining recourse is to undertake
terrorist acts.
But none of this was mentioned in the debate last night. It was like you
gotta put your hand on your heart and support whatever it is we’re doing over
their or you’re not a patriotic Canadian. So that’s what the MPs, hands on
hearts, did.
Ed
