From the inbox:
Prime Minister Harper,
I am deeply saddened by the news that six Canadian soldiers have died during a military offensive in Afghanistan. This brings the total number of Canadian soldiers killed to 51 since the invasion in 2001, and 43 of those deaths occurred in only the last fourteen months.
I do not support this military role for Canada, and urge your government to pursue a diplomatic solution to end the war as quickly as possible.
Politics'n'Poetry 
And what do you believe a “diplomatic solution” will achieve? Given that placing Taliban members in the government, or any position of power, is not an option (and the drug leaders, warlords, milita leaders, and war criminals in the government should have been deemed ineligible to run under Afghan electoral procedures but, alas, corruption failed Afghans there), what exactly would you offer in exchange for a ceasefire?
Well, to start, I would offer life and living, as opposed to death and destruction.
The guy we’re fightin’ an’ dyin’ for has been negotiatin’ with the Taliban fer quite a while. Maybe Michael oughta ask him what he’s offerin’ an’ whether them negotiations with the Taliban are gettin’ anywhere. Usually, the people who live in a country are the best ones to decide whether they wanna negotiate with one faction or another.
In this case, the warlords that we helped install into power have got their pointman, Karzai, talkin’ to the Taliban. Is that so they can protect the opium crop that funds the entire country? When Canajuns die fer the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, we shouldn’t be dyin’ fer warlords an’ opium profits an’ secret negotiations between our ally and our enemy.
JimBobby
I would love to ask Karzai what he is offering. More than that, I would like to ask why the international community allowed Karzai to choose the SNTV electoral system because he felt he would get a Pashtun parliamentary majority (yes that is true). I think we need to seriously look at most of the international development policies in Afghanistan but I do believe we need to stay there (we have a moral obligation to).
Politicsnpoetry, I don’t think life and living are going to be enough to offer. I am not convinced you can find anything acceptable to offer considering they must not be allowed to have any influence in that country. As we build that country and its education system we must eradicate fundamentalism, extreme cultural interpretations of Islam, and give liberal democratic education to all and, in particular, the children. The Taliban have no place in the state we need to create unless they are willing to completely abandon their beliefs. If not, then we merely need to convince and teach the population why the Taliban is wrong; I would argue that we can make very compelling arguments against Islamic fundamentalism once we provide the population with a proper education that they were deprived of thanks to the Taliban and ultra conservative ideologies.
“As we build that country and its education system we must eradicate fundamentalism, extreme cultural interpretations of Islam, and give liberal democratic education to all and, in particular, the children. The Taliban have no place in the state we need to create unless they are willing to completely abandon their beliefs.”
If you are reality-based, then you know that Karzai is negotiating with the same bunch who are engaged in killing Canadians. They already have a seat at the table. We are there to prop up Karzai. We are sending our brave soldiers to die for Karzai’s government. There is absolutely zero possibility that we few Canadians with our limited resources can “eradicate fundamentalism, extreme cultural interpretations of Islam, and give liberal democratic education to all.” Our Merkan allies have no patience for nation-building – only war.
If we were serious about creating a democracy, we would not be fighting and dying for an Islamic Republic, run by corrupt US puppets and drug-financed warlords. We’re willing dupes blindly taking orders from the worst US president in history. There is no defensible plan at work in Afstan just as there was no plan for Iraq. Our kids are dying for nothing other than Harper’s ego in wanting Canada to be a major player on the world military stage.
JB
Thanks for quoting only what you choose to read. I recognized Karzai’s negotiations in my first paragraph and I am fundamentally opposed to them. It is clear that state-building (please don’t say nation, nations don’t exist) exercise will take a very long time and require a multilateral effort. While I argue that peacekeeping is a myth, multilateralism, in the Canadian context, is not due to our “middle power” status.
If we were serious about democracy we would re-examine the policies we are using to development Afghanistan. You will find me in complete agreement with regard to the problems in Afghanistan and how we cannot sustain some of the misguided policies (I can give you a very long list of problems if you want it). I do not, however, believe that these problems mean that we must withdraw. On the contrary, I think we need to change the theoretical framework that underpins our foreign policy and then apply a new, liberal cosmopolitan framework, to the situation in Afghanistan so that we can change the international development policies to effective ones that actually address domestic Afghan concerns.
We have an obligation to the Afghan people. I don’t hear any mention of them in our arguments. What about the hundreds of thousands of women dying from preventable disease? What about the hundreds of women committing suicide by self-immolation because of a lack of hope? What about the oppressive, ultra conservative ideology that prevails in that country? If we leave there is a cost. The cost is that the Taliban will take control of Aghanistan again and continue their brutal, oppressive reign of tyranny. We are failing women with our policies now but withdrawing, rather than changing our approach, would complete the disaster. Never forget that inaction or withdrawal has a human cost; I do not think that cost is acceptable.
Finally, I am worried about how some of the left are using the argument that soldiers are dying as a reason for bringing them home. What concerns me is that we are placing a much higher priority on soldiers than on innocent civilians. I would argue that, if we make some important changes to our international development policies so as to allow for a success in Afghanistan, the cause and the long-term success is worth losing soldiers for (this is, after all, what they signed up to do; the military has always been about fighting first and foremost and the only reason this seems to have changed of late is because some on the left do not understand that there are just wars that we must initiate and pursue to protect innocent civilian populations).