Category: Asia

I came across this over at PTBC and won’t bother trying to explain it. Suffice it to say that this is something that every true Canadian should watch and think long and hard about whenever thinking about what we’re doing in Afghanistan…

Click here to see the video.

Does anybody else remember how, not so long ago, Aiman al-Zawahiri (the number 2 turd on the al-Quaeda manure pile) was blabbing his sorry arse off about how Canadians were nothing but “second rate crusaders?” Remember how he was burbling on that we should “prepare to bury your dead?”

And now we have an assortment of squawklets whining and handwringing that we’re “losing” in Afghanistan. Somehow, I don’t think so.

If recent accounts can be trusted (and I trust even the MSM a hell of a lot more than I’d trust some nutjob like Zawasneezy), the casualty ratio for Operation Medusa was something like 300 to 1 in our favour (5 Canadians KIA, to some 1500 or so toasted Taliban).

So tell me there, Aimy; if those are the “second-rate” ones, what the hell are you gutless buggers going to do when we decide to throw some real hardasses at ya? Just wondering, ya know…

Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington brings up an interesting (and disturbing) question in his latest column: Was the latest suicide attack in Afghanistan, which left four brave Canadian soldiers dead and dozens of soldiers and civilians wounded, deliberately timed to coincide with the return of our MPs for the fall session?

Are the Taliban taking lessons from the West’s history of warfare in the last half century? Are they being mindful of how the United States lost the war in Vietnam?

Yes, I know I’m going to get some heat for that comment (most of it likely from Texas) but it’s still true. The war in Vietnam was never lost on the battlefield, it was lost on the streets of America. The American public lost its stomach for the conflict and the Yanks finally cut and ran in April of 1975. In spite of winning every major engagement with the enemy (yes; including even the Tet offensive, which the peaceniks called a victory for the commies), the inexhorable, grinding lack of support for the war back home eventually knocked the pins out from under the whole damned effort.

The usual Leftist suspects who are today comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam will howl any parallel that they can find, no matter how tenuous. What they won’t mention, unless you drag it out of them kicking and screaming, is the more than 5,000,000 (yes, FIVE MILLION) Cambodians and Vietnamese who were slaughtered by the communists after the Americans pulled out. Why the hell do you think we had so many boat people seeking refuge in Canada??

How many Afghanis will the Taliban murder in repraisal if we leave?

If a recent poll is any indication, however, the Taliban are in for a rude surprise if they think mere casualties are enough to shatter our collective will. The poll by Ipsos-Reid, taken in the days prior to this past September 11th, shows that Canadian resolve is hardening as the war goes on, not weakening.

We are, historically, not a nation given to heat-of-the-moment declarations of war (with the exception of 1939) but when we do get into a fight, we damn well finish it.

As most of you already know, Canada’s calls for more troops from our NATO “allies” to reinforce the ISAF in Afghanistan have, so far, been met with nothing but a chorus of crickets. It’s disgusting in its moral cowardice.

The Americans can be excused, as can the British, being entangled in Iraq as they are. And let’s face it, the only time the French ever want someone to go to war is when the German army is busy knocking up mademoiselles left and right and buggering off with all the croisants, so you really can’t expect a damn thing from them. Speaking of Germans: historically, Krauts and Canucks on the same battlefield has been, shall we say, problematic (for the Germans); so they’re off the hook too.

But the deafening silence from other NATO nations, particularly some who owe their very freedom to the blood price paid by our courageous fighting men (yes Holland, I’m looking at YOU), just leaves me shaking my head. For God’s sakes, even the Polish are kicking in some more help.

So just what the hell are we going to do? That’s a no-brainer: we dig in our heels and keep on getting the damned job done ourselves. That’s right, we’re beefing up the Afghanistan deployment, with the first injection announced today:

The reinforcements include an infantry company from Quebec’s Royal 22nd Regiment, a squadron of Leopard tanks from Edmonton, some military engineers to bolster Canada’s provincial reconstruction team, and a special anti-mortar unit.

NATO/Europe wants to sit on their sorry arses and let us do the work yet again? Fine. Just don’t call us the next time Germany goes apeshit.

Here’s a little something that was found in Wednesday’s online edition of the Globe & Mail and written by Lewis MacKenzie, who could probably be accurately described as being the best Governor General Canada never had. Considered the most experienced peacekeeper in the world, Major-General (ret’d) Lewis MacKenzie encapsulates what being a leader truly is. He also has a bullshitometer permanently set on a hair trigger and isn’t afraid to sound off when some bonehead sets it off. Check it out:

The Afghan mission is not a failure
There’s ‘tradition’ and then there’s getting the job done, says retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie

LEWIS MACKENZIE

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail

As the leader of a party that has little chance of governing the country, the NDP’s Jack Layton can accept the political risk of holding up a mirror to the government’s decisions and occasionally acting as our national conscience. On the subject of Canada’s role in Afghanistan, however, I fear he is dead wrong and am left to wonder if he is following the polls and playing domestic politics on the backs of our soldiers.

Mr. Layton says that he and the NDP support our soldiers but question the wisdom and achievability of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. And, having said that, he goes on to say the mission is the wrong mission for Canada and is, at the very least, unclear. I can only assume Mr. Layton’s call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2007, to pursue more traditional Canadian roles involving mediation and negotiation, is based on a widely held myth that we are better than the rest of the 192 nations in the United Nations at the dated concept of “peacekeeping.”

Peacekeeping between states that went to war and needed an excuse to stop fighting worked relatively well during the Cold War and Canada played a role in each and every mission. Mind you, at the height of our participation in UN missions during the 1970s and ’80s we had a maximum of 2,000 soldiers wearing the blue beret deployed abroad in places such as Cyprus and the Golan Heights. At the same time, we had 10,000 personnel serving with NATO on the Central Front in Germany, armed with nuclear weapons, ready and waiting for the Soviet hoards to attack across the East German border. Peacekeeping was a sideline activity. We did it well, along with others such as Sweden, India,

Norway, Brazil — but it was never even close to being our top priority.

The other Canadian myth that might have influenced Mr. Layton’s ill-timed call for our withdrawal is the oft-quoted description of Canada’s policies being “even-handed,” “neutral” or “impartial.” We never take a stand for fear of upsetting someone. But the facts surrounding even our exaggerated peacekeeping role explode this troubling myth. For example, in the approval process preceding the very first UN lightly armed peacekeeping mission — stick-handled by Lester Pearson through a hesitant Security Council in 1956 — Canada voted against the British and French and, by default, sided with Egypt. We took a stand.

To suggest, as Mr. Layton does, that we should pull out of the Afghan mission next year and return to our more “traditional” roles ignores one compelling fact. There will be no significant capability for any nation to carry out those “traditional” roles of nation-building in southern Afghanistan until those who are committed to stopping such undertakings are removed from the equation.

In other words, by leaving, we would be saying to the remaining 36 nations on the ground in Afghanistan, “Hey guys, this is getting pretty difficult. We have decided to leave and go home, but don’t worry, when the rest of you have put down this insurrection and things are peaceful, we will return and offer our vastly superior skills in putting countries back together. So please, call us as soon as the shooting stops — for good.”

For all those who, like Mr. Layton, say the mission is imprecise, unclear, without an exit strategy, etc., let me disagree and say that to a NATO military commander the mission is crystal clear.

It is to leave Afghanistan as quickly as humanly possible — having turned the security of the country over to competent Afghan military and police forces controlled in their efforts by a democratically elected national government. Sounds pretty clear to me.

(Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was the first commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.)

“When the RAF flew over, the Germans ducked. When the Luftwaffe flew over, the Allies ducked. When the Yanks flew over, everybody ducked.” – often-repeated quip by soldiers in WWII

It’s an old, sick joke; probably better left forgotten. Nonetheless, it’s been clattering around in Canadian skulls like some malignant revenant, taunting us, for the past few days now.

In case you’re one of the four people that haven’t heard yet, our boys in Afghanistan were struck early Monday morning by yet another “friendly fire” airstrike by the Americans. The tally: 1 dead, over 30 wounded. And while it is tempting (damn tempting) to rail against the Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight, there are a few things that we should keep in mind before getting our national panties in a bunch.

Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, the Canadian in charge of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, made one good point:

“We do have procedures. We do have communications. We do have training and tactics and techniques and procedures to mitigate the risk, but we can’t reduce those risks to zero.”

No, you can’t. Combat is Murphy’s Law run amok. A day in the field is ten hours of trying to find the enemy and ten minutes wishing you hadn’t. Pick a cliche. They all have the same grain of truth to them: in battle, sometimes shit just happens.

But just how much coincidence are we prepared to accept? This latest incident brings the proportion of Canadian fatalities in Afghanistan due to American air to ground fire to nearly twenty percent. Of all Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, nearly one in five were killed by American FW aircraft. These are supposedly the most advanced combat aircraft the world has ever seen, with sophisticated friend-or-foe identification systems.

So what the hell keeps screwing up? Even our men in the field, who normally maintain a professionalism and discipline respected worldwide, are beginning to chafe at the American Air Farce’s apparent myopia:

“We should spray-paint a big circle around us, with an arrow that says ‘Not here, asshole,’ ” one soldier said, packing up his sleeping gear.

Soldiers go into combat expecting that some of them are going to die; it’s just part of the job. But when nearly a fifth of your fatalities are being inflicted by those who are supposed to be on your side, it begins to erode morale. You start feeling like George Patton… with a French division behind you.

You would think that, even at altitude, a pilot could be expected to tell the difference between Taliban and Canadians travelling with a bunch of armoured vehicles that the Taliban just don’t use. But perhaps there is a more disturbing question here. It’s this:

Those A10s didn’t just come from nowhere. Ground troops weren’t set to move in and begin the assault for over another 30 minutes. Who the hell called in the airstrike?