Get out of Afghanistan now!

By GERRY WARNER
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
April 13, 2007
Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more."
Shakespeare's words must come as cold comfort to the 2,500 or so Canadian troops serving in George Bush's war in Afghanistan. Eight dead Canucks in a week. The highest Canadian wartime casualty total in more than half a century. And the week is not even over.
Something is terribly wrong here.
The irony of this coming on the heels of the Battle of Vimy Ridge celebrations is almost too much to bear. Vimy, Canada's proudest military moment, the curcible in which Canadian nationhood was forged. Then Afghanistan -- picking up the pieces after the Americans -- good Canadian boys, many of them barely out of their teens, trying to "stabilize" a country that's been at war for a thousand years. A country that hasn't been conquered since Genghis Khan and sucessfully repulsed such great imperial powers as Britain and the Soviet Union. And 2,500 brave Canadian boys -- and they are "boys" if you look at the ages of most of the ones killed this week -- are going to turn back the tide and reverse a thousand years of history and do what the British, Russians and Americans failed to do?
I don't think so. And I think it's nothing short of a national tragedy that we're putting that burden on our heroic soldiers, feeding them into a meat grinder knowing that on any given day some of them won't return. Or return minus an arm, a leg, their eye sight or worse. Wake up people! It's not Vimy Ridge again. Nor Dieppe, D-Day or Passchendaele where soldiers lined up against each other mano a mano. In Afghanistan its asymetrical warfare. Soldiers being blown up by "IED's,"(Improvised Explosive Devices) that they can't even see and can't defend themselves against. This isn't war. It's Russian Roulette. You might as well roll the dice, stick a bullet in the chamber, hold the gun to your temple and pull the trigger. It makes as much sense. Not that war ever makes sense and it's never been more senseless than it is in Afghanistan. American author Lawrence Wright in his book "Looming tower; Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" says after the towers fell the American army and its allies poured into Afghanistan chasing Osama Bin Laden and in less than two months declared "victory" even though Bin Laden escaped (if he was even there) and they'd only "conquered" the capital Kabul while the countryside was rife with Taliban. And you know the rest. The Americans left to pursue their real interest -- the oilfields of Iraq -- and the Taliban left their rabbit holes and surged back into power and, like it or not, they'd be running the country today if it wasn't for the NATO Coalition troops occupying the country in a futile attempt to maintain peace. And as far as the occupation goes, most of the occupying countries won't even send their soldiers into Kandahar becauseit's too dangerous.
So who gets to be cannon fodder in the hell hole of Kandahar? Those brave Canadians. Just like they did at Vimy Ridge, Dieppe and Passchendaele as already pointed out.
Except this time it's different because bravery and courage is not going to "win" in Afghanistan. A February 2005 UN Report tells why. The report said Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, 173rd out of 178 countries ranked. Only sub-Saharan Africa is poorer. Out of every 1,000 babies born in Afghanistan, 142 die before reaching the age of one. An Afghani woman dies in pregnancy every 30 minutes. Life expectancy is 42.5 years. And it gets worse. Afghanistan is a theocracy. Ninety-nine per cent of the population is fundamentalist Islam and Shariah Law based on the Qu'ran is strictlyenforced. You know what that means. When a woman gets raped in the Afghanistan countryside, she's the one that gets stoned to death, not the rapist.
Now do you think for one minute that 20-year-old Canadian soldiers --several of the soldiers killed this week were 20 or so -- no matter how brave, how trained or how well-intended can "pacify," "stabilize" or"reconstruct" a dysfunctional, basket case of a country like Afghanistan?They don't even speak the language. Mike Cessford, the deputy Canadian Commander in Afghanistan, says Canadians are in for the long haul. "This is a long war. You have to think in terms of years and generations. "Generations?" Isn't the mission supposed to end in 2009? Is the carnage to go on indefinitely? Even the Americans are talking about getting out of Iraq. The "surge" hasn't worked. More than 40 US soldiers have died this month alone and more than 3,300 since the war began and 600,000 Iraqi civillians have been slaughtered in the name of "democracy." And Bin Laden is still on the loose. Surely there's a message here. The West can't bully the rest of the world into adopting its ways. They only hate us for it. It's time to bring home the troops.
Now!
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