The Role of Canadian Troops in Afghanistan
It is disturbing to see the direction Canada is taking in its foreign policy regarding the use of Canadian troops. It is one thing to be sent under a United Nations mandate for peacekeeping activities and another to be going on search and destroy missions to root out an unrecognizable civilian enemy.
Peace-keeping activities have been our mainstay since our involvement in the Korean war, if my memory serves me right. Our recent foray into Bosnia in this capacity was fraught with all the dangers of warfare, and our beleagured troops under the command of Gen. Romeo Dallaire show Canada's willingness to engage belligerent combattants when the need is there, even if the world community forgets to care.
So as you can see, I'm not necessarily against war. The difficulty with the present so-called 'war on terror' is that history has shown that a guerrilla war cannot be fought with conventional troops.
Removing both the Taliban and the Saddam regime with conventional forces was immensely successful. Its what follows that goes to the proverbial Hell on a haycart.
How do we take troops trained to fight a conventional war by european standards and send them to search for guerrillas tens of thousands of miles away, in a forbiddingly difficult terrain, with a semi-hostile population and a totally alien religion and culture?
If, hypothetically their job was to eradicate or contain a terrorist threat on Canadian soil, it would be a task beyond their capacity, given a well-established civilian structure of police and a citizenry mainly sympathetic to their cause. It is one thing to fight a visible, easily identifiable enemy and another to fight those disguised as honest citizens.
Would Canadians tolerate home invasions by armed men who cart off any male accused by informants? Would we tolerate innocent children, women and the elderly killed as collateral damage in the taking of a suspect? And yet we are willing to let this happen, as long as it is to the little brown people half a world away.
As a Canadian who had the pleasure of seeing Afghanistan before the russians invaded, I cannot emphasize strongly enough the high regard accorded Canadians by the Afghani citizenry.
It is one thing to fight wars to bring peace and another to wage war.