[R-G] Eric Margolis and John Manley on Afghanistan

[Anthony Fenton]

The Quick and the Dead:
Eric Margolis and John Manley on Afghanistan
by Neil Kitson
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kitson.php?articleid=12379

So I'm waiting around for Robert Marleau to give me some information  
about Canadian prisoners in Afghanistan, having waited 14 months, the  
waiting likely to be longer now that I've posted a snotty letter to  
him about the delay, and I can't help but notice the Manley Report.  
Actually, it almost doesn't matter about my application for  
information, most of it having been made public by the action brought  
by Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties  
Association in Federal Court. The facts are indisputable: Canada has  
taken prisoners in Afghanistan and transferred them in circumstances  
prohibited by the Third Geneva Convention, that Convention governing  
United Nations Forces in the field, and the United Nations provides  
the legal cover for what Canada is doing in Afghanistan. I'm looking  
forward to Rick Hillier's trial in The Hague.

Meanwhile, the Manley Report [.pdf] falls predictably like a dead  
hand on the tiller of Canadian foreign policy in Afghanistan: we're  
heading for the rocks, but we should be more frank about the  
impending shipwreck. The Manley Report begins with a falsehood  
("Afghanistan is at war") and goes downhill from there. The Islamic  
Republic of Afghanistan is not at war, and it has declared war on no  
other state. How can Manley, a lawyer, not get this? Either he  
chooses not to get it or he's an idiot. His shtick might play well in  
the corridors of power in North America, but it's going nowhere in  
the back blocks of Kandahar. Afghanistan may well be experiencing a  
civil war, in which case Canada is aiding the "civil power," but what  
if the civil power is completely corrupt?

Such hideous possibilities are ignored by John Manley and his  
colleagues, people well-known for being well-known but otherwise  
innocent of realities in Asia. Meanwhile, we have Eric Margolis, who  
has actually been to Asia and knows much about its history and  
cultures but, for some reason, was not invited to be on the Manley  
Committee. Perhaps he hasn't done enough time on the cocktail circuit  
in Manhattan.

What does Eric think? It's all out in the open, ladies and gentlemen,  
but somehow it doesn't make headway in what passes for political  
discourse in Ottawa. There is discussion of "combat" or "non-combat"  
roles, withdrawing in 2009 or 2011, but there doesn't seem to be a  
discussion of Eric's position, which is, as I understand it, that the  
whole thing is a farce. Or, to quote him directly: "Most Europeans  
regard the Afghan conflict as a. wrong and immoral; b. America's war;  
c. all about oil; and d. probably lost."

So let's imagine it the other way around. The Gigantic Islamic  
Republic of Asia (population one billion) decides that Canada is a  
failed state. The government of Canada is replaced by Shariah law,  
and 2,500 Afghan troops are dispatched from Washington (by Hamid  
Karzai, the mayor of Washington) to oversee the Provincial  
Reconstruction Team in Sudbury. You can see how this would work. None  
of the Afghans speak English, so some local "terps" are hired to deal  
with the natives. The whole of the Afghan detachment would fit  
comfortably into the Sudbury Arena for a hockey game. Do these guys  
play hockey?

Various forward operational bases are established at North Bay and  
Sault St. Marie, but casualties are incurred during routine  
transport, and only helicopters are deemed safe. German tanks worth  
one billion euros are parked in Sudbury and forgotten. Unrest begins  
at home, but people are told "we might be in North America for 100  
years," and "Muslims don't cut and run."

Reality doesn't always work well with public relations. The Tet  
Offensive of 1968 destroyed the official version of America's  
involvement in Vietnam (eerie echoes of that time being heard by many  
of us now), and the official version of the Iraq invasion has been  
destroyed by reality, unless you have a thing going with Tinker Bell.  
The official version of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan actually  
doesn't exist, other than the mythical mission that has not been  
defined. One does, however, get the impression of some sunlit  
democracy with clean water and well-paved roads extending down to the  
Pakistan border, or at least the border with the "lawless tribal  
lands," next to which various Tim Hortons franchises sit invitingly  
as emblems of Western democracy.