Here's another spin to CAN extending the mission - it'll get the USA pres-elect on our side. Links to policy papers mentioned
here, all shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions,
Section 29, of the
Copyright Act.
Blueprint for getting Obama's ear: Keep our troops in Afghanistan
Supporting U.S. in spreading global democracy will be a key to a better relationship, a policy paper says
Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service, 13 Dec 08
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Canada's laundry list for Barack Obama's arrival in the White House next month is ambitious: boosting trade across a dysfunctional border, a continental energy and climate-change accord, and halting the economic meltdown.
But if Ottawa has any hope of getting the ear of the world's most popular politician, it will have to think big and act even bigger. And that means dumping plans for the large-scale withdrawal of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan in 2011.
That was the underlying message this past week when dozens of senior bureaucrats, diplomats and analysts from Canada and the U.S. met in Ottawa to discuss a "blueprint" for getting the Canadian government on the radar of the incoming Obama administration.
The message couldn't be any more timely, given the musings last week by U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates about keeping Canadian troops in Kandahar past their 2011 pullout date.
Carleton University's Canada-U.S. Project will forward its sweeping policy paper to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an attempt to advance an ambitious new agenda in Washington.
Bold and daring needed
Canada's overtures to Obama will have to be as big as the larger-than-life U.S. president-elect himself, and will only grab his attention if they are bold and daring, and promise to take the Canada-U.S. relationship to new highs.
That means playing the Afghanistan card.
Against the backdrop of recession, Obama comes to power facing weighty world problems with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a provocative and nuclear-minded Iran, and carnage in Haiti and Sudan's Darfur region.
"It's not wait times at the Ambassador Bridge," a senior Bush administration official said.
The official was referring to the bottleneck at the two countries' busiest land crossing at Detroit and Windsor -- a major focal point of Canada's irritation with its "thickening" border with the U.S., which it believes slows trade and is economically harmful.
What the U.S. wants from its northern neighbour, the official said, is help on the world stage to help solve big world problems.
"You did that with Afghanistan," the official said, and that translated into face time for Canada with the U.S. to solve bilateral irritants, such as the softwood lumber dispute.
Bruce Jentleson, a Duke University political scientist and a foreign policy adviser to former Democratic vice-president Al Gore, said Canada should extend the Afghanistan mission beyond the withdrawal date set by Parliament.
"The nature of the U.S. presidential transition makes engaging a new administration on anything other than a crisis or a top priority inherently difficult well into its first year in office," wrote Jentleson in one of the 17 policy papers submitted to the Carleton project.
"A constructive scenario would be for Canada to reaffirm its commitment beyond the current 2011 time frame."
David Bercuson, the director of the Calgary-based Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, said the U.S. does not expect Canada to behave like a superpower, but it does want it to contribute to the defence of democratic values on the world stage....
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