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Flip;
Have a copy to post here?
Maybe the Globe will read and print my letter of outrage???
Have a copy to post here?
Maybe the Globe will read and print my letter of outrage???
Teddy Ruxpin said:Ruxpin predicts:
Our mission will indeed "end" in 2009. By that time we'll have transitioned almost exclusively to an ANA mentoring role (of a brigade no less) and can wind up the "combat role". A matter of semantics if you ask me.
By Feb 2009, we'll have a large (perhaps even larger than currently contemplated) OMLT role ("noncombat", heh), a PRT and some enablers. This will allow the government of the day - of whatever stripe - to claim that the focus of the mission has indeed changed, but will keep us fully and heavily engaged in Kandahar. Net savings to the CF? A company, perhaps, and maybe the tanks/recce squadron.
Personally, I believe that this has long been the government's plan and will allow Harper et al to claim they've adjusted the mission in response to public "concerns" while in reality nothing really will have changed...
Politicians...bah!
When reading into MacKay's comments on question period remember this. He stated that Canada would not keep the current configuration in Afghanistan without the support of Parliment. Does this mean they will up the numbers of the PRT. Or does it mean that if the Harper Government gets a majority they will continue the current numbers and manning? Remember politicians are shifty people.
In commercial circles it's called "re-branding".I was thinking along the same lines, no more "battle group" but a much larger OMLT and a re-enforced PRT with some enablers (Arty, DFS, etc), but without much of a change in total numbers on the ground...
Munxcub said:... "monkey sphere" ...
Afghans are a courageous people.
Millions have risked their lives to vote in democratic elections.
Millions more have risked their children's lives as well as their own
simply to send them to school. Afghan National police and Army members
risk their lives daily as do those who act as interpreters and health care workers.
Canadians by contrast, take for granted the institutions and freedoms which
Afghans crave, and worse we have grown weary of the sad news that goes
with our involvement in that country. So weary that many of us would risk
the lives of Afghans again by simply refusing to continue supporting
their new government.
Canadians choose to forget the sacrifice and pioneering spirit that built this Canada.
We also choose to ignore what it took to defend Canada from a kind of intolerance
that threatened our freedom and prosperity all the way from Europe.
Afghans face the same kind of depraved external threat today.
The Taliban and their kind are totalitarian by nature and intolerant
by doctrine. Islamists like this are a threat in many other countries
including Canada.
Stephan Dion says we should turn our backs on Afghans in 2009.
Jack Layton says we should turn our backs on them now.
Gilles Duceppe says we should turn our backs on ourselves.
The values that make us Canadians, like democracy,generosity, courage in our convictions,
tolerance are all to easy to forget when the going gets hard.
Lloyd Axworthy said we should move others with the power of our ideas - ideas we are willing to abandon.
Christy Blatchford has it exactly right in her column from Sept 5.
It stinks.