“If I’ve lost Margaret Wente, I’ve lost middle Canada.”

[...being, of course, a paraphrase of Lyndon Johnson's response to hearing Walter Cronkite declare the Vietname war "unwinnable" in Feb '68.

(Margaret-freaking-Wente, for cronk's sake!) ]

And we’re in Kandahar because?

By Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail
March 2, 2006

We are in Kandahar in large measure because the previous government wanted to find a way to improve our relations with the Bush administration, and ponying up forces for a major deployment in Afghanistan was one way to show our bona fides.”

If you believe what you hear, the reason our forces are in Afghanistan is to help the suffering Afghan people. A little bit of reconstruction, some nation-building, a few photo ops with cute children — who could be against that? Trouble is, that’s not why we’re in Afghanistan. And there won’t be time for much of that stuff anyway. Our soldiers are going to be too busy dodging roadside bombs and hunting scumbags. There’s a war on, and we’re in it up to our necks.

Canadian boots are hitting the ground just as the Taliban and al-Qaeda are about to mount a major spring offensive. The director of the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency warned this week that the Afghan insurgency now presents a greater threat “than at any point since late 2001.” People on the ground say that defeating the insurgency might take a generation.

Afghanistan is supposed to be the “good” war, as opposed to the “bad” one in Iraq. But the two are looking more and more alike. The Afghan insurgents have imported two of Iraq’s most deadly weapons — suicide bombers and homemade roadside bombs, the kind of device that killed Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry. These weapons will never win a conventional war. But as we’ve seen in Iraq, they are remarkably effective at sapping the morale of civilians back home who don’t want their sons and daughters to return in body bags.

Why are we in Kandahar? “Simplistically put, this is all about Canadians and the international community helping Afghans help themselves . . . so they can deal with their challenges their way,” says Brigadier-General David Fraser, the Canadian now in command of the international coalition in Kandahar. But Kim Nossal, professor of political studies at Queen’s University, has a different explanation. “We are in Kandahar in large measure because the previous government wanted to find a way to improve our relations with the Bush administration, and ponying up forces for a major deployment in Afghanistan was one way to show our bona fides.”

No wonder everyone would rather mumble platitudes about peace and democracy. Besides, says Prof. Nossal, “who wants to make a speech warning about the possibility of Canadian casualties?”

Despite the happy talk, Canadians aren’t buying it. According to a Globe poll, public support for our Afghan mission is running at 27 per cent. It’s not just the usual latte-loving liberals who oppose it. The Tim Hortons crowd is against it, too. “I don’t think it’s our fight,” said a butcher who works near a military base in Alberta.

Their skepticism is well founded. For starters, the idea of nation-building in Afghanistan makes nation-building in Iraq look like a snap. If a nation means an entity with a strong central government, then Afghanistan has never been one. The good guys and the bad guys keep changing sides, and many of the good guys are former bad guys who just happen to be on our side, for now.

Although undoubtedly nicer than the Taliban, Afghan authorities are not quite ready to embrace a liberal democracy. They’re still jailing teenagers convicted of homosexuality and women accused of adultery. A (male) magazine editor recently spent two months in prison on blasphemy charges because he suggested that Islamic law ought to be reinterpreted to protect women’s rights.

Afghanistan is a narco-economy, responsible for much of the world’s opium supply; more than three million Afghans, mostly poor farmers, are involved in the opium business. Now the U.S. has declared war on the opium crop, a move that’s not likely to endear the foreigners to the locals. Meantime, the Taliban are burning schools and beheading teachers. “Why don’t the security forces, our own, the Americans and the British, protect these schools? What is the point of them being here if they cannot protect even children?” pleaded one director of education.

In other words, Afghanistan is a nasty, bloody place. It has confounded every foreign force that’s dared to meddle in it. And in the end, there is just one reason to be there. It’s to wipe out al-Qaeda and the Taliban before they wipe out us. And that’s one tough sell.