Kitchener

Are you serious? Good grief. This is rather confused. Babies did indeed die in Kuwait; that wasn't entirely manufactured. The deception in that case involved the number of babies, the precise manner of their deaths, and the way that the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter was passed off as an eyewitness to the events. It was a shocking and sickening deception, but hardly grounds for scepticism that neonatal deaths occurred! As for the suggestion that Bin Laden never existed... well, I'm at loss to understand your thinking.

So, that would be option (A), then: vacuous and entirely fictitious smear job. Monty, making things up is not a good way of establishing yourself as someone worth taking seriously. I mean, look at what I actually said. Look again at how you replied. Now, read those two things very carefully, Monty. What did I say about oil? What did you say I said about oil? Uh-huh... So that would make your post a... what, now? The icing on the cake is that you don't seem to know what a fallacious conspiracy theory is. Note: it's not just something you disagree with. In problematic cases of conspiracy theories, somebody must have postulated a conspiracy whose actions include the elimination of evidence for the conspiracy. Since I postulated no conspiracy of any sort, this would be another case of you making things up. Words have meanings, Monty, and making up things about your interlocutors is unmannerly.

Of course you're the authority on the question of what you thought at the time. But I don't know of evidence that the oil pipeline is or was Canada's main reason for getting involved in Afghanistan. I can't see much reason to doubt that humanitarian aid was part of the reason. But for my money -- and this is mostly an educated guess -- I'd say that there was also a strong element of realpolitik regarding Canada-US relations. Remember, Feb. 2003 (the Liberal 1000-soldier commitment to Afghanistan) was when Iraq invasion hype was at a fevered pitch, and the Bush admin was pulling out all the stops to assemble the appearance of a broad-based coalition. The pressure on Canada to go along was substantial and was only going to get more intense, as Celluci was ramping up his aggressive rhetoric month by month. Chretien was not going to participate in Iraq, and wanted to have a bone to throw both to the US and to hawks in Canada. The Afghanistan mission accomplished this, to a degree.

Once again: are you actually replying to some particular post, or are you just venting about nobody in particular -- or nobody who actually exists save in your imagination? For example, you wrote about some vague entity called "the left" that "does not believe in Afghanis having any rights". Wow! The whole left! Afghans not having any rights! Now, one possibility is that this is a childish, groundless smear that you've pulled out of thin air, in order to indulge your wish to blurt out something despite not having an actual point supported by actual evidence. But maybe, just maybe, somebody on this thread did indeed both identify as a leftist, deny that Afghans should have any rights, and give reasons to think that "the left" more generally shared this view. If so, you should be able to quote them saying that. I guess we'll see which it is.

Was there some particular post you were replying to, or was this outburst just randomly dropped on this thread?

One needn't look for such acts as shooting abortion-providers in order to see the bloody consequences of religious conviction. The very successful efforts in the USA to depict GW Bush as a godly (hence, to simplistic reasoners, a moral) man, in spite of masses of evidence of callousness and dishonesty, fairly directly led to a war and occupation so lethal to non-combatants that 9/11 is trivial by comparison. Even staunchly religious people may shake their heads at the disgusting rhetoric of Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps, and regard him as an isolated example of religiously motivated hatred. But when some of those same people came out to vote pro-Bush oin order to prevent gays from marrying, a campaign widely driven by religious organizations with Republican backing (and vice versa), their reasons were no less religious and not much less degenerate than Phelps's, and the consequences of their votes cost immeasurably more in terms of money and innocent lives. Religious conviction has its bloodiest consequences through the aggregate effects of politely shared prejudice, and not by the one-off acts of extremists.

Well, it was the Liberals who expanded the mission from policing Kabul to combat around Kandahar; they also supported Harper's extension of Canada's military involvement. And, in the meantime, there are equally valuable human lives being destroyed in parts of the world where our finite peace-keeping resources might be more effectively employed. It's not a choice between doing something and doing nothing; it's a choice between Afghanistan and places of similar or greater need, but perhaps better prospects of success. This point about using our powers where they are likeliest to do the most lasting good is one that Jack Layton has made clearly; it strikes me as incomparably more tough-minded and realistic than meaningless bumper sticker slogans about not cutting and running. The question is whether our efforts there are apt to have a long-term benefit. It is far from obvious that they are doing so; hence the questions I posed earlier in this thread -- the only intelligible reply to which, so far, was a link to the notes from the Afghanistan compact.

Could you please state your positions in the form of intelligible English sentences? Not only will it help you communicate with others; you may find it helps you to subsequently stick to what you've said. ...who also did not answer the questions before the invasion, as it turns out. Yes, we've covered this ground. This too is unintelligible. It sounds like it's meant as an insult, but the lack of connection to anything that I've said makes it unfathomable even from that perspective. Indeed. The OP says nothing about Parliament either; and it is to me, notice, that you keep repeating this Parliament! hiccup. So, yes, obviously you are making it about me by addressing it to me; and yes, it is every bit as rationally unrecoverable whether directed at me or to the thread at large. Both I and the OP hold that the right things haven't been said about Afghanistan; I more specifically say that they haven't been said in Parliament. You seem to respond by asking us/me for the quotes from Parliament that weren't said there. Who could have foreseen such an incisive challenge? I suppose that next you'll ask me for pieces of the alien spacecraft that I don't believe have landed.

I don't blame you for losing track of your own claims. But think back really, really hard, now: Remember that these are claims about which I inquired? They may be ill-considered; they might be stupid. But they are yours, not mine. Uh, okay. I prefer not to play hockey without two goalies. Glad we got these highly relevant preferences out in the open. Why on earth are you waiting for that? Do you mean from me? This business of making things up and then pathologically repeating them is very strange indeed. I suggest that if you tried to produce an actual quote from me, showing that I should somehow cite something from Parliament about Afghanistan, you might come to understand how disoriented and confused your posts have become.

Intriguing. Of course, like your bizarre Parliament! outburst, it has nothing to do with what you said, and what I responded to -- namely, your specific claim that the Bush admin specifically answered my specific questions. So you've managed, as if by accident, to say something true: there is "no argument" about this latest batch of claims, because they were not the ones at issue. (Naturally, you've included some strange falsehoods in this batch too -- in particular this alleged lack of flaccid reporting about Iraq! -- but let's not be distracted from the mysteries currently before us.) Let me repeat my wish not to discuss things you make up. I did not say the goals and methods were implicit; I said they were ill-defined. You could easily show otherwise by giving precise operational definitions of, e.g., Iraq's no longer posing a threat to the stability of the region (a goal given in the resolution). Wouldn't that be easier than jacking around with stream of consciousness musings? Only the absence of such evidence makes sense of your failure to provide any -- an absence confirmed by actually reading the red herrings you tossed out. The best interpretation of this presumed attempt at blank-verse poetry is: no timetables are actually given. Yes, I know. Hence the point that no timetables were given, and hence that that particular question was not answered. I see. Well, if that's what you think is happening. In fact I'm simply trying to get you to make sense of your claims, when I'm not just plain old trying to get you to make sense. There's little success on either front, but hard work never killed anyone.

Show you mine? Parliament? Are you confusing me for someone else? This is completely unintelligible, attaching to nothing I've written to you. Could we stick to things that have actually happened, please?

You are not here to provide evidence for your claims? Okay. Argumentation isn't everyone's cup of tea. At least we seem to have discovered we have something in common: neither of us has any idea how, e.g., the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 provides a clear answer to such questions as (i) what America was trying to accomplish in specific measurable terms; (ii) what mechanisms are expected to accomplish these specific goals; (iii) on what evidence those mechanisms are believed to have that likely outcome; and (iv) on what timetable the success is expected. The problem, obviously, is not that the resolution failed to list the removal of Hussein from power among its various goals. The problem is that it included many other goals as well, all of them far more vaguely defined, some of them essentially undefinable, and hence as a whole is, if anything, an especially stark example of an utter failure to answer the questions I mentioned. (Or did I miss the operational definition and timetable for, e.g., Iraq's no longer posing "a continuing threat to... international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region"?) Don't throw irrelevant citations at me and claim you've answered a question. Tarting them up with their Congress and law numbers is vacuous; if you can't give the evidence in question -- even just because you can't be bothered -- I'd prefer you just admitted as much and moved on, rather than pretending that you've done so.

Careful, now. That's a bit of a red flag. I'm all for equal rights, BUT... ? Let's make sure that whatever follows the conjunction, whether we're talking race, gender, age, or ability, is not just a veiled way of saying, "not too much of it" or "unless it rocks the boat" or "unless it impinges on my privilege." Whatever reservation or qualification we ever want to append to an expression of equality had better be sensible and well-supported by evidence, I'm sure you agree. Fair enough. Who exactly are these man-hating feminists? What, exactly, are the man-hating things they say and do? Do they occupy positions of power? And what makes them "militant"? I find it curious, the way that "militant" has become this automatic prefix to "feminist", as if calling someone a feminist makes it a free shot to call them militant as well. What specific acts of militancy by specific people on specific dates do you have in mind? That would indeed be twisted. Since you can see this clearly enough to assert it, would you mind just posting or linking to the evidence you have in mind as establishing its truth? Thanks.

How you got that from anything I wrote is anyone's guess. Or is this more free association? Well, some of the events you describe happened. So there's that. Your remarks about the relation between the "explanation", Chretien's reasoning, and Afghanistan are so confused that it's probably most charitable to regard them as an extended typo. But none of what you've written is correct as regards the Bush admin answering my questions for the invasion of Iraq. But if you seriously believe that the stated legislation answered my questions, I invite you to demonstrate this by quoting my questions one by one, and quoting the parts of the legislation that clearly answers them. I understand that you are attempting to mock something or other that you think you sort of understand. The question is why this utterly uncontroversial point is causing you to strain so mightily. Canadian casualties were not as big a media story in the former Yugoslavia as they are in Afghanistan. The point is not a difficult one.

No, those questions were not asked (or rather, they were asked, but not given any media attention, and not properly aired in Parliament). They should have been. Certainly the Conservative Party, as HMLO, was not interested in carefully defining the mission before pushing for it; but the primary blame falls on the Liberals. These claims fairly strongly indicate that you are unfamiliar with the events and the public discourse leading up to the occupation of Iraq. But if you believe yourself to be in possession of actual facts to support these remarkable statements, you should feel free to take the questions I asked about Afghanistan and show how the Bush admin answered them in advance of the invasion of Iraq. A new thread would probably be the most appropriate venue. You seem to be using this phrase in some way unique to yourself.

Well, obviously. It's hard to see why anyone could think this. But it's not really germane to this thread.

Thanks! I look forward to reading it. They have done a poor job -- indeed, they've done worse than nothing, because, as I noted above, the noises they have made about why we should be in Afghanistan are patently absurd. But this was not a situation of their making (though they approved of it in Opposition). The Liberals launched this mission and agreed to expand it.

Agreed on all fronts. As to higgly's complaint about all the lawyers: there's actually a lot to be said for having lawyers as Ministers; their training is in seeing how reasons fit together, quite independently of the specific content, and they are likely to have a respect for expertise, for due process, and for publicly mooted reasoning.

I think you mean "stream of consciousness", rather than "abstract thought". And you've done it again in this post. Anyhow, back to the live action. Canadians cannot be expected to understand what we (where "we" can include ISAF/NATO if one likes) are doing in Afghanistan, unless there is some account of: (i) what we are trying to accomplish in specific measurable terms; (ii) what mechanisms are expected to accomplish these specific goals; (iii) on what evidence those mechanisms are believed to have that likely outcome; and (iv) on what timetable the success is expected.

It doesn't matter whether we call it a war -- it's a commitment that will generate casualties. Just as UNPROFOR was, war or not. That's why it's important for a nation to go into such a commitment with its eyes open, and not lurch into a combat scenario by default, having quietly decided at first to have a mere policing presence. It's not an excuse. (What do you think it would excuse?) It's a description of fact: the dangers of our commitment in the Balkans were not heavily emphasized in public, and not because there were no casualties, but in spite of the casualties. Hence the need to look for other explanations for the greater emphasis on quagmire potential in Afghanistan, as I already explained. I daresay they do, since it's an English sentence, and they speak English. But as a slogan, applied in this case, it's trivial and unclear. I have no idea why you keep repeating it, since it illuminates nothing else that you say, and has no obvious application here. Um, okay. Again, I have no idea how those sentences are supposed to fit together, nor how they engage anything I've said. Was this intended as a kind of unified case for some conclusion, or is it just supposed to be a list of sentences?

Hm. That's no less obscure to me, as an explanation of what you said earlier or how it relates to anything I've said. But it doesn't seem particularly important to the discussion at hand, so I won't worry about it. How would that follow? Doesn't it show, at the very most, that the Canadian body count matters, and not that it's the only thing that matters? Unless your contention is that Canadian deaths don't matter at all, it's hard to see what the problem is with treating different cases differently. In fact, if anything the point should be the very opposite: Canada's military involvement in the former Yugoslavia went under the radar here at home even though our forces sustained casualties. (Just not in the Kosovo bombing campaign.) But the perceived differences, with respect to "quagmire" status, are not hard to understand: in the former Yugoslavia, there were historically distinct nation-like regions, with at least some preponderance of ethnic identities associated. There was, partly as a result of this, some conceivable stable endpoint, at which the warring parties would be regionally separated in a way that could achieve some equilibrium. What is the endpoint associated with Afghanistan? I submit that not many people perceive one, and of those people, a substantial proportion have some childishly oversimplified idea in mind. That sort of difference, I think, explains why Afghanistan seems a quagmire while the former Yugoslavia seemed less of one. I believe I am. If you want to say something more substantive than that he doesn't speak for you, I'm afraid that actual arguments will be required to shore it up. But of course it's fair enough just to say he doesn't speak for you. Don Cherry doesn't speak for me, though I can't be bothered right now to explain why not!

Okay -- I agree that these definitions will be an important part of clear thinking about the issue. But I certainly haven't answered those questions! I'm not sure what that means. Could you explain your point directly, in sentences? What does "let's hear it on an international level" mean? Do you want ideas about Canada's involvement to be discussed in international media? I don't see how these two sentences are related; maybe they're not meant to be. Of course Layton leads many, many people who believe that Canada should be out of Afghanistan soon. I take it you mean that he doesn't speak for you. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, stability is not a flag in a game of capture-the-flag, nor do barbaric scum come labeled that way. It is a mistake to describe these goals as if they were simple actions that one can attempt with confidence that one is really doing them. Stability is not a fire mission; whether a particular mission leads to more stability, less stability, or no effect at all typically won't be knowable for a long time, if ever. And more than a few of the people ISAF troops have killed have not been barbaric scum, but civilians, and even government forces. Even the ones shooting at ISAF forces can't be labeled barbarians with such a casual handwave: we know from wars a hundred times over that today's angry but quiescent villager may be tomorrow's committer of atrocities -- and then be genuinely back to a civilian by next week. In short, such simplistic thinking based on false presuppositions is not the informed discussion needed.

This doesn't mean much. Should we take the lead in getting out of the way? Should we lead the way in solely non-military assistance to Afghanistan? Would that count as getting out of the way of the ISAF, or as following the example of NATO members who have not sent troops to occupy the country? Personally I would like to see more discussion -- that is, more informed discussion, which I am not in a particularly good position to produce myself -- of the prospects for long-term success resulting from short or medium term military presence in Afghanistan. To my knowledge, disinterested experts on Afghan politics and history have not predicted that a stable democracy can be produced there on any foreseeable timetable. And there are certainly reasons to doubt that it can. The reliance on such empty appeals to emotion as "Don't cut and run" and "don't let their sacrifice be for nothing" in public discourse about the Afghan mission strongly suggests to me that actual reasons to be there are in very short supply.

I prefer argued claims to mere statements of preference.