The Canadian Afghanistan Expedition

[carepov]

Sure...why not ? Canada didn't even bother to bring tactical aircraft or helicopters to the war, and Canadian Forces paid dearly for that "mistake". Not Canada's fault...blame the USA.

You mis-understood me, yes Canada made mistakes that cost lives and deserves criticism. Canada's mistakes did not cost us the war because our influence is so limited.

[On Guard for Thee]

Sure...why not ? Canada didn't even bother to bring tactical aircraft or helicopters to the war, and Canadian Forces paid dearly for that "mistake". Not Canada's fault...blame the USA.

I would do a little homework on that. Canada did bring tactical a/c and helicopters to Afg. I kinda know that because I flew some of them.

[bush_cheney2004]

I would do a little homework on that. Canada did bring tactical a/c and helicopters to Afg. I kinda know that because I flew some of them.

What year ? Did you fly Iltis jeeps too ?

[bush_cheney2004]

You mis-understood me, yes Canada made mistakes that cost lives and deserves criticism. Canada's mistakes did not cost us the war because our influence is so limited.

Still don't understand...what does "cost us the war" mean ? Did you expect a Timmy's in every cave by now ? Did you want Afghanistan to be "conquered" like First Nations in North America ? What ?

Edited March 17, 2014 by bush_cheney2004

[jbg]

I recall a very interesting interview just prior to Bush's first visit to Canada who said in theory when he steps off the plane an RCMP officer could slap the cuffs on him and send him to the ICC, because we are a signatory to it, and his name is on the docket. We didn't of course but interesting to know it could have. Some othr countries may not be so "neighbourly". Ever wonder why he stays close to home?

One of the reasons we didn't ratify ICC is the risk of politicized arrests. It is hard to confine such a body to monsters.

[On Guard for Thee]

What year ? Did you fly Iltis jeeps too ?

First hitch in '09

[On Guard for Thee]

One of the reasons we didn't ratify ICC is the risk of politicized arrests. It is hard to confine such a body to monsters.

The politics of what I speak here are immense, and would rock the boat so much they will never be allowed to occur. However GWB did break international law, and so now he fits into a group that has the likes of Putin in its roll call.

[bush_cheney2004]

First hitch in '09

That's very late in the game...but thank you for your service. Did you see any CF-18's ? CH147D Chinooks ?

Allies stunned Canadian troops lack helicopters

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WOLVERINE, AFGHANISTAN - Every suicide bomber and every improvised bomb that the Taliban has aimed at a Canadian resupply convoy underscores the point. Canada's Achilles heel in Afghanistan has been its lack of a robust helicopter to move supplies and troops by air.

...Canada has no rotor aircraft capable of flying in the extreme heat and mountains of Afghanistan after years of questionable helicopter decisions in Ottawa, such as when the Chretien government aborted the purchase of the EH-101, which cost half a billion dollars in penalties -- the price of about 40 Chinooks.

As a result, frontline combat troops with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry fighting in the neighbouring province of Kandahar have been resupplied mostly by convoys that run a daily gauntlet of land mines, improvised explosives and suicide bombers.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=9689fab6-ecfd-4bed-8c06-925f8254cd1e

Edited March 17, 2014 by bush_cheney2004

[On Guard for Thee]

That's very late in the game...but thank you for your service. Did you see any CF-18's ? CH147D Chinooks ?

Allies stunned Canadian troops lack helicopters

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WOLVERINE, AFGHANISTAN - Every suicide bomber and every improvised bomb that the Taliban has aimed at a Canadian resupply convoy underscores the point. Canada's Achilles heel in Afghanistan has been its lack of a robust helicopter to move supplies and troops by air.

...Canada has no rotor aircraft capable of flying in the extreme heat and mountains of Afghanistan after years of questionable helicopter decisions in Ottawa, such as when the Chretien government aborted the purchase of the EH-101, which cost half a billion dollars in penalties -- the price of about 40 Chinooks.

As a result, frontline combat troops with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry fighting in the neighbouring province of Kandahar have been resupplied mostly by convoys that run a daily gauntlet of land mines, improvised explosives and suicide bombers.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=9689fab6-ecfd-4bed-8c06-925f8254cd1e

C-130's, C-17's Chinooks, Twin Huey's

[bush_cheney2004]

C-130's, C-17's Chinooks, Twin Huey's

The old Chinooks were procured late after big time criticism for convoy attacks. It is well documented....

...That Canada has no helicopters in Afghanistan is a fact that its main allies in southeastern Afghanistan -- the Americans, British, Dutch and Australians, who all have Chinooks here -- find odd. A senior coalition officer said last week he was astonished that a country of Canada's wealth and size had not bought any military transport helicopters for its domestic needs, let alone for when its troops went to war.

Edited March 17, 2014 by bush_cheney2004

[carepov]

Still don't understand...what does "cost us the war" mean ? Did you expect a Timmy's in every cave by now ? Did you want Afghanistan to be "conquered" like First Nations in North America ? What ?

It means we accomplished not enough at too much cost.

[On Guard for Thee]

Well the last time I was in KAF there were a number of Canadian chinooks working. Mind you we tend not to get too heavily involved in wars that make no sense. We just make more maple syrup when we need more jobs.

[bush_cheney2004]

It means we accomplished not enough at too much cost.

And yet...lots was accomplished...not the least of which was an opportunity for Afghans to unify and form a functioning government. No amount of blood and treasure can force them to adopt foreign ways.

[bush_cheney2004]

Well the last time I was in KAF there were a number of Canadian chinooks working. Mind you we tend not to get too heavily involved in wars that make no sense. We just make more maple syrup when we need more jobs.

That's a great strategy going forward...think of all the money that can be saved. Canadian Forces will just have to do more with less...as always.

[On Guard for Thee]

And yet...lots was accomplished...not the least of which was an opportunity for Afghans to unify and form a functioning government. No amount of blood and treasure can force them to adopt foreign ways.

And yet...lots was accomplished...not the least of which was an opportunity for Afghans to unify and form a functioning government. No amount of blood and treasure can force them to adopt foreign ways.

Functioning government? Surely you jest! Kharzai's corruption know's no bounds, he has stated he is no friend to America, and if you go over the hill into the next province, they don't recognize anything to do with Kabul. I wouldn't call that a "functioning government"

[bush_cheney2004]

Functioning government? Surely you jest! Kharzai's corruption know's no bounds, he has stated he is no friend to America, and if you go over the hill into the next province, they don't recognize anything to do with Kabul. I wouldn't call that a "functioning government"

Hey....if Afghans wanted to move beyond loya jirgas, the opportunity was there. You can lead a horse to water.....

[On Guard for Thee]

Hey....if Afghans wanted to move beyond loya jirgas, the opportunity was there. You can lead a horse to water.....

I agree with ya there. Hopefully some of the schools built there will bear at least some fruit. Education could help immensly IMO.

[Army Guy]

First off, thank you for serving. But being part of the military you are seen simply as a tool by the government to implement foreign policy. I hope you never need to go back out on tour, and I hope your scars, both seen and unseen are minimal and you are surrounded by caring family and friends.

On your last point, that would have been a good question to ask before boots where put on the ground.

What really was the goal in Afghanistan? Rule of law is very similar to what it was before. Still have threats of Al-queda and the Taliban. To think that these people have been eradicated from Afghanistan is simply a bad joke.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/03/us-afghanistan-election-idUSBRE9920FS20131003

Thu Oct 3, 2013 11:13am EDT <-- date of article.

Looks like he was a pal of good ol Bin Laden.

I am not sure what those reconstruction projects are, but I'll do a search for them.

Thank you for your support, And yes the military is a tool in which our government implememnts our foreign policy, after diplomacy fails. Like any dept within the government each has a task assigned to it, Such as the RCMP which have law and order. That does not mean it's members opinions should be discounted in any debate. If anything i believe it would be constructive. We are after all Canadians citizens as well and have opinions of our own.

The real question our government should have asked is Can Canadians be counted to hold on to the support ? That answer was a big NO.....The country was split on this, Canadian soldiers had the opinion that we could make a difference, for the first time in a long time this conflict was not about oil, or resources of any kind, but rather righting a wrong , and giving the people of Afghanistan some hope of peace....

Canadian citizens gave up on all of that, the war dragged on, they quickly lost interest and went on with their lifes, with that lost interest our soldiers felt the effects, much needed equipment was not purchased in time, that time would come at a cost, the cost of our soldiers lives....Soldiers quickly developed the opinion that this was our war,not the Canadian citizens... we would try to make a difference without the citizens of Canada....we wanted to finsh the job that the citizens gave us, it is who we are,what we trained for... second place is for lossers....Hence why we were so reluctant to come home....

What was the main goal of the fighting over there ? well it changed over time, but our first goal was to destroy terrorist elements within the country, that was done, their main base of operations were pushed into neiboring countries, such as Pakistan....Destroy any other threat that prevented us from accomplishing the first, that was the taliban, also pushed into neiboring countries....

You can't eradicate an idea, there will always be that one person who will tell others....so there will always be an AQ or Taliban...armed intervention will however make their job and that process very difficult....Also remeber it is very easy to terrorize a large group of people with very little effort....and it can happen any where in the world...So the orginal plan was not to destroy everything about the AQ and Taliban but to remove them from AFghanisatn....and we did that....

The people of Afghanistan have had more than 40 years of constant conflict...the want peace, the want security to raise a family and provide for them....And they will find that in any corner they can...But they know what they don't want, they don't want the taliban back,they don't want extremism...

Their laws and traditions may seem foreign to you,on the extreme side, but that is part of their culture, and takes time to change....we did not just wake up one morning and decide to let women vote....it took time to change....We did not go over there to change them into Canadians, we went over to rebuild their nation with their vision....not ours...we are talking about a nation that after 30 years of war did not have to much in the way of infra structure....so a well for drinking water is a big thing over there....Canadian soldiers built thousands, along with major highways so they could get trade goods in and out with little effort...we built a hydro electrical dam to provide electricity...we built irrgation ditches so they could grow crops,....Our soldiers built out of their own pockets a hospital, firehall, along with fire trucks and ambs....the list is endless, every tour had a project, or two....on top of the regular stuff....

Maybe the Canadian people do think it was a huge failure, maybe it is just me that thinks that our efforts changed lifes for the good, maybe it just me clinging onto the hope that all our blood sweat and tears were not for nothing...maybe i don't want the sacrifice of so many good men and women be for not.....

During my second tour we had stopped along a wall that had some shade, to eat lunch, the kids had already gathered "they knew the boys would share their meals"...a small girl about 8 or 10 sat down beside me, she had no hands, you see the taliban had cut them off because her father sent her to school, i later found out that they had also killed her father in front of her....dispite lossing so much....she thanked me...she had said without our precence she would not be able to go to school....She thanked me, WOW...here is a 8 to 10 year old setting the example for future generations, she has lost her father, her hands and she thanked me a foreigner....thats when i decided that if she could give so much of herself, why could i not give up something.....my time, alittle sweat, some blood....if not for anything else but to let her go to school....

But by then Canadians had grown tired of the whole Afghan mess, they did'nt have to do anything except perhaps 20 to 30 dollars of their tax dollars would keep me and the thousands of Canadian troops in the area so the girls could go to school.....it would piss me off that the average Canadian could not do that....

I get that the whole afghanistan thing was more than girls going to school....their are thousands of stories just like mine that motivated soldiers....The average soldier of the time has done 3 or more tours, they have volunteered each one of those times....the have risked it all...the question Canadians have to ask is why?

[eyeball]

The only thing I'm wondering is why you didn't give up on Canada's military and join an NGO?

[Army Guy]

The only thing I'm wondering is why you didn't give up on Canada's military and join an NGO?

It's the only thing i know how to do, is soldier....

[eyeball]

That's clearly not true if your posts are any indication.

You sound way more like Mike Holmes than Nick Fury.

[carepov]

And yet...lots was accomplished...not the least of which was an opportunity for Afghans to unify and form a functioning government. No amount of blood and treasure can force them to adopt foreign ways.

Sure, a lot was accomplished and I agree that the war was justifiable. I also share Army Guy's lament that Canadians and other countries gave up and "cut and ran" despite promising otherwise.

The war was a failure because not enough was achieved at too great a cost.

Let's say your team is helping a family. This family lives in a rat-infested shack and is harbouring gun-smuggling gangsters with a meth lab in the basement. You kill the gangsters - mission accomplished, right. Hoping for long term sustainable improvements, you start building a new house and destroy the lab. You end up building a house that is slightly better than what the family had but at a cost that could have built several great homes for several families, perhaps the entire block. Also, new gangsters return, no-longer gun-smuggling (yet) but still mixing up meth. Mission accomplished?

[bush_cheney2004]

The war was a failure because not enough was achieved at too great a cost.

.... Mission accomplished?

I disagree....as described above, several NATO/ISAF and U.S. objectives were accomplished. To discount such efforts and sacrifices made as a "failure" sets a very high bar that few past conflicts and their resolution would meet. Unreasonable expectations do not define success or failure.

What would "success" or "mission accomplished" look like to you ?

[PIK]

What would have happened if we never went, that should be debated. And it is up to the people now. I know the media has painted it as a complete failure, so that should tell us is was't. In time we will know how successful it will be. Just think howe many dead we could have if harper did not come thru with proper equiptment. These Iltis jeeps they had ,would have really stood up to IED's.

[eyeball]

We wouldn't have any dead if we never went.

Normally when people asked, "what of we never went" they were accused of being commies and terrorist sympathizers and traitors to Canada. Has that changed?