[CanadianJeff]

ridenrain wrote:

You dodged my question though. How many Canadian soldiers lives did you think this was worth? I guess when that number is reached, the sacrifice of those troops, the wounded and the families is cast aside as another failed plan?

I think your simply playing politics with these peoples lives.

and I think your twisting his argument. What I'm hearing from Lemmy is that the situation has changed and in light of that we would be wasting our time and the lives of our troops to continue this war.

I don't hear him saying that there is a certain cost at which a war becomes something to get rid of and I don't see him saying there is a number attached to that.

I do agree with you that the war is most certainly worth it and that it shouldn't be decided by the public because 90% of the information on the war is not something we get to see.

But point in case let's not get into strawman tactics.

[DoyleG]

Lemmy wrote:

That's a difficult question to answer. The reason is that its 2009 so I have the advantage of retrospect. In retrospect, one Canadian life was too many, given the value of this mission in terms of its results.

Here's a better question.

Would you say he same things if all those had died on a UN Peacekeeping mission?

[Lemmy]

That's a good question, Doyle, but I don't want to play "what ifs?". We went there, we tried to help, but it ain't working. All we're doing now is sacrificing our best and brightest young men and women on a mission that can never succeed.

[ridenrain]

CanadianJeff: The question then becomes, what has changed? It was Paul Martin who moved us into a more direct combat role and that added movement explains the extra casualties we've taken. The nature of the mission hasn't changed but the news coverage definately has, along with the political will to fight it.
Insurgency's are very hard to fight but they defiantely can be won, as I believe we are winning this one. What we're seeing is that the left is more willing to throw the peoles of Afghanistan under the buss so they can make some political hay. All the flowery talk from Obama and Chretien/Martin on helping others is just hollow lies because they don't have the political courage to follow through.

I was reading "The difficult war: perspectives on Insurgency and special operation forces" from the Canadian Defense Academy press when I noticed this little quote:

"A Military force in a democracy can only retain legitimacy, it's self confidence and it's public support if it plays by the rules, it refuses to fight dirty but all of the wars and challenges that you face are coming at you from people who definitely and most emphatically fight dirty. "
Michael Ignatieff.

It's clear that Iffy did understand what the score was but if he's still willing to admit it is definately questionable.

[Akhenaten]

I think it's funny that our soldiers fought for freedom of speech, yet during the war there was a hell of a lot you couldn't say...

...stuff like this. You couldn't open a full page ad stating that Hitler wasn't so bad and that avenues of peace should be persued. You'd get jailed or shot....because people knew what they know today: this self-perpetuated, self-propelled, prophecy of failure does indeed help the enemy.

People who "from day 1" were against the war in Afghanistan have in their own way, and to their own admission, tried every little bit of propaganda they can get awaay with to try and make sure we lose (i.e. pullout early). This is why it's so disingenuous to listen to them speak about how "Afghanistan has never been occupied before" yadda yadda yadda. It's BS and it always has been. Afghanistan has been 'occupied' in one manner of another for near 40 years now.

It's a lie to listen to them banter on about how it "can't" work, because that's not even what they necessarily believe or care about: they just want it to fail because they predicted that it would and just desperately want to be 'right', regardless of the damage it does, or they simply never wanted it to start.

This is why they're pretty much hated by anyone neutral or even timidly in favour of the mission: it's one thing to be against the mission - it's another thing entirely to actively work against it because you want it to fail.

[ridenrain]

This is where I have no problem with people who were always against the war but I have nothing but contempt for the people who flip flopped, simply because of the political change on the home front.

[Proculation]

What's the point of the ad ? That we should stop the war in Afghanistan and use the money saved to subsidize the auto industry ?

[Lemmy]

ridenrain wrote:

This is where I have no problem with people who were always against the war but I have nothing but contempt for the people who flip flopped, simply because of the political change on the home front.

Fair enough, but don't confuse those who flip-flopped for political reasons with those who've changed their opinion based on the evidence. It's not a "flip-flop" to conclude an action that you'd supported was ineffective and change of policy is needed.

[DerbyX]

ridenrain wrote:

CanadianJeff: The question then becomes, what has changed? It was Paul Martin who moved us into a more direct combat role and that added movement explains the extra casualties we've taken. The nature of the mission hasn't changed but the news coverage definately has, along with the political will to fight it.
Insurgency's are very hard to fight but they defiantely can be won, as I believe we are winning this one. What we're seeing is that the left is more willing to throw the peoles of Afghanistan under the buss so they can make some political hay. All the flowery talk from Obama and Chretien/Martin on helping others is just hollow lies because they don't have the political courage to follow through.

I was reading "The difficult war: perspectives on Insurgency and special operation forces" from the Canadian Defense Academy press when I noticed this little quote:

"A Military force in a democracy can only retain legitimacy, it's self confidence and it's public support if it plays by the rules, it refuses to fight dirty but all of the wars and challenges that you face are coming at you from people who definitely and most emphatically fight dirty. "
Michael Ignatieff.

It's clear that Iffy did understand what the score was but if he's still willing to admit it is definately questionable.

Yet time and again you let your personal prejudice and hatred undermine the war effort because you don't actually care about winning the war or about any lives involved in it.

To you its nothing more then an avenue of attack against the people you hate. You claim Chretien didn't have the political will or that he flip-flopped when in fact he was the person who more then any one else committed the troops. If he had not had the political will we would not have gone to Afghanistan and if he didn't have the will to stand up to morons like yourself who decried our lack of involvement in Iraq we would have gone there as well.

Martin expanded the role as the military wanted and backed it up with money and support. He didn't waver in the least. It's not that you can prove that, its that you need to believe it because you can't stand the Liberals being on the same side as you so you must give them token support for committing the troops (lest you yourself be exposed for the hypocrite you are) then attack them relentless for everything else claiming crap like they hate the military, they are waffling on the war ignoring it when your side does the same.

Cue up Harper now, the so called military loving savior who not only told the military to fight the war on a budget (because his own economic ineptness was digging us into debt) but that he changed the funding from 30% to 75% of the war costs to come out of the DND operating budget. That meant overall less money in the DND budget because the government decided they weren't going to foot as much of the bill. As for waffling well it was Harper himself who negotiated the 2011 exit date, a date which you had previously claimed was forced on him by a minority government and cut and run Libs, a date which just months later became the best and most logical exit date that Harper so wonderfully and graciously provided.

As for Obama, well he has more political will then your messiah bush had over Afghanistan. In fact it was bushs f*ckup in the first place with going into Iraq that was the reason Afghanistan became what it is today. He didn't have the will or rather then intelligence to finish what he started and has left it entirely up to Obama to shoulder all the blame for his failures.

[ridenrain]

In light of the story I posted this morning, reguarding the taliban's improved media campaign, plese tell us what has changed. The fact that our victories are not being reported shows what side the media is on.
Was it Martin moving us further south, and if the goal was to secure the nation, wasn't that the right thing to do?
Is it the casualties from IEDs? Keep in mind the move I mentioned above has extended our logistics and mobility is vital to win this fight. Frequent patrols are needed and they can't be done with a helecopter. We simply need more boots to patrol effectively.
Is it the Afghan government? We fight our own corruption and even the most uneducated farmer can see they have better prospects than under the religious rantings of the taliban.

[DerbyX]

ridenrain wrote:

In light of the story I posted this morning, reguarding the taliban's improved media campaign, plese tell us what has changed. The fact that our victories are not being reported shows what side the media is on.
Was it Martin moving us further south, and if the goal was to secure the nation, wasn't that the right thing to do?
Is it the casualties from IEDs? Keep in mind the move I mentioned above has extended our logistics and mobility is vital to win this fight. Frequent patrols are needed and they can't be done with a helecopter. We simply need more boots to patrol effectively.
Is it the Afghan government? We fight our own corruption and even the most uneducated farmer can see they have better prospects than under the religious rantings of the taliban.

That's funny because it was those military hating Liberals who deployed us without much air mobility and the sainted Harper who is saving lives what with replacing the Chinooks Mulroney sold off.

[PENATRATOR]

The only reason Chretien committed troops to Afghan was to appease the Americans "with us or against us" so he would not have been pressured to commit to Iraq, not because he is a good citizen of the planet. If he could have had no involvement in either, make no mistake, he would have. This way he has the Americans off his back, and the majority of Canadian at the time certainly favoured Afghanistan as a way of contributing to the fall out of the terrorist attacks.

[ridenrain]

Derby: Your petty finger pointing is just proving my point.
The Liberals were right for this mission and I've been quite public on that but since Harper took over, all we heard is that the mission is a failure, yet the only difference is the prime minister.

[DerbyX]

PENATRATOR wrote:

The only reason Chretien committed troops to Afghan was to appease the Americans "with us or against us" so he would not have been pressured to commit to Iraq, not because he is a good citizen of the planet. If he could have had no involvement in either, make no mistake, he would have. This way he has the Americans off his back, and the majority of Canadian at the time certainly favoured Afghanistan as a way of contributing to the fall out of the terrorist attacks.

Can you prove that or is that just your opinion? The fact is that he committed troops to Afghanistan and not to Iraq, 2 wars with very different public opinion and support and it seems he was making the right choice.

Chretien received a shit load of bad press from the US over his Iraq decision including being called the Queen of Spades in the deck of unwilling allies. Bush made no small effort to conceal he was deeply displeased with Chretien and whatever favour he supposedly won from him was surely lost over the Iraq war, a war which he would rather have had Canadian support for then Afghanistan.

Chretien could have committed a small combat team like the JTF2s or other "token" force and claimed we were standing alongside the US.

To me its all evidence that he believed in one war and not the other and comiited troops under that belief.

[DerbyX]

ridenrain wrote:

Derby: Your petty finger pointing is just proving my point.
The Liberals were right for this mission and I've been quite public on that but since Harper took over, all we heard is that the mission is a failure, yet the only difference is the prime minister.

YOU have been finger pointing through the entire war. All you do is point fingers of blame and everybody else.

You blame the Liberals, the NDP, Obama, the media, just about everybody you can in a desperate bid to score cheap political points. The fact is that the war has changed and evolved and as it drags on with no improvement so to does public opinion.