Reply #19: I beg to differ with you...

[arikara]

I'm being painfully honest. The Harper government ultimately is behind the slick and growing yellow ribbon and red shirt Friday campaign. We have always been in Afghanistan to appease Bush for not joining the invasion of Iraq, and we are NOT peacekeeping over there.

Afghanistan: “A mark of shame”
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php?story=20070926191511583&query=afghanistan

Afghanistan and Iraq: the same war
http://canadianobserver.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/afghanistan-and-iraq-the-same-war/

<snip>
Most Canadians are proud that Canada refused to invade Iraq. But when it comes to Afghanistan, we hear the same jingoistic bluster we heard about Iraq four years ago. As if Iraq and Afghanistan were two separate wars, and Afghanistan is the good war, the legal and just war. In reality, Iraq and Afghanistan are the same war.

That’s how the Bush administration has seen Afghanistan from the start; not as a defensive response to 9-11, but the opening for regime change in Iraq (as documented in Richard A. Clarke’s Against all Enemies). That’s why the Security Council resolutions of September 2001 never mention Afghanistan, much less authorize an attack on it. That’s why the attack on Afghanistan was also a supreme international crime, which killed at least 20,000 innocent civilians in its first six months. The Bush administration used 9-11 as a pretext to launch an open-ended so-called “war on terror” ­ in reality, a war of terror because it kills hundreds of times more civilians than the other terrorists do.

That the Karzai regime was subsequently set up under UN auspices doesn’t absolve the participants in America’s war, and that includes Canada. Nor should the fact that Canada now operates under the UN authorized International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mislead anyone. From the start, ISAF put itself at the service of the American operation, declaring “the United States Central Command will have authority over the International Security Assistance Force” (UNSC Document S/2001/1217). When NATO took charge of ISAF, that didn’t change anything. NATO forces are always ultimately under U.S. command. The “Supreme Commander” is always an American general, who answers to the U.S. president.

Canadian troops in Afghanistan not only take orders from the Americans, they help free up more U.S. forces to continue their bloody occupation of Iraq.

Marching Orders - How Canada abandoned peacekeeping – and why the UN needs us now more than ever
http://www.canadians.org/peace/issues/Marching_Orders/index.html

The Truth about Canada in Afghanistan
http://www.wooleylegs.com/canada_in_afghanistan.htm

Why I won't wear red
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/citizensweekly/story.html?id=6e4b9e61-271f-4183-8023-250a066cd852

What used to be an uncomplicated show of pure human support has become political, and the politics is distinctly ugly. Under Canada's New Government, we're witnessing the rise of Canada's New Militarism.

<snip> And, perhaps most dramatic of all, it's in the politicization of the "support our troops" campaign.

<snip> Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made that very clear. "You can not say you are for our military and then not stand behind the things they do," he said.

<snip> Smoothly abetted by a government that seems to love rattling sabres and waving big sticks (even if the sabres and sticks are a bit the worse for wear), we're being pushed and shoved into cheering simplistically for war.

You don't approve of U.S.-style political decals on police cars? Shame on you. You must hate our soldiers.

You think the mission in Afghanistan is a big, tragic mistake? Shame on you. You must hate Canada.

You believe we should get out -- now? Shame. You obviously hate freedom.

It's become nasty out there, and stifling. Try to debate issues that used to be open for discussion in this country -- issues that go the heart of our collective sense of morality -- and suddenly you're charged with lacking patriotism, or backbone, or some other fragment of cheap and borrowed jingoism.

<snip>