Canada's Role in Afghanistan

Captain's Quarters lauds the French entry to the NATO Combat Mission in Afghanistan and it is nice to see that the French finally have a leader with a soul but the story is more complicated on the Canadian side with the need to have some Opposition support to do the right thing - something that the opposition Liberals and NDP are loath to do. After a comprehensive study by a Liberal Privy Councilor who is now in private life both parties feel it is best to ignore the recommendations and stick to their old rhetoric.

"After touring NATO headquarters, Afghanistan and receiving hundreds of submissions, the independent commission (headed by former Liberal Foreign Minister John Manley) created by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to advise his government on the way forward is not expected to recommend any significant scaling back of Canada's commitment of 2,500 soldiers in the Kandahar region, or any profound change in their current marching orders." (National Post)

It seems that the way should be clear to maintain the mission until the job is finished, except that the current Liberals have a solution based on their polls and an ideology whose goal is to regain power rather than to do an important job right. They are stuck in a fictional paradigm that Canada's military are not war fighters but peacekeepers. They are happy to screw the people of Afghanistan and make a mockery out of the sacrifices of countless service people and their families including 78 soldiers killed in action in order to be seen to be upholding a nonsense notion of Canada's role in the world.

Happily disregarding the report, not prepared by some Conservative hack but by one of their own acting in his capacity as a lifetime Privy Councilor, the Liberal Leader Stephane Dion writes to the Prime Minister:

"The Liberal plan is consistent with our long-standing position that Canada's mission in Kandahar must change in February, 2009. It brings clarity to our goals in Afghanistan by placing a greater emphasis on stronger and more disciplined diplomatic efforts, and striking a better balance with respect to the reconstruction and development efforts that will be essential to creating a stable Afghanistan."

Manley's report recommended that the government get tough on the parts of NATO who have not been carrying their weight against the greatest threat to the Alliance since the fall of the Iron Curtain. It did, however, recommend that Canada continue to fight to maintain their gains. The Liberals feel that the "mission must be about more than the military: There is no
exclusively military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan so our
efforts must be balanced between defence, diplomacy and development." Clearly we have missed all our opportunities to negotiate a peaceful solution with the nihilist Taliban who, despite their every attempt to destroy all that has been built for the people of Afghanistan, really want to see the development succeed.

The NDP under Taliban Jack Layton want to withdraw all Canadian Troops immediately regardless of the disaster that would result for the people of Afghanistan. After all, there can't be a war if we don't fight, right. Jack is the fellow who has consistently cooperated with the Taliban by insisting on surrender and withdrawal every time a Canadian soldier is killed - ensuring the next attack will occur. Without Jack's participation, the IEDs would be worthless. This is, of course, the party that (as the CCF) insisted until 1942 that we pull out of WWII.

Why is all this important? Because, without the support or abstinence of one of the Opposition Parties the Government cannot pass a resolution on the future of the mission. The NDP will not play grown-up and the Liberals would rather play politics. The Manley Report brought the French in but the Liberals want us just to switch places with them in the Coward's Section.

South Korea Taliban as Foreign Affairs Ministry

In a brave move to resolve the hostage crisis in Afghanistan the South Korean government of President Roh Moo-hyun has hired the Taliban to kidnap and kill people who travel to Afghanistan to help bring the country out of the catastrophic anarchy inflicted by the Taliban since they seized power in 1995. As part of the deal the Taliban have take ownership of South Korea's sovereignty over their Foreign Policy, a role that they and their partners al-Qaeda assumed in Spain in March 2004.

While Roh might interpret his actions differently, it is rare that one is permitted to determine one's historical epithet. It is, however, certain that the success met by the Taliban in its dealings with Roh's government will ensure that they use similar tactics in the future. They would be fools not to and they have indicated positively that they will. Further, the success will encourage the Taliban to take more bold actions against Afghan civilians, aid workers, and other caring civilized people with anticipated impunity and the money awarded them by the South Koreans as part of the deal will enable them to fund paramilitary activities against the troops trying to bring a semblance of order to the country.

Korea was once a great nation whose influence was formational to the development of the Japanese civilization and who maintained independance in the face of attempted invasions from the Mongols and Japanese as well as constant pressures from neighbouring China. How truly pathetic that they should fall so far as to roll over for a bunch of bandit dogs in the backward sticks of a tribal hinterland.

The streets of Seoul are truly paved with the blood of their betters. May they long hang their heads in shame.

Spain cathedral shuns Muslim plea

I was looking over some letters I have written in the last few months about the double standard by which the Dar al-Islam and the West are judged. While conversion to Islam is encouraged of South Korean Christian prisoners of the Tabiban as they wait to be murdered and an Egyptian former Christian is denied permission to convert back to his original faith. Christians and Jews - in fact all non-Islamic religions - are forbidden to build places of worship in Saudi Arabia. Muslim authorities routinely deny that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a Jewish Holy site, seeming to claim that it came into existance with the onset of Islam or that the kings, prophets, and patriarchs of the bible were Muslim.


Within this environment the BBC lambasts the Roman Catholic bishop of Cordoba in southern Spain for the religious insensitivity of his rejection of an appeal from Muslims for the right to pray in the city's cathedral, a former mosque.


The BBC discussed at length the request of Spain's Islamic Board to share the Mezquita, the Cathedral in Cordoba, as "an ecumenical temple where believers from all faiths could worship". While this might seem to be a reasonable request to someone who does not consider the worship of a different religion within the confines of a Catholic Cathedral to be a desecration it should be considered within context, which the BBC story does not provide.
While the the short article noted three times, the history of the Cathedral as a former mosque, it doesn't mention even once the name of the Cathedral, officially the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin.


Nor did the story address the Islamic practice after conquest of desecrating existing religious sites and replacing them with mosques. Such notable examples are the Tejo Mahalaya, a hindu temple-palace which is now known as the Taj Mahal, the most holy site in Judaism which is the site of the Temple of Solomon but is now the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Visigothic cathedral of St. Vincent which was razed to build the Aljama Mosque - the very site of this story.


Most interestingly, the Aljama Mosque episode began with a determination by Tariq ibn-Ziyad, who occupied Cordoba in 711, that the Cathedral would be used as a shared place of worship. This was eventually determined to no longer be acceptable, the Christian portion was expropriated and St. Stephen's was destroyed.


Within the context of history the hesitation of the Bishop of Cordoba is understandable.

Dalhousie Honours an Arsepluck

May 25, 2007 I was sitting in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax at my son's graduation from Dalhousie Law School. The speech from the recipient of the Legum Doctor (honoris causa), Prof William Schabas, seemed a little flaky in that he referred to his fight to establish the inalienable right of all people to peace and that, to that end, he had established offices all over the world. It seemed typical of a liberal that he had responded to a need he had identified by establishing a beauracracy.

Just the other day, however, I discovered a new dimension to Prof Schabas. I was perusing a post at The Torch and it struck me that one of the people who had written to the International Criminal Court to investigate the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan for War Crimes was this same wingnut. I recognized him because he is the director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway. The letter was instigated by Michael Byers, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia who is a senior policy advisor to the federal NDP who wrote a defence policy discussion paper for the NDP in the spring of 2005. He is a strong proponent of distancing ourselves from the USA in defense matters.

What is Schabas role in this? It is not clear if he is a happy participant in a stunt that was clearly designed to play to the tune of the debate going on in Commons the week of the letter allowing the NDP to state that there had been complaints to the ICC about the CF in Afghanistan or if he was a dupe of Byers' to lend credibility to the stunt that was lacking in a PoliSci Prof/Political Hack but it was a cheap and dirty trick to play on people who put their lives on the line by people who respond to human rights issues by setting up offices around the world.

I am offended that I was made part of honouring this arsepluck by attending my son's convocation.

South Korea "Submits"

I heard the term "root cause" on the radio today with regards to the Taliban abduction and murder of South Korean Christian aid workers and I had to look into what the "root cause" for the situation was. I found the source of the story through Michelle Malkin's August 2, 2007 post.

Sure enough, as reported in the English version of The Chosun Ilbo, it was the US's fault again:

At a meeting of the Uri Party on Wednesday, Rep. Park Chan-suk said, "The root cause of the hostage crisis lies in our dispatch of troops to Afghanistan. While the Koreans are suffering, the U.S. stands firm on the principles. It's irresponsible and it's a betrayal of one of its allies." Uri Chairman Chung Se-kyun said, "The U.S. should not remain a mere bystander."

Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea a quotable pacifist group has labeled "the Bush administration the "main party" responsible for the abduction of 23 Koreans by the Taliban." I think that their reasoning for this was the irresistable pressure that President Bush applied to Bae Hyung-kyu and his group to risk their lives and to go into Afghanistan without telling them:

• that the Taliban don't want the conditions of normal Afghans between Kandahar and Kabul to improve,
• that the road between Kandahar and Kabul is so dangerous that it makes the DMZ between North and South Korea look like the Epcot Centre, and
• that anyone travelling in an Islamist controlled region under the banner of Christianity is considered to be a proselytizer and is subject to death.

Wait a minute...the Bush Administration didn't send these people there any more than than they sent the Christian Peacekeeper Teams there. They are just expected to pull their asses out of the fire when everything goes pearshaped on them. I'm not just ranting about this! The same group said, "On Wednesday, the group in a press conference threatened a "massive" candlelight rally unless the U.S. starts negotiations with the Taliban immediately."Fortunately, the families of the captured Aid Workers have not bought into the rhetoric:

Lee Jeong-hoon, a representative of the families, said on Thursday, "Since an anti-American demonstration could have a negative influence on the negotiations for the release of the hostages, we have made efforts to avoid being involved in any such demonstrations." "An anti-American movement could be what the Taliban want," Lee said. "We rejected suggestions by some anti-American groups to hold a candlelight vigil and march to the U.S. Embassy in Korea."

Yes!! That is exactly what the protests for disengagement from Afghanistan are doing. Dealing with them as real people legitimizes them and makes them stronger. It emboldens them to go into schools and kill little girls for being out of their homes and it ensures that this "hostage crisis" will happen again. Meanwhile the Korean government has engaged in a remarkable round of moral equivalence:

Korean hostage negotiators have agreed to direct talks with Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan, a purported spokesman for the Islamists militants told DPA Thursday. The news agency quoted Qari Yousuf Ahmadi as saying Korean Ambassador to Afghanistan Kang Sung-ju spoke directly by phone with his Taliban counterpart.

His Taliban counterpart??!! Is Kang Sung-ju a murderous terrorist? That is the only counterpart that the Taliban have in the real world. How can they even say that? This is what Lee Jeong-hoon was talking about. Every inch that these people are given emboldens them to take the next. Their stated goal is to bring their version of Sharia law to the world and they use every concession received as a launching pad to the next while treating every concession given as a temporary tactical retreat. It is an eternal struggle for them to force the Submission of everyone to the authority of Islam.

Every time an atrocity is not met with overwhelming force it rewards them with another inch. Al Quaeda has already taken over foreign policy for Spain when they were elected to that office as a result of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. They now seem poised to take over that position in South Korea. How is it that countries can rail on about the evil USA dictating foreign policy to them and then jump onto the Islamist bandwagon as soon as they say "Boo"? Once they cede their foreign policy to Islamofacsists it is a short hop to total "Submission". For Spain this will simply be a re-reconqista but for South Korea it will be something new.

Negotiation with Animals

Jack Layton and the NDP want to start peace-oriented discussions with the Taliban in Afghanistan. These are the same people who murder adolescent girls for the crime of going to school. How do you negotiate with that??!! Do you tell them that this is wrong??!! If you have to then there is not basis for discussion.

The NDP and thier advisors advocate an unconditional rejection of violence that makes them smugly think of themselves as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than abject moral capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense, and defense of people like these Afghan girls, because they think it's a supposed surrender to violence, leaves no resort but to beg for mercy or offer appeasement.

Evil grants no mercy, and these animals are evil, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more than a piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best, death at worst. Thus, the unconditional rejection of violence is really nothing more than embracing death as preferable to life.

Those who embrace this path of death will achieve what they embrace, if not for themselves then for their children. The right, the absolute necessity, of overwhelming response against anyone who initiates force against you is fundamental to survival. The morality of a people's self-defense is in its defense of each individual's right to life. It's an intolerance of violence, made real by an unwavering willingness to crush any who would launch violence against you. The unconditional determination to destroy any who would initiate force against you is an exaltation of the value of life. Refusing to surrender your life to any thug or tyrant who lays claim to it is in fact embracing life itself.

If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own life, then you are merely like a mouse trying to argue with owls. You think their ways are wrong. They think you are dinner.

Layton's predecessor, Alexa McDonough, said much the same a week after the WTC attack on 11 September 2001. She felt that an international court should mete out the punishment. Current advisors of the NDP want the same courts to mete out punishment to our own soldiers in Afghanistan rather than to the Taliban and al Quaeda. (more on that later) You can't wag your tongue at such people and offer it the justice of a civilized court. They don't acknowledge our concept of justice.

Even as the Taliban as killing off one Korean teacher after another people are calling for negotiation and talks with the captors. This was the tack that was taken by Karzai in March to secure the release of Daniele Mastrogiacomo, an Italian journalist who had been captured by Taliban forces, a tactic that significantly encouraged this abduction. However, Cheong Wa Dae (S Korean Office of the President) also ruled out the possibility of military action against the kidnappers. "There is no change in the stance that without our government's consent, there will not be any military strategy to solve the issue," Cheon Ho-seon told reporters. Nothing can be more misguided. This event is the direct result of Karzai's capitulation and that of the Spanish left wing government's after their last election.

If, hoping to appease it, you willingly compromise with unrepentant evil, you only allow such evil to sink its fangs into you; from that day on its venom will course through your veins until it finally kills you.

Compromising with murderers, which is precisely what these people are suggesting, grants them moral equivalence where none can rightfully exist. Moral equivalence says that you are no better than they; therefore, their belief - that they should be able to abduct, torture, rape, or murder you - is just as morally valid as your view - that you have the right to live free of their violence. Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally valid, so everyone should compromise and get along.

Where could you compromise with those who abdut, torture, rape, and murder people? In the number of days a week you will be tortured? In the number of men to be allowed to rape your loved ones? In how many of your family are to be murdered?

No moral equivalence exists in that situation, nor can it exist, so there can be no compromise, only suicide. To even suggest compromise can exist with such men is to sanction murder.

Some comments on negotiation with murders was paraphrased from Terry Goodkind's "Naked Empire".

Why Are We In Afghanistan

As noted by Kate at Small Dead Animals there really is a reason that we are in Afghanistan.

1. Millions of girls are back in school with 400,000 new female students starting school for the first time this year;
2. Over 100,000 women benefited from micro finance loans to set up their own business;
3. Over a quarter of parliamentarians are women;
4. Over 7 million girls and boys are in school or higher education;
5. 83% of the population now has access to medical facilities, compared to 9 percent in 2004;
6. 76% of children under the age of five have been immunized against childhood diseases;
7. More than 4000 medical facilities opened since 2004;
8. Over 600 midwives were trained and deployed in every province of Afghanistan;
9. GDP growth estimates of between12-14% for the current year;
10. Government revenues increased by around 25% from 2005/06 to 2006/07;
11. Income per capita of $355, compared to $180 three years ago;
12. Afghanistan is one of the fastest growing economies in South-East Asia;
13. Over 4000 km of roads have been completed;
14. Work has begun on 20,000 new homes for Afghans returning to Kabul;
15. Over 1 billion square metres (roughly 32 km X 32 km) of mine contaminated land cleared;
16. 10 universities are operating around the country, against one (barely functioning) under the Taliban; and
17. 17,000 communities benefited from development programmes such as wells, schools, hospitals and roads through the Government’s National Solidarity Program (NSP).

Of course this directly contradicts comments by Taliban Jack Layton in early July that, “It’s the wrong mission; it’s not working; it’s not going to accomplish the goals.” Unless he missed the point, each of the seventeen points above were not true before we went into Afghanistan. If we leave or "scaleback" before the nascent Afghanistan government is ready to defend itself then they will not be true anymore in a year.

Why is it that we never hear these points from the CBC?

Taliban Jack Layton

Taliban Jack Layton has been doing his best to get Canadian soldiers killed again. Every time there is a death or serious injury he rewards the insurgents with such PR releases as this in the Edmonton Sun July 4, 2007:

“The prime minister needs to engineer a scaleback of military operations in Afghanistan in the face of mounting civilian and military deaths, NDP Leader Jack Layton said Wednesday shortly before news that six more Canadian troops had been killed.
Layton said Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs to show leadership by urging the United States to stop high-altitude bombing in the war-torn country and withdrawing Canadian troops from what he characterized as a hopeless mission.”

So TJ thinks that when the going gets tough the tough bugger off. All the Taliban have to do is hit the Canadians a few more times and he should be able to convince the Canadian people to pull out immediately. It makes you wonder if Jack will be awarded an Honourary Mullah title for services to al Quaeda.

Jack has promised Mullah Omar that his party will ensure the issue is front and centre in coming federal byelections and he added the only way to peace is through negotiation. He urged Harper to take a lead role in establishing a peace process.

I am trying to remember when it was that anyone on the Taliban side has indicated that they are interested in negotiation. Perhaps it was when they hung a woman and her son outside their village for the crime of teaching in a school.

In his final nugget of wisdom Taliban Jack excreted:

“Students of history will know that all major conflicts are resolved, ultimately, through peace-oriented discussions. . . . And that’s what needs to happen here.”

Clearly Jack is not a student of history. WWI was resolved through "peace-oriented discussions". The result was WWII, the continued distrust of the West by China that exists to this day, most of the problems in the Middle East... The list goes on. WWII was resolved by destroying the war making ability of the enemy. The result is a Europe that co-exists as Union and a Japan that leads the world in manufacturing and is integrated with the world economy as a full partner.

The only thing that resolves conflicts with monsters like the Taliban, al Quaeda, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is superior force and the resolve to use it to the end. Anything less is seen as degenerate weakness of an infidel who must be crushed and brought to submission.

As one of the greatest philosophers of freedom and liberty, John Stuart Mill said:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing
is worth a war, is much worse.

Jack Layton's war on Canadian Soldiers is a truly ugly thing.

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The Source of Islamofascist Hate

Reported in Captain's Quarters, Kevin Brock, the Deputy Director of the new National Counterterrorism Center, told the AP that he doesn't believe the invasion and war in Iraq can be blamed for the threat reports that come into his center each day.

The idea that Al Qaeda and the rest of the Islamofascists hate the US because of the invasion of Iraq or the invasion, for that matter, of Afghanistan is ludicrous. They hated us enough to hit the World Trade Centre twice (the second time successfully) and American targets around the world long before Afghanistan or Iraq happened. It is silly that Brock still even has to say this.

As General Rick Hillier the Canadian Chief of the Defense Staff, has said, "These are detestable murderers and scumbags, I'll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties." They would reduce our society to rubble simply because they can't control it.

That is why they set up in Afghanistan. At the beginning of the war against the Taliban Afghanistan had a political structure virtually identical to eleventh century Europe - a high level of anarchy where the biggest bully called the shots. If they could erode the confidence of the West in their governments and reduce our society to that level of anarchy they would happily stroll in and impose their barbaric Wahabi form of law. God help us if we should lose this struggle.

Taliban Afghanistan was rough but it would pale in comparison to what we would face here once humbled by the likes of bin Laden and Zarqawi.