Lauryn Oates: The War in Afghanistan Made the Country Better

I read the Doug Saunders column to which Lauryn Oates refers, and it was one of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever seen appear in a major newspaper. Either Saunders has a cognitive disability or he was intentionally manipulating and lying about data. He referred to one report that indicated that the current NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was creating a situation in which Islamists were feeling more at liberty to mistreat women. Among other egregious distortions, Saunders implied it was because of the NATO forces presence in Afghanistan that conditions for women were worsening in that country.

Afghan women police training graduates (Nov 2011)

From The Huffington Post:

Media coverage of Afghanistan over the past decade is notoriously prone to selective coverage of the negative -- the latest bomb blast or kidnapping -- while doing a dismal job of telling the story of the transformative progress that has occurred, and what exactly is at stake should security deteriorate this year upon the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Then there are the armchair pundits, who further help colour public opinion in the NATO countries towards unjustified pessimism. Last Saturday The Globe & Mail ran an opinion article by Doug Saunders called "Was our Afghan saga useless -- or worse?" in which he suggests that Afghanistan may be worse off now than it was before international intervention (while simultaneously contradicting himself by noting that there are gains, though they may not last).

I've worked in aid and development in Afghanistan for more than a decade, and I am flummoxed by Saunders' article, and more so, by his clumsy misreading of the sources he cites...

Afghan duo who disrupted solemn Remembrance Day services want to sue Sun News for "defamation"

Two young Afghan-Canadian women who helped disrupt Remembrance day services last November say they want to launch a defamation suit against Sun News. The presumptive grounds is their claim they were libeled when referred to as "Taliban supporters" "Islamists" and "Jihadists."

The pair do however, make it very clear they want NATO and western forces out of Afghanistan.

If NATO, including Canadian forces were to withdraw from Afghanistan, who benefits and who loses?

The obvious answer is that immediate gain would go to the Taliban, the fanatical Islamist terror organization, which would likely regain control of the chaotic Central Asian country. The clear losers would be Afghan women, upon whom the Taliban, during their rule and in areas they control, imposed the most brutal and restrictive controls. The Taliban prevented women from receiving education, from having employment, from going out in public in anything more revealing than a full-body burkah, and from leaving home without permission of a male relative, among other primitive dictates from the catalogue of Islamic totalitarianism.

So it follows to reason that those advocating a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan are, consciously or not,  acting in the de facto interests of and lending tacit support to the Taliban.

via facebook

Which brings us to a pair of young women who gained notoriety last November for a reprehensible display during Remembrance Day services at Toronto's Old City Hall. Laila Rashdie and Suraia Sahar both insist they are neither Taliban supporters nor Islamists, as they had been described following the incident which they helped to instigate. From their appearance, that claim seems entirely plausible.  Both wear modern western clothing and take advantage of Canada's generous education subsidies to all post-secondary students, privileges they would be deprived of were they living under Taliban control in what they often refer to as their "home country" of Afghanistan.

But by proposing a withdrawal of all foreign troops to Afghanistan, they are advocating for something the Taliban desperately wants so it can seize control in Afghanistan and restore their tyrannical rule.

So how would a modicum of  human and women's rights be preserved in Afghanistan if NATO were to pack up and leave? Ms. Sahar offered the phenomenally simplistic, nonsensical solution of providing education and health care. Things that have improved significantly under NATO's presence and would be eradicated under the Taliban. How women are going to receive these services without a competent armed force to preserve them is something she neglects to delineate because she obviously doesn't have the slightest clue.

What does seem apparent is Ms Sahar and Ms. Rushdie lack the mental acuity to connect rather obvious dots and comprehend that what they advocate serves to support the aims of the hateful Taliban Islamists.

Of course, profound, or even average insight is not something one expects from the sort of people who write things like,

"The ugly side of freedom is the state-run military spectacle supporting the NATO-led imperialist war and occupation in Afghanistan but parading as a false guilt-trip memorial for those who sacrificed to fight for “our” freedoms. Well, just in case you selectively forgot, your parade is and has always been on stolen, occupied, Native land - what about their freedoms to sovereignty and the Afghan peoples for self-determination? What about our freedom of speech which was infringed on when an officer called our message “trash” and “laughable.” We courageously endured a violent and racist crowd calling out: “go back to your country”, "

There's a priceless humor in the irony of the blatant hypocrisy of two women who refer to Afghanistan as their home condemning Canada as a settler colonial society on stolen land and then bitching about people who tell them to "go home". Unfortunately for the duo, understanding that appears to be beyond their cognitive abilities. If they actually believe the idiocy they propound, what are they doing here settling, occupying and stealing land from its rightful owners? If, as they have repeated, Afghanistan is their "home country," shouldn't they stop being occupiers, pack up, and go to a Taliban-occupied part of Afghanistan to experience what Afghan self-determination would actually be like if they got their wish for a NATO withdrawal?

Apparently that's something they want for other unfortunate Afghan women, but not for themselves. Maybe, though hypocrites, they aren't quite as stupid as they sound.

There are plenty of opinions and honest disagreements about the Canadian military role in Afghanistan and anyone has the right to speak out and demonstrate against it. But Remembrance Day services are solemn occasions meant to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and the principles that represents. To choose the particular location and occasion of a Remembrance Day service to insult and demonstrate and intentionally offend those who have come to mourn is callous and disgusting. Anyone who does that, as my friend Michael Coren has observed, is in my opinion no better than the moral troglodytes of the Hillsboro Baptist Church who defile military funerals with their "God hates fags" protest signs.

While writing about their own courage, the pair of hypocrites who claim their free speech was deprived neglected to mention the police were actually protecting them from an angry mob they had riled up with their offensive display.

Rashdie and Sahar protest that they, with their banner, were not the ones shouting slogans during the moment of silence at the service and they were only one of four protest groups their to offend those honoring and mourning lost soldiers. To the casual observer, there would be no distinction between the two dozen or so ragged radicals who were intermingling and shaming themselves on that occasion. And, as a video shows,  the pair certainly enthusiastically participated in foul-mouthed, shrill, shameful hysteria that continued the disruption of the services that day.



The pair tried to justify themselves when they wrote,  

In 2001 we watched the invasion of our home country, Afghanistan. Fast forward 11 years later: Afghanistan is still occupied, and every year on Remembrance Day we are reminded of it. It has become painfully obvious that Remembrance Day is used as a war propaganda tool. If one is going to take offense to our presence, direct your misguided anger at those responsible for why we are taking offense. 

No one has the right to physically attack someone for their opinions. But someone would have to be a complete idiot to go to a service at that nature, provoke the crowd, and not expect such a response. While taking advantage of the freedoms that Canadian soldiers have fought and died to preserve, they came to a memorial to metaphorically spit on the graves of the people who gave them the rights they abused.

Their idiocy continued with:

This is a settler-colonial society, reinforcing itself through racism, which we witnessed at the Remembrance Day ceremony. This is what explains why a handful of racist, white men screamed in our faces to "go back to your country." They believe that they are the rightful owners of this land. We are never accepted as real Canadians in their rigid, exclusionary and alienating cultural terms. We are always deemed as a potential foreign threat especially when we reveal this status quo and hypocrisy. 

Speaking of hypocrisy, the pair, that alternatively posture themselves as either Canadian or Afghan, depending on which suits their needs at the moment,  claim to be "peace activists." It brings to mind the sort of peace activism the late Christopher Hitchens described when he wrote,   "in reality, they are straight out pro-war, but on the other side."  

That seems evident from an article penned by Leila Rushdie in which she wrote:

We should support the Palestinian national fight for liberation against a military super-power threatening the Near East. The Zionist project is founded upon colonialism and genocide of Palestine. Palestine acts in defense to a colonizer that has been viciously taking Palestinian land and lives in one hand while shamelessly claiming peace and negotiations in the other. The comparison maps of Palestine since 1946 till today speak for itself about the intentions of Apartheid Israel: its about land, not peace.

Aside from other apparent idiocies, for so-called peace activists such as Rushdie and Sahar, Western troops fighting against Islamic Jihadists who throw acid in the face of Afghan women who want an education is bad, but Muslim Jihadists who murder Israeli civilians to replace a liberal democracy with an Islamic state is just fine.

But remember, Ms Rushdie and Ms Sahar are not Taliban supporters, Islamists or Jihadis. They just, by remarkable coincidence, share a lot of desired outcomes with them.

Terry Glavin: Ottawa’s Gaddafi fans find their world crumbling

Terry wrote this very interesting piece in The National Post:

The Centre for Research on Globalization is – how to put it delicately- a Canadian clubhouse for crackpots of the anti-war, 911-truth, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist variety. The Centre would not normally be worth noticing except for a laugh. But, today is not a normal day.

Run by Michel Chossudovsky, economics professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa, the Centre has for some long while enjoyed what could be called a friendly relationship with the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The Centre also enjoys an intimate and wildly successful relationship with one of the world’s pre-eminent cable “news” networks, and it has put that relationship to the purpose of disseminating undiluted Gaddafist propaganda. As I write this, it’s all crashing down around their heads.


One of Gaddafi's pet weasels sounds worried:

NATO's Secretary-General on the lessons of Libya

The mission in Libya has revealed three important truths about military intervention today. First, to those who claimed that Afghanistan was to be NATO's last out-of-area mission, it has shown that unpredictability is the very essence of security. Second, it has proved that in addition to frontline capabilities, such as fighter-bombers and warships, so-called enablers, such as surveillance and refueling aircraft, as well as drones, are critical parts of any modern operation. And third, it has revealed that NATO allies do not lack military capabilities. Any shortfalls have been primarily due to political, rather than military, constraints. In other words, Libya is a reminder of how important it is for NATO to be ready, capable, and willing to act.

More at Foreign Affairs

Two taboo words about Libya: "Exit Strategy"

Though they finally engaged this week, every day of America's and the Western allies' prolonged inaction during the Libyan revolt put NATO's credibility at risk. Each rebel death seemed a painful reminder of a lesson established by Jimmy Carter's inept handling of the Khomeniites' takeover of Iran and George H.W. Bush's betrayal of Iraqi Shiite rebels in the first Gulf War, that "to be America's enemy is dangerous, to be its friend is fatal."

So, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new coalition has entered the fray in Libya. And like in the previous two interventions, we know we want regime change, but we don't quite know what to do if things get ugly afterwards. 

Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke was paraphrased as saying "no plan survives contact with the enemy." Perhaps that was what Barack Obama, a master of disinformation, was thinking when he said on Tuesday that America's "Exit Strategy" would begin this week. That was a rather unusual pronouncement considering that so far, not only is there no real exit strategy for Libya, but we don't even have a clearly defined entry strategy.

As of today, NATO left the the US disappointed by only agreeing to assume responsibility for the No Fly Zone, leaving attacks against Gaddafi's ground troops the responsibility of whomever will take that role. It will likely fall to the US, the UK and possibly Canada and France to assume that responsibility.

There is a school of thought present among a certain category of Western "progressive" whose devotion to Marxist ideology makes them consider capitalism and perceived imperialism to be worse crimes than the Taliban's brutality and its denial of civil rights and education to Afghan women, or to the fratricidal bloodbath that would have consumed Iraq if the coalition had withdrawn prematurely. But them aside, notwithstanding the lack of effective strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq, no reasonable person would argue the world isn''t better off for having the Taliban and Saddam Hussein removed from power.

So far, no one knows much about the Libyan opposition, much less what a government that replaces Gaddafi will look like, but we do know a world without Gaddafi running a country is a better one.

The precedents for Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq may be in the presence the US maintains to this day in Germany and Japan, decades after the 2nd World War concluded. Those countries are now democratic and among the most stable and prosperous in the world.  What this teaches us, but no one is willing to admit, is that like in the cases of other successful major military interventions, the only real exit strategy is to wait until the job of stabilizing a country is complete.

Christopher Hitchens: Taliban reality finally dawns on human rights camp

Even in a week that concentrated all eyes on the magnificent courage and maturity of the people of Cairo, a report from Kabul began with what must surely be the most jaw-dropping opening paragraph of the year. Under the byline of the excellent Rod Nordland, The New York Times reported: “International and local human rights groups working in Afghanistan have shifted their focus toward condemning abuses committed by the Taliban insurgents, rather than those attributed to the American military and its allies.” 

The story went on to point out that the Taliban was culpable for “more than three-fourths of all civilian casualties” and informed us that some human-rights groups are now so concerned that they are thinking of indicting the Taliban for war crimes. “The activists’ concern,” Nordland went on, “would have been unheard-of a year ago,” when all the outcry was directed at casualties inflicted by NATO contingents.

The story became more mind-boggling as it unfolded. One had to ask oneself what had taken the human-rights “community” so long.

Read the rest at The National Post