Pro-War Pundits: Completely Incoherent, Completely Absurd

I'll tell you what's absurd about pro-war pundits, it's pretending to be a grown-up by admitting the facts are the facts, that yes, the Taliban are far stronger than they have been since 2001, that yes sooner or later they will have power again over Pushtun areas favourable to them, that yes, WE FINANCE 90% of AFGHAN GOVT & ARMY - buying little or no loyalty (but better than none?) AND WITHOUT US THE POTEMKIN INSTITUTIONS WOULD COLLAPSE, that yes, the place is irredemably corrupt, THAT WITHOUT OUR PRESENCE KARAZI & Co. WOULD DE DEAD, GONE, OR BECOME OUTRIGHT INTEREST-BROKERING DICTATORS, that yes, yes, yes, the place was, is and always will be a mess...but perhaps by next summer all will be well?! Or maybe the next summer? Or the summer after that? I mean, it's only been ten years, and look at all the progress we've made. Luckily, none of the allies is suffering from crises in their public finances, that means further war would bankrupt us...

OUR LOYALTY AND DUTY IS TO CANADA FIRST AND FOREMOST. AFGHANISTAN IS NOT SIMPLY OF NO NATIONAL INTEREST, IT IS NEGATIVE TO THE NATIONAL INTEREST - IT PUTS US IN THE RED. Literally. Not just money. The red blood shed, not for nothing, not less than nothing, but for a cause negative to the national interest.

Listen to yourselves. Think about what you're saying. It's complete double-think. One the one hand you say it's worse than ever, no prospect of any fundamental shift, you admit the Taliban will retake power in parts of the country, eventually, inevitably, etc. etc.. In summary, looked at coldly, that it is hopeless. AND THEN YOU TURN AROUND AND SAY WE SHOULD STAY LONGER! SHED MORE LIVES, LIMBS & DOLLARS...for what? For what? Answer me, for what? You admit it's hopeless...but we should continue to live in hope? And sacrifice here and abroad on that basis?

The problem is, as Usbek said, that everyone has been colonised. But those who were cheerleaders from the beginning suffer the condition most, because to recognise what a folly it is, to act logically on the facts as they admit them, would mean, in effect, repudiating a decade of their foolishness, that aided and abetted the deaths, injuries and wasted treasure (which means greater death and injury here at home as well, if you think it through - there's only one dollar).

You are all now suffering, and have been for a while, from what pro-Soviet Western Communists suffered after Stalin's crimes could no longer be denied, or what Iggy was forced to confront on Iraq. You were so very very wrong. Blood is on your hands. And naturally, you are having trouble coming to terms with it. And you can never make up for it. So you are retreating into fantasies, naturally enough. Psychologically understandable. But given your share of responsibility for the shambles, utter cowardice. Senator Colin Kenny is one of the very few to have had the guts and integrity and intellectual and moral honesty to face up to it. The rest of you? A shower, a complete shower.

The Women? It sucks. But that's Afghanistan. It's not great even now. And you admit the Taliban will retake power. So what will happen to the women then? It sucks. But we didn't make it that way, and we are the boys with our thumbs in the dyke, holding back the flood. But it's coming, you admit it's coming, sooner or later, so how many CANADIAN dead, wounded and dollars should we spend, for how long, to hold back the water? The Sea always finds its natural level, sooner or later. That's nature, that's the world. It sucks. But if the Afghan Government, its institutions, are completely dependent on us, and there is no real prospect of that changing for the forseeable future, than is that an argument for staying forever, or leaving immediately?

Well guess what, there are other women, in other places, we can help, whose societies offer some realistic possibility of permanent, structural progress. We can reduce misery and improve women's rights without getting our kids killed, and maimed, and with an immeasurably higher ratio of benefit to cost. We can help WAY MORE WOMEN if we leave Afghanistan and focus our energies elsewhere.

In effect, by staying in Afghanistan, the utopians would have us hold on to the most unproductive aid enterprise imaginable, rather than investing in much more productive, high-growth opportunities, on the "open market" of needy countries.

National security considerations? For Canada, a joke, from the beginning. Only the USA & UK might have some logic there. And even then, the Biden plan is much more efficient and rational.

You cannot pretend te be rational, admit the facts, admit it's hopeless, and say we should stay. You cannot. Not unless it's a matter of faith or madness. Utopianism is both.

Anyway, if you are fanatical or mad, none of this will matter, or convince you. Otherwise, you could also read Hillier & Haiti & Other Thoughts if you wanted more perspective on everything, and how things are interconnected. Every dollar spent in Afghanistan is a dollar not spent elsewhere. Every life. Every limb.

There is one rational possibility I haven't addressed. I work on the assumption that for all my criticism, Canada remains a sovereign state. That may be my own blind spot, my own faith interfering. Perhaps the media cheerleaders are not the fools they seem, but rather even harder, colder, more cynical, more realpolitik men and women than me. Perhaps they take it for granted that we are a colony of the USA. That we must stay as long as the USA needs us to stay. Why? Because we are their colony and must please our master, or else! That is not my view. But I may be naive and wrong. And so the media's apparent mad incoherence is actually completely coherent, intelligent and sensible. They know we ARE going to stay, like it or not. So they view their job as to make the decision as little humiliating as possible, as enjoyable as possible. At least Canadians can be made to feel they made their own sovereign decision to stay, the polls notwithstanding, year after year. The cheerleader media are perhaps trying to do their fellow citizens a service, to make things as palatable as possible. They sacrifice themselves for us.

I sometimes think that Harper's education as PM has led him to rethink many things. I sometimes think that he discovered he was far more typically Canadian in his views than he even thought he was himself, before. I sometimes think that he was upset to discover that he might have less freedom for action than he thought he did, that given his psychology, he instinctively pushes back against imposition from above - he was always happy to be pro-American before, but he'd thought it was his choice, his personal rejection of Trudeau. I sometimes think he now perceives he has no choice, and that rankles him. I sometimes think that might explain his behaviour on this issue. It's not that he was lying, it's that he didn't want to admit to the country and himself that he was just a puppet, and so typically, he pouted and shouted, and pretended and hoped it would go away, and tried to ignore it, and still does. Because once in power he's enough of an economist at heart to do the cost-benefit and want to leave Afghanistan...if the premise is that Canada is an independent country. But what if that premise is wrong? And that would explain the media's incoherence, and their scapegoating of Harper over process issues to do with Afghanistan, since he is them and they are him, psychologically, on this, and so they can work out their issues, their self-hatred, through him. They all know we are a colony, with a colony's fate, but only Harper has to wear it, they just have to talk, write and promote the rationale that lets Canadians sleep at night.

Those are not my views or premises. Maybe more fool me. But I still think of Canada as a proud independent country, master of itself, if it so wishes. But I could be wrong.

PS. I just realised that I forgot to address the rhetorical trick of saying the troops want us to stay, probably because it's hardly worth mentioning, without being insulting to media who engage in shitty emotional blackmail. Anyway, for the very dim, do we let police officers decide justice policy by themselves? Teachers education policy? Etc.etc.. C'mon. Public policy is about the public interest. Public to MPs to representative democracy in the Burkean sense, remember? Stop the nonsense.