The Limits to Potential
by C. L. Cook

• "Three Canadians killed in an ambush. Eight in the armoured vehicle. Five injured: One critical."

I wrote last week of three other Canadians cut down fighting the battle, waging this endless mission to defend Afghanistan against self-determination. Of one of the three killed today, the DND said he was a professional soldier, and at 21 possessed "unlimited potential."

 

Unlimited potential too describes Canada's position, via bilateral support of spending years, and untold billions of tax dollars occupying Afghanistan. Departure time: Open (with provisos); budget: Open (without reservation); acceptable death and casualties: Not determined (unlimited potential).

Successive Canadian governments, ostensibly representing opposing parties, have granted the country's military force stay in Afghanistan and increased budgets to pay the growing costs. This has carried on now for nearly seven years, but where it took the first five of those years of Canadian Forces occupation in-country to kill eight Canadian soldiers (half of those credited to two United States Air reservists who bombed a night-firing range exercise), today's dead make for numbers ninety-four, ninety-five, and ninety-six Canadians killed since America's Afghanistan resurgence.

Listening to Joe Lieberman addressing the Republican convention, (that would be the same Lieberman of the "Bore/Loserman" democratic presidential ticket of another century) one may think the war in Iraq is over and John McCain is already "bringing thousands of soldiers home."

 

Left out of Liarman's (another of Joe's Republican sobriquets) stump speech is the hotting up of Afghani resistance to the occupation, and its exponential growth as more civilians are killed at roadblocks and indiscriminately in ever-escalating US air raids. Aiding in this escalation of hostilities is the Canadian Forces, and the rising death toll is only one side of the killing story.

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) quotes retired Colonel, Michel Drapeau saying;

• "[The military is] no longer dealing with an insurgent that plants a bomb in the middle of the night, but somebody who is bold enough and equipped enough with ammunitions and know-how to stand up to a very, very potent force."

That potency will certainly grow before the U.S. and its allies manage, as jolly Joe believes the "Surge" accomplished in Iraq, to kill and displace a large enough number of Afghanis to achieve the ultimate goal of The Mission: pacification and stabilization. Sitting at the crossroads of trade, Afghanis are again in the way of empire and dying for the ambitions of others. Whether for silk, spice, or oil, occupation and resistance is an old story for Afghanistan's ancient people.

For Canadians opposed to the nation's understanding of itself as a "player" in the new Great Game, the thin public support for military adventures wears thinner with each Canadian soldier dispatched for the benefit of Washington's friends in the petroleum and weapons trade.

 

Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper has hinted broadly of an imminent election call. While the CBC and Canada's corporate media has largely supported both political parties' prosecution of the occupation, a lengthening death train coming out of Afghanistan will prove difficult to ignore. The two war parties could find themselves facing a single issue election; a referendum on Canada's foreign policy decision to tie the country's wagon to America's military star.

It is only a matter of time before Canadian voters begin hearing, as their American counterparts have already heard, of the depravity and senseless destruction occupation necessitates. What Canada's leaders must ask themselves now is:

• "Will Canadians abide an unpopular and morally disastrous course for the nation merely because both the Liberals and Conservatives support it?"        

And there's a question all Canadians need to ask themselves:

• "How much more unlimited potential are we willing to see squandered fighting foreign wars for foreign masters?"