Note to readers: Please don't publicly speculate here as to the identity of the author. No one has gotten it right, but it is decidedly unhelpful. Such comments will be deleted.
This column is heart-breaking in so many ways, about Afghanistan, about Canada, and about the "Free World". Superb writing always increases the power of a message. Thanks to The Line and to the author.
Should Canada ever be challenged as Afghans were - fighting for our homes and culture inside our OWN country - you'd find we were tough enough. Humans are, and we're human.
But you can hardly watch your much-admired Afghans all surrender, and not admit that even those heros don't fight pointlessly for a corrupt government unworthy of sacrifice. Canada became "war weary" because we knew we were throwing our children to the flames to protect narco-mansions in Kabul. Our forces weren't the only ones at the mall; the Afghan leaders they were dying to protect were at their penthouses in Abu Dhabi.
The war was never winnable from the day it became a war for Afghanistan, rather than an effort to arrest bin Laden and his lieutenants, and leave, which was all that the UN Security Council authorized. The rest was arrogated authority to save the whole country forever, and that was hopeless. Read "Afghanistan in Sixteen Characters", by Gwynne Dyer, which predicted the last 11 years with laser accuracy in 2010.
And, of course, the public "grew weary" of a war with no progress. At no point in 20 years did "our side" hold ANY ground. How could anybody be surprised it all fell apart in weeks, when there was never a safe city, absent western air support? Not Kandahar, not even Mazar-i-Sharif in the north. If no one part of it could be held, why expect all of it to be held at once?
The normal progress of a normal war, like WW2, is you'd have taken land, been able to turn it over to Afghan forces, ALONE, with no western support of any kind, then turn your attention to still-unsafe areas. That never happened with a square metre. It was always the same war story, ever year, for 20 years: we'd have a battle, win, move away, and they'd move back in. Dr. Dyer explains this had happened before in several countries, and the insurgents won every single time. Including Vietnam obviously. (Dyer's essay laments that Americans forgot that lesson.)
As for worthy goals, yes making Afghanistan into Switzerland, or even Guatemala, would have been an upgrade for millions. This is also true of Kazakhstan, Krgystan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and of course, Pakistan itself. (Or Egypt: 80% of women get FGM.)
Of course, all those wars would be illegal under Canada's treaty obligations - the UN Charter is a treaty, all war is illegal. Afghanistan was a UN legal police action with an unfortunately vague goal that the Americans of course took shameless advantage of. Doubling down there got us out of Iraq, which was blatantly illegal.
You placated our necessary, impossible-to-refuse, 75%-of-our-trade, American partners, and kept us out of Iraq. That was your real mission, and yeah, we tossed 150 guys into otherwise pointless, useless deaths to accomplish it.
Still, take pride: you served your country bravely and well, because Afghanistan was never the point. Pleasing America was.
We are a nation of the weak and the home of the bored. What was bequeath to us by our fathers and forefathers is our reminder of sacrifice and honor. They stood for something and gave their lives to ensure we were advantaged by it and they left us to protect it. Not only has it been forgotten by many, the coddled and the spoiled consider it a burden to maintain. One need look no further than our capital and parliament buildings to see the great loss of values, morals, and honor. Canada is a sham, full of self indulgent, selfie seeking, pompous parliamentarians and spoiled voters who feel entitled to more of everything. My greatest hope for this country is destitution of all we know and great suffrage in order to gain some perspective and knowledge of difficult times. It seems that difficult times is what brings out the best in humanity. In Canada we live a fantasy that is in desperate need for a dose of reality in order to shed the ridiculous and the morally corrupt indulgences of our society. Hard times begets strong people and good times begets weak ones.
An unflattering comparison from George F. Kennan comes to mind:
"I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath—in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed"
Canadians have a strong tendency to take our security for granted, and to pay little attention to the outside world. Moreover, the fact that Canada is always under internal tension means that the national government tends to be cautious and slow to act, to preserve national unity - I think of Mackenzie King's formula "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription," postponing commitment to one course of action or the other.
With the rise of China and the relative decline of US power, we're facing a more dangerous and uncertain world, and this has opened a sizable gap between our goals and our capabilities. Closing this gap is going to require setting more modest goals (Canada is not responsible for the well-being of everyone everywhere) and building up our hard and soft power - diplomacy, intelligence, cyber-security, and military.
And of course we need to work with our allies. I think it'd be helpful for Canadians to pay attention to Australia, which has more experience of having to fend for itself after Japan destroyed the Royal Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
I'm not sure I buy the argument that Canadian morale has become weak, incapable of sacrifice in a greater cause. For example, many immigrants to Canada have made tremendous sacrifices for the future of their children. I think the issue is more complacency and inattention.
It rehashes the tired trope that strong-jawed militarism is the only true expression of values like honour and duty, and it does so almost entirely via reductive anecdotes drawn (presumably) from the author’s personal experiences in Afghanistan.
There’s a tepid attempt to draw a line to something more substantive than personal anecdotes in support of his condemnation of Canadians' as weak, but it’s by way of a lazy false equivalency argument involving first Churchill and then Kennedy. (It takes a certain confidence to invoke two such paragons of twentieth century statesmanship; our author is nothing if not sure of himself.)
Speaking of the author, there’s nothing in this oped so controversial as to warrant affording “Tommy” the cloak of anonymity, regardless his employer or position, and indeed it smacks as ironic that he’d ask for anonymity given the John Wayne-esque undercurrent of his views.
Which brings me to an anecdote of my own, specifically for Tommy: I recall vividly a night in 2005 when I awoke to the sound of incoming RPGs, and the surreal-ness of scrambling to get my boots on in the pitch dark, while all around me the SF guys I was in-transit with were standing in their boxer shorts loading their Sigs. (The whole time I couldn't stop thinking, why aren't they getting dressed -?; is that some special SF training, do they fight in their underwear?) It was a tense fifteen minutes or so. No one was hurt. The rounds landed near the chapel. The chapel? Yes. The chapel. We were a good hundred yards plus "inside the wire" at KAF.
You see, "inside the wire" is a big deal for Tommy. He goes to great lengths to distinguish what he feels are the honourable, spiritual, morally tough people who operate "outside the wire" from their presumed opposites "inside the wire." It's a straightforward worldview, common in certain circles (i.e.: 'merica!). It lacks nuance, or, more specifically, the self-awareness that often comes only through true personal adversity. I'd go so far as to say it's the same worldview my twelve year old son shows when we watch the Blue Jays lose: the pitcher's trash. Fire him. Full stop.
Fundamentally, and aside from its structural weaknesses, the core problem with this oped is Tommy's credibility: he lacks the courage to use his real name, yet feels he has the moral high ground to ascribe a lack of spirituality and morality to soldiers who came before him, not to mention, it would seem, a general condemnation of Canadians in general, all because, one would deduce, he spent a few weeks, months maybe, "outside the wire" whilst on deployment a few years back where, and this seems to be a real frustration for him, he only got to wash his socks once a week.
What a really well done piece. Such good points. I know more than one person who is an immigrant who says that Canadians haven't fought the fights on their land and don't know how good they have it here OR how hard you have to fight sometimes. Thank you for your perspective.
Like a moth to flame I read and reread this article. It touches on many truisms that reflect on us Canadians. We need to learn to help each other before jumping into international wars.
“They are worthier of our inheritance than we are.”
You hit me hard with that. And you are correct to say it, notwithstanding the sacrifices of my parents and grandparents during WW II. I am realizing that my thoughts of former wartime national pride and sacrifice for the common good are merely personal nostalgia.
How do we build that belief back when there is not a clearly defined “enemy” and no urgent timeline?
This was hard to read as I remember this country back in the 30's and 40's through my parents' stories. But I'll say one thing - behind all the rah-rah that arrives around July 1st, I've found over the last few years that we have a sad problem with national self-disparagement. It's everywhere. There's no one who despises Canada more than Canadians.
Eye-opening commentary. Something a lot of Canadians need to hear, myself included.
All these years of being told, by governments and media as a whole, how great Canada is only to find out what a sad state of disrepair our institutions are in at the time they are needed most. This is true of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as our public health system as highlighted by this pandemic. And that's not an indictment of the men and women operating on the front lines who are doing the hard work, but of the management within these institutions and our purported "leaders" that direct them.
Where did we go so wrong? Where's the accountability? And, most importantly, how can we fix it?
Note to readers: Please don't publicly speculate here as to the identity of the author. No one has gotten it right, but it is decidedly unhelpful. Such comments will be deleted.
This column is heart-breaking in so many ways, about Afghanistan, about Canada, and about the "Free World". Superb writing always increases the power of a message. Thanks to The Line and to the author.
Should Canada ever be challenged as Afghans were - fighting for our homes and culture inside our OWN country - you'd find we were tough enough. Humans are, and we're human.
But you can hardly watch your much-admired Afghans all surrender, and not admit that even those heros don't fight pointlessly for a corrupt government unworthy of sacrifice. Canada became "war weary" because we knew we were throwing our children to the flames to protect narco-mansions in Kabul. Our forces weren't the only ones at the mall; the Afghan leaders they were dying to protect were at their penthouses in Abu Dhabi.
The war was never winnable from the day it became a war for Afghanistan, rather than an effort to arrest bin Laden and his lieutenants, and leave, which was all that the UN Security Council authorized. The rest was arrogated authority to save the whole country forever, and that was hopeless. Read "Afghanistan in Sixteen Characters", by Gwynne Dyer, which predicted the last 11 years with laser accuracy in 2010.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2010/afghanistan-in-sixteen-characters/
And, of course, the public "grew weary" of a war with no progress. At no point in 20 years did "our side" hold ANY ground. How could anybody be surprised it all fell apart in weeks, when there was never a safe city, absent western air support? Not Kandahar, not even Mazar-i-Sharif in the north. If no one part of it could be held, why expect all of it to be held at once?
The normal progress of a normal war, like WW2, is you'd have taken land, been able to turn it over to Afghan forces, ALONE, with no western support of any kind, then turn your attention to still-unsafe areas. That never happened with a square metre. It was always the same war story, ever year, for 20 years: we'd have a battle, win, move away, and they'd move back in. Dr. Dyer explains this had happened before in several countries, and the insurgents won every single time. Including Vietnam obviously. (Dyer's essay laments that Americans forgot that lesson.)
As for worthy goals, yes making Afghanistan into Switzerland, or even Guatemala, would have been an upgrade for millions. This is also true of Kazakhstan, Krgystan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and of course, Pakistan itself. (Or Egypt: 80% of women get FGM.)
Of course, all those wars would be illegal under Canada's treaty obligations - the UN Charter is a treaty, all war is illegal. Afghanistan was a UN legal police action with an unfortunately vague goal that the Americans of course took shameless advantage of. Doubling down there got us out of Iraq, which was blatantly illegal.
You placated our necessary, impossible-to-refuse, 75%-of-our-trade, American partners, and kept us out of Iraq. That was your real mission, and yeah, we tossed 150 guys into otherwise pointless, useless deaths to accomplish it.
Still, take pride: you served your country bravely and well, because Afghanistan was never the point. Pleasing America was.
We are a nation of the weak and the home of the bored. What was bequeath to us by our fathers and forefathers is our reminder of sacrifice and honor. They stood for something and gave their lives to ensure we were advantaged by it and they left us to protect it. Not only has it been forgotten by many, the coddled and the spoiled consider it a burden to maintain. One need look no further than our capital and parliament buildings to see the great loss of values, morals, and honor. Canada is a sham, full of self indulgent, selfie seeking, pompous parliamentarians and spoiled voters who feel entitled to more of everything. My greatest hope for this country is destitution of all we know and great suffrage in order to gain some perspective and knowledge of difficult times. It seems that difficult times is what brings out the best in humanity. In Canada we live a fantasy that is in desperate need for a dose of reality in order to shed the ridiculous and the morally corrupt indulgences of our society. Hard times begets strong people and good times begets weak ones.
An unflattering comparison from George F. Kennan comes to mind:
"I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath—in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed"
Canadians have a strong tendency to take our security for granted, and to pay little attention to the outside world. Moreover, the fact that Canada is always under internal tension means that the national government tends to be cautious and slow to act, to preserve national unity - I think of Mackenzie King's formula "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription," postponing commitment to one course of action or the other.
With the rise of China and the relative decline of US power, we're facing a more dangerous and uncertain world, and this has opened a sizable gap between our goals and our capabilities. Closing this gap is going to require setting more modest goals (Canada is not responsible for the well-being of everyone everywhere) and building up our hard and soft power - diplomacy, intelligence, cyber-security, and military.
And of course we need to work with our allies. I think it'd be helpful for Canadians to pay attention to Australia, which has more experience of having to fend for itself after Japan destroyed the Royal Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
I'm not sure I buy the argument that Canadian morale has become weak, incapable of sacrifice in a greater cause. For example, many immigrants to Canada have made tremendous sacrifices for the future of their children. I think the issue is more complacency and inattention.
This oped isn’t up to The Line’s usual standard.
It rehashes the tired trope that strong-jawed militarism is the only true expression of values like honour and duty, and it does so almost entirely via reductive anecdotes drawn (presumably) from the author’s personal experiences in Afghanistan.
There’s a tepid attempt to draw a line to something more substantive than personal anecdotes in support of his condemnation of Canadians' as weak, but it’s by way of a lazy false equivalency argument involving first Churchill and then Kennedy. (It takes a certain confidence to invoke two such paragons of twentieth century statesmanship; our author is nothing if not sure of himself.)
Speaking of the author, there’s nothing in this oped so controversial as to warrant affording “Tommy” the cloak of anonymity, regardless his employer or position, and indeed it smacks as ironic that he’d ask for anonymity given the John Wayne-esque undercurrent of his views.
Which brings me to an anecdote of my own, specifically for Tommy: I recall vividly a night in 2005 when I awoke to the sound of incoming RPGs, and the surreal-ness of scrambling to get my boots on in the pitch dark, while all around me the SF guys I was in-transit with were standing in their boxer shorts loading their Sigs. (The whole time I couldn't stop thinking, why aren't they getting dressed -?; is that some special SF training, do they fight in their underwear?) It was a tense fifteen minutes or so. No one was hurt. The rounds landed near the chapel. The chapel? Yes. The chapel. We were a good hundred yards plus "inside the wire" at KAF.
You see, "inside the wire" is a big deal for Tommy. He goes to great lengths to distinguish what he feels are the honourable, spiritual, morally tough people who operate "outside the wire" from their presumed opposites "inside the wire." It's a straightforward worldview, common in certain circles (i.e.: 'merica!). It lacks nuance, or, more specifically, the self-awareness that often comes only through true personal adversity. I'd go so far as to say it's the same worldview my twelve year old son shows when we watch the Blue Jays lose: the pitcher's trash. Fire him. Full stop.
Fundamentally, and aside from its structural weaknesses, the core problem with this oped is Tommy's credibility: he lacks the courage to use his real name, yet feels he has the moral high ground to ascribe a lack of spirituality and morality to soldiers who came before him, not to mention, it would seem, a general condemnation of Canadians in general, all because, one would deduce, he spent a few weeks, months maybe, "outside the wire" whilst on deployment a few years back where, and this seems to be a real frustration for him, he only got to wash his socks once a week.
What a really well done piece. Such good points. I know more than one person who is an immigrant who says that Canadians haven't fought the fights on their land and don't know how good they have it here OR how hard you have to fight sometimes. Thank you for your perspective.
Like a moth to flame I read and reread this article. It touches on many truisms that reflect on us Canadians. We need to learn to help each other before jumping into international wars.
“They are worthier of our inheritance than we are.”
You hit me hard with that. And you are correct to say it, notwithstanding the sacrifices of my parents and grandparents during WW II. I am realizing that my thoughts of former wartime national pride and sacrifice for the common good are merely personal nostalgia.
How do we build that belief back when there is not a clearly defined “enemy” and no urgent timeline?
Thanks for posting that. I couldn't agree more.
This was hard to read as I remember this country back in the 30's and 40's through my parents' stories. But I'll say one thing - behind all the rah-rah that arrives around July 1st, I've found over the last few years that we have a sad problem with national self-disparagement. It's everywhere. There's no one who despises Canada more than Canadians.
Eye-opening commentary. Something a lot of Canadians need to hear, myself included.
All these years of being told, by governments and media as a whole, how great Canada is only to find out what a sad state of disrepair our institutions are in at the time they are needed most. This is true of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as our public health system as highlighted by this pandemic. And that's not an indictment of the men and women operating on the front lines who are doing the hard work, but of the management within these institutions and our purported "leaders" that direct them.
Where did we go so wrong? Where's the accountability? And, most importantly, how can we fix it?
Why is “The Line” using “they” as a pronoun to describe this author? The irony between that and the subject of the piece is just astonishing.