Yet Another Reason I Will Not Vote Liberal (And Neither Should Anybody Else)

The following article is from the Owen Sound Sun Times...

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Dion distorts Afghan reality

When people talk about Stephane Dion's difficulties they tend to talk about his personal style. But what if there's something more fundamental at work?

What if Dion's failure to catch on, especially in Ontario, relates directly to the mush, nonsense and outright falsehoods that he continues to perpetuate about the Afghan mission?

Consider the latest Liberal position paper on Afghanistan, unveiled in December. Since then Dion and his deputy, Michael Ignatieff, have dropped into Kandahar for a fact-finding mission. But neither man allowed the facts on the ground to interfere with their preferred story line.

As far as these two are concerned, this remains a "war-fighting" or "combat" mission. Their job, as they see it, is to help our misguided military reshape this into an entirely more peaceful operation, in which soldiers do not "proactively" seek out and engage enemy fighters.

This habit of "proactive" action, the Liberal brain trust says, is what makes the Afghan mission distastefully combative, as opposed to peaceful and supportive and righteous.

Let's pursue this notion for a moment.

Most of our casualties in Kandahar have been suffered in IED attacks. A convoy of LAV-III armoured troop carriers rolls down a dirt road, en route to or from a forward operating base or to the Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Kandahar City. It might be a resupply mission; it might be a convoy to an orphanage or a school; it might be a transport of aid workers, journalists, politicians or other civilians; or it might be simply to show a security presence on the roads.

There are only so many roads in Kandahar Province. The insurgents watch these routes and they know the ones our troops use. During the night, they booby-trap them with improvised explosive devices. These are sometimes made of reclaimed Soviet artillery shells, wired together. Or they use more conventional modern explosives, shipped in from Pakistan. The IEDs pack enormous explosive punch. They're rigged with wireless detonators and can be set off using a cellphone signal.

Here's the point: The bulk of our military casualties in Kandahar are not taken in so-called 'combat' operations. There are combat operations under way, to be sure: These are undertaken by a battle-group contingent, usually about 700 strong, within the larger Canadian force. These soldiers go "outside the wire" on missions to find, kill or disrupt insurgents. But they do this primarily for one reason - to prevent them from importing, building and setting off lethal IEDs on Kandahar roadways - because the roadways are the primary means of establishing security and advancing the reconstruction.

In other words, the 'combat' operations so distasteful to Dion and Ignatieff are defensive, from a tactical point of view. They are intended to disrupt insurgents before they kill our soldiers and aid workers, and their Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army allies. The overwhelming focus of all Canada's military efforts in Afghanistan is peace and security support. This has been the case for many months now. It's not a secret.

Prevent our troops from "proactively" seeking out and destroying insurgents? That's another way of saying, stop defending the troops, aid workers and diplomats engaged in training and reconstruction. Stop using your intelligence network to find out where the insurgents are, and stop trying to put them out of business. Instead, roll down the road in your convoy and let them blow you up. Sound insane? It is. But it follows logically from the current Liberal position on Afghanistan. It is worse than irresponsible, it is willfully ignorant. No military in the world would implement such a policy, because to do so would be suicidal. In Kandahar, without force protection, the only option is to stop rebuilding and leave.

Or - and perhaps this is the true Liberal view - we should look to the Americans to provide the muscle? Here's the trouble with that approach: Canadian soldiers are actually better at this than Americans. The American military too often uses blunt force, including air strikes, to impose security. Air strikes, the Liberals acknowledge, are a dangerously scattershot weapon in a counter-insurgency campaign. Most often they simply turn the local people against you.

Canadian soldiers are doing an extraordinary job in Afghanistan under extremely dangerous conditions. The political class in this country owes them a degree of unanimity. If Dion wants to be considered a leader in waiting, he should speak like a leader.

That means, very simply, telling the truth.