Afghanistan: Dumbing It Down, Surging It Up

I've never been one to buy into the notion that Stephen Harper's Conservatives are the Canadian equivalent of the George W. Bush Republicans. For one thing, the Bush brand of religious moralism, thankfully, hasn't been viable as a foundation for electoral success in Canada for quite some time. For another, Bush's failings, if nothing else, revealed in painful fashion his undeniable humanity, while Harper rarely shows evidence of being carbon-based.

But there is certainly something Bush-like in the way the Harper Conservatives have dragged political discourse in Canada down to its most reptilian level. The most recent case in point was this week's head-slappingly stupid back-and-forth between Defence Minister Peter McKay and members of the opposition about allegations that the Canadian military ignored evidence that detainees in Afghanistan had been tortured after being handed over to Afghan authorities.

To review: these allegations were brought by diplomat Richard Colvin, and - this is crucial - do not include accusations that Canadian soldiers themselves had tortured anyone. The issues Colvin has raised relate to the military's process and policies regarding detainees, not the behaviour of individual soldiers.

This should be pretty clear to any thinking person. But the Tories seem to be betting, or hoping, that Canadians aren't interested in thinking. Thus, they've trotted out the familiar rhetoric about how those who would dare follow up on Colvin's claims are guilty of failing to support our men and women in uniform. "Casting aspersions," to use McKay's words.

That's a clear case of Bush-speak - spouting the idea that anyone who even questions the way the war in Afganistan is being prosecuted is an unpatriotic jerk.

Conservatives have also argued that Colvin is alone in his concerns. But today, news broke that, in fact, the Red Cross had raised the same issues, to the extent that international law enables them. One wonders whether the Conservatives are now prepared to cast aspersions on the behaviour and credibility of that most dastardly of organizations, the International Red Cross.

The point is, the Conservatives have tried to dodge some serious allegations by using numbingly simplistic arguments that could only reasonably convince a population that was either amazingly apathetic or, yes, even dumb. It's up to Canadians to prove otherwise.

Meanwhile, another figure, one far more popular than Harper, has also gone in for a little bit of Bush-iness. President Barack Obama, ever the "on the one hand, on the other hand" thinker, has announced both an increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan - a 30,000-soldier deployment reminiscent of Bush's "surge" in Iraq - and a date for said soldiers to start coming home.

The additional troops may be enough to appease hawkish types who believes more boots and bullets are the keys to victory, while the July, 2011 pullout date is a sop to Obama's lefty supporters who want the Afghan adventure over with. As Fred Kaplan of Slate explains here, neither side is likely to be happy with this apparently muddled compromise. In Kaplan's view, the additional troops won't matter unless they're put to proper use - and figuring out just what that is is a quandary that's plagued the mission since the Taliban was overthrown. And he notes that the 2011 "deadline" is actually quite artificial and unlikely to be enforced unless things change dramatically.

But the point Kaplan makes at the beginning of his article is the one I want to echo here - that Obama, with this announcement, can no longer be seen as the hamstrung inheritor of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unavoidable or not, he's now waded into the fray, and history will accord him a share of the responsibility for the results.

Bush may still bear the bulk of that responsibility. But he must find it nice to have company.

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