The Mound of Sound

Great news out of Afghanistan. The Afghan National Army is well ahead of schedule and expects to reach a force level of 80,000 next year. From Reuters:

Afghanistan has accelerated training for army recruits and expects to have a combat-ready force of 80,000 troops by early 2009, well ahead of initial targets, the country’s defence minister said on Friday.

Abdul Rahim Wardak told Reuters the effort was part of a strategy to take over the brunt of fighting from NATO troops as soon as possible. But he repeated Afghanistan still needed help to create a viable air force before taking over full leadership.

“It will save lives for our friends and allies,” Wardak said in an interview after talks with NATO counterparts in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Wardak said U.S.-backed army training was being stepped up with the aim of turning out 4,000 soldiers a month compared with 2,000 late last year, enabling Afghanistan to surpass an internationally agreed 2006 target of 70,000 troops by end-2010.

“We hope by April, May this year we will achieve that number and we are hopeful we will reach 80,000 by March, April of 2009,” Wardak said.

Training of Afghan forces was already ahead of target but Wardak’s announcement that the effort would be further accelerated underlined the push to off-load more of the combat burden from the 43,000-strong NATO-led force.”

So, there we go, we can leave. It’s over. The Afghans are going to have plenty of troops, high-quality US trained soldiers, well more than we estimated. The Afghan army is up in the high fives while we’re told the insurgents remain in the low fours. Isn’t it time then for the “we’ll stand down” promise? This is certainly what we were promised by Rick Hillier and his retired cheerleader, Lewis MacKenzie.

Maybe, though, we haven’t been told the truth by Hillier or the government of the day. Maybe while the Afghan army has been standing up, so has the Taliban. Maybe the highly trained Afghan army isn’t as capable or reliable as it should be. Who knows? It would be nice if Lardo would trust us enough to keep us informed of what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan but he doesn’t and he won’t.

Maybe he’s tired of watching his bank account dwindle. Maybe he’s just seen the writing on the wall. Maybe his friends got to him. Whatever the motivation, it’s reported that Mitt Romney is abandoning his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

That pretty much leaves John McCain the anointed choice of the Republican side even as Movement Conservatives boil in their own juices.

“I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney said in remarks prepared for his appearance and released by his campaign.

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win,” the statement says. “And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Stephane Dion claims Harper has promised a “civilized debate” on Canada’s role in Afghanistan followed by a vote somewhere near the end of March.

A civilized debate. How can you debate anything unless you have clear, convincing facts? When it comes to “the mission,” what are the facts?

I think it would be fatal to the debate to allow it to be informed by the Manley report. There is so much solid information that exposes the report’s many errors and shortcomings. Why doesn’t the Commons committee start gathering its own evidence on the state of today’s Afghanistan?

Call the UN’s drug czar to testify. Let’s get a clear picture of Afghanistan’s opium economy and let’s have a look at the key players – the Taliban to be sure but also the ties to the Karzai government. Let’s get an assessment on Afghanistan’s slide into feudal fundamentalism with a central government that exists at the suffrance of a warlord power base. Let’s have a look at what’s going on across the border in Pakistan – in the Northwest Frontier and the autonomous Tribal Lands and Islamabad itself. Let’s receive expert (i.e. non-Manley) evidence on the true state of NATO’s hapless, disjointed and counterproductive military efforts, how the Taliban was allowed to become resurgent and whether anything is going to end that threat to Kabul. Let’s hear about the core principles of counterinsurgency warfare and how few of them are being met in the type of war we’re waging over there.

Once we get this sort of honest, meaningful and accurate information then parliament can hold a civilized debate. Then our debate will be manifest to Brussels and Washington. Then Canadians will have an opportunity to decide what they think we ought to do. If we’re going to have an election on this issue, our government owes us that much.

The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime has just released its winter estimates for Afghanistan’s opium poppy crop and it looks as though the drug barons/warlords/insurgents/government are in for another bountiful year, perhaps even surpassing last year’s record production.

It’s not clear just yet whether opium cultivation is as extensive as last year and the UN says the good news is that the rate of increase in production is tapering off. However Afghan farmers are making up for that by huge increases in marijuana production.

Well it looks like our Furious Leader has found an issue he’s prepared to hang an election on – Afghanistan. Word has it he’s going to toss out a confidence motion calling for an extension of Canada’s Afghan mission beyond 2009.

Sounds to me like Stephane Dion had better pull his thumb out and find a clear position he can explain to the Canadian public, a position they can support. I’m betting that’s what Harpo believes Dion can’t do and he plans to make the election a referendum on the Liberal leader. The way everything else is going for Lardo this is probably his best bet.

The first thing Dion needs to do is to ensure that his policy is viable. As Hillier has said we can’t stay in Kandahar and not fight. It’s bandit country and, unless Dion can get the Taliban to go away, they’ll take over if we don’t fight to defend our turf. Can’t be any simpler.

Reconstruction? Sure, just as soon as we establish an adequate level of security. Oops, there we go again, fighting.

No, I think this is a “take it or leave it” question and the Libs are going to have to support the Cons or fall into line with the Dippers. I’m pretty sure that’s what Harpo’s thinking too.

Maybe it’s time to reassess the whole business. Let’s not get snowed by the Manley panel report. It’s simply not reality based. An extra thousand soldiers and a few helicopters isn’t going to secure Kandahar province, not even close. That’s a political sop, nothing more, and Manley ought to be ashamed for playing Harper’s stooge.

We could begin by asking what “success” in Afghanistan would look like and then contrast that with conditions on the ground to see what needs to be done to get there if that’s even possible. What do we want out of this? What’s our bottom line?

If our goal is simply to be a dutiful member of NATO, success or failure against the Taliban is irrelevant, the corrupt and chaotic central government is irrelevant, the Afghan security services that alienate the people in the countryside are irrelevant, the looming unrest and threats from the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are irrelevant. Just by staying there, we succeed. Afghanistan may utterly fail but that doesn’t matter.

If the Canadian people want a “goal oriented” approach then our participation in the NATO/ISAF mission becomes less significant and all the irrelevant considerations above suddenly become very meaningful. Suddenly it becomes relevant that we’re not winning against the Taliban. It becomes relevant that the central government is corrupt and unviable. It becomes relevant that the Afghan security services are actually undermining our best efforts to build support among the Afghan people for their central government. The descent into violence and destabilizing religious extremism across the border in Pakistan becomes relevant.

So what we need is to engage the voting public on these issues, to make them see the fundamental flaws in the Afghan mission. The Canadian people have been kept in the dark about this little war and that’s understandable – the less they know the better it is for Lardo. The same goes for Hillier. Then there’s John Manley. Manley has done Harpo an enormous favour, a shield that Stevie can hide behind and a club he can use to bludgeon Dion.

Working around Harpo, Hillier and Manley will be tough. It’ll require a clear message and solid communication with the voting public and I’m not sure the Libs can manage either challenge. Their message is muddled and indecisive and, as for a communicator, well it’s Stephane Dion.

Correct me if I’m wrong. Please, set me straight. I’ve not been following the US presidential nomination campaigns all that closely but, that said, I haven’t noticed one candidate on either side come out and say they would move to restrict the unconstitutionally-seized powers established by George w. Bush.

Governing by fiat, recess appointment, signing statements and outright defiance of the constitution has become so “second nature” with the Bush/Cheney tyranny that many, on both sides of the aisle, urged impeachment for the sake of restoring, unequivocally the constitutional balance of checks and powers. It wasn’t so much for the sake of punishing Bush or Cheney as for upholding the constitution by prevailing on the legislative and judicial branches to rein in the executive.

An executive that cannot be removed by confidence vote and forced to defend its actions in front of the electorate surely must be otherwise restrained lest the nation itself turn into a quasi-dictatorship. And yet I haven’t seen that this issue has achieved any prominence in the current campaigns.

Am I wrong? Please advise.

If Norman Spector really slammed anything or anyone in his testimony before the Commons ethics committee it was the National Post which he singled out for spiking the Mulroney/Schreiber story at the outset. He suggested that there was a cozy relationship between the Spot and Mulroney who appointed Conrad Black to the Privy Council and who subsequently intervened on behalf of David Milgard, a pet cause of the Aspers. Strangely enough, not a word of this made it into the Spot’s reportage of Spector’s testimony.

Spector had promised to drop bombshells in his testimony before the committee but his ordinance turned out to be a dud. He mainly expressed concerns in his capacity as a citizen and not very much in the way of hard detail about the dealings of the Schreiber and the former P.M.

One interesting remark from Spector’s opening remarks came in a reference to the late Frank Moores, head of the lobby firm GCI, which represented Airbus on the Air Canada deal and which, according to Schreiber, received $20-million in bribe money.

Here are a few opening remarks by Spector: A proper post will follow

Can you imagine a newspaper like the National Post killing a story like this?

Fred Doucet extraordinary access to Mulroney

Imagine if this committee hearing was held in 2001 when Frank Moores was still alive?

Documents a “more prosaic” source of cash. Explains why Mulroney was willing to cater to the rich and powerful – obsessed with how he would get by after leaving office.

I have grave doubts that Mr. Harper wants “airbus answers” in contrast to Mr. Martin’s response to the sponsorship scandal?

Harvey Andre?

RCMP botched Airbus investigation.

Story suppressed by remarkably large segment of the media.

Subpoena bank and tax records.

Start pressing government to offer Schreiber a deal to spill the beans.