Via Macleans' Paul Wells, a CPAC hosted debate/discussion on Afghanistan. Participating:

• Chris Alexander, former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan
• Andrew Coyne, national editor, Macleans
• Mercedes Stephenson, military analyst
• Scott Taylor, editor, Esprit de Corps
• Paul Wells, senior columnist, Macleans

I find more apparent truthiness in what former soldier Scott Taylor has to say about the situation than what Chris Alexander, a hawkish former ambassador to the country, now the Conservative candidate for Ajax-Pickering, has to say.

When Alexander continually presses his point that "overwhelming force" is the only sure way to victory, Taylor pushes back and reminds us that western forces already present an overwhelming force against the insurgency today as measured in any dimension whether it be force numbers, technological superiority, training, equipment, or funding. And it's not working.

We failed Afghanistan early on in our involvement. When we entered the country the Taliban had already fled and there was at that time no real insurgency. We didn't prepare the country to stand on its own, and we didn't leave then when we most easily could. Damningly, we allowed our involvement in what was essentially a police action to track down Bin Laden turn into an a full-fledged war of occupation that will stretch out for many years to come.

Well over an hour, worth listening to even if only to see what policy makers you may disagree with are thinking...

Noted today in Juan Cole's informative journal:

If Karzai is so widely suspected of stealing this election, why is there not the same global reaction against him as there was against Ahmadinejad in Iran? Is there an unwritten rule that allies of the West get cut some slack? Juan Cole, Informed Comment

So, in the 2004 study, I went and I led the study, and I paid a guy $200 to smuggle me into Iraq. So I flew to Jordan, and gave him 200 bucks, and he smuggled me in. He had really dark tinted windows. And so he smuggled me across the border—even though they searched the car, somehow we made it—and we went through a checkpoint in Fallujah as we were coming in.

This guy who smuggled me in—he’s a professional smuggler. He’s a tough guy. He’d been in the military 21 years, the U.S. had come, and now he was suddenly unemployed and driving a car. As we drove past Abu Ghraib prison—I’m lying on the floor in the back, and he goes, “Abu Ghraib! Abu Ghraib!” And I sort of looked up, and my driver was up front, and I said, “Do you mean the prison?” And he looked back over his shoulder, and he was weeping.

You know, there are consequences to every American family that’s lost a loved one that dwarf the economic concerns. And the notion that there might be hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families with scars that deep should scare us profoundly, I think. Les Roberts, Associate Professor, Clinical Public Health, Columbia University

The hearing looks into the recent Lancet study which pegs the number of Iraqi deaths at over 650,000 since the start of George W. Bush’s foolhardy, illegal, and pointless war in that country. When the study was released in October it was greeted by howls of protests by both the U.S. and U.K. governments, however as time has past the conclusions reached in the report have only gained additional credibility and currency among the press and many policy makers.

P.S.: Lets not forget: the Iraq war is a war Stephen Harper wanted Canada to support.

During his hour-and-a-half lecture – part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill – Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said. McGill Daily

These are serious charges, made by one reporter few will dismiss off hand.

Personally I think our greatest indignation should be levelled at the murderous, violent, political leaders that sent these soldiers into harms way to fight an unnecessary war, a war that was sold on lies and deception by Bush and his cabinet.

A war Stephen Harper was only too keen for Canada to join.

Pre war intelligence was handled in a very un professional way, analytically. Basic procedures we should follow, were not. We didn’t follow process by: a) saying clearly what we know, how we know it and when we learned it, and then b) saying what we don’t know. That basic process of analysis was not performed.

There are inescapable conclusions to be made.

Its hard to escape the conclusion that several intelligence agencies “stood by”, silently, or approvingly, while leaders said things they knew not to be true while exaggerations and distortions were made.

And its hard to avoid the conclusion that for all of its expertise most intel agencies failed to warn adequately that the occupation of Iraq would be a mistake, would be disastrous in fact.

When will Bush and Cheney be censured by Congress and impeached? Perhaps even tried for war crimes? They should both be locked up.

SPIEGEL: Most of your Ismaili constituency lives in states that cannot be called perfect democracies: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. What makes democracies fail?

Aga Khan: I ask myself every day what we can do to sustain the multiple forms of democracy, to make these forms of government work, whether it is in Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.

SPIEGEL: And what do you believe to be the answer?

Aga Khan: I admit that I live in a mood of frustration. What is the point in these areas of the world of carrying out a referendum in a population that essentially cannot read and write? What is the point in testing a constitution with a population that knows no difference between a presidential regime or a constitutional monarchy? Elections, constitutions—all this is necessary, but not sufficient. I think we have to accept that countries have different histories, different social structures, different needs, so we have to be a great deal more flexible than we have been.

On Iraq:

Aga Khan: I am very, very worried about Iraq. The invasion of Iraq had an impact across the world like nothing before in modern times. The invasion has unleashed every force in the Islamic world, including the relations between the Arabs and non-Arabs and the relationship between the Shia und the Sunni.

SPIEGEL: You mean the war created a new terrorist base and radicalized people?

Aga Khan: Indeed. It mobilized a large number of people across the Islamic world, who before then were not involved, and indeed I think they did not want to be.

SPIEGEL: Do you share the view of the American professor and Islam expert Vali Nasr that the balance of power in the Muslim world is undergoing a decisive shift, that Shiites could become the most influential force from Baghdad to Beirut, that the future of the Middle East will be shaped by wars between different Muslim factions?

Aga Khan: When the invasion of Iraq took place, we were told two things: (that there would be) regime change and democracy. Well, anyone who knew the situation in Iraq, as you did, I did, but what did that mean? That meant a Shia majority; it could not have been otherwise. Anyone who then concludes that the next issue is a Shia majority in Iraq is going to start thinking, What does that mean in the region, what does it mean in the Islamic world, what does it mean in relation to the West? All that was as clear as daylight, you didn’t even have to be a Muslim or a scholar to know that.

Perhaps my favorite exchange:

SPIEGEL: “The West (will stand) against the Rest” wrote Professor Samuel Huntington in his famous book “Clash of Civilizations.” Is such a conflict, such a clash inevitable?

Aga Khan: I prefer to talk about a clash of ignorance. There is so much horrible, damaging, dangerous ignorance.

Its election season, and Bush’s constant mantra of “we will stay the course” isn’t playing well. So this week Bush’s handlers instructed him to tone it down, and make it seem like that his preoccupation with “stay the course” had changed somewhat. Its electioneering.

THE Bush administration has finally been caught in its own language trap.

“That is not a stay-the-course policy,” Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, declared on Monday.

The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll think of an elephant. When Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook” during Watergate, the nation thought of him as a crook.

“Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George,” President Bush told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News a day earlier. New York Times, Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff

Yet, in the comfort of his right wing, lets not think too much, fan club, yesterday Bush said:

This stuff about “stay the course” — stay the course means, we’re going to win. Stay the course does not mean that we’re not going to constantly change. George W. Bush, White House transcript

Bush also demonstrated that he’s out of touch with the here and now:

I know it looks grim right now, but it has looked grim before in this war on terror. It looked grim right after September the 11th. It looked grim when we were so-called bogged down in Afghanistan. George W. Bush, White House transcript

One wonders if an aide even bothers tugging on his sleeve, “uh, Mr. President, we’re bogged down and its really grim in Afghanistan right now.”

Probably not. Why confuse the President with reality?

“Iraq is a pure failure. If the Americans pull out, there is a risk that they will leave a country in civil war. At the same time it doesn’t seem that the United States can help to stabilize the situation by staying there,” former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said in comments published Wednesday.

Blix said Iraq would have been better off if the war had not happened.

“Saddam would still have been sitting in office. OK, that is negative and it would not have been joyful for the Iraqi people. But what we have gotten is undoubtedly worse,” he was quoted as saying.2006–10-25 CBC News Iraqis better off under Saddam, says former weapons inspector

Bush is making a speech right now, repeating one of the latest spin lines ”[the new Iraqi government] is only five months old,” adding that the problems of Iraq today – sectarian violence and an insurgency against U.S. occupation – are directly caused by Saddam Hussein. Typical tactic – blame the “former” government and plead for more time.

Uh, George, not sure if you noticed but Hussein is locked up. His former rule, while terrible, did not start the current civil war. You did.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s wife says in a new biography that President George W. Bush used her husband to sell the war in Iraq. In “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell” by Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post, Alma Powell describes the administration’s treatment of her husband as callous. “They needed him to do it because they knew people would believe him,” Mrs. Powell said.

That may be true and many will believe this, just as many were willing to believe Powell over Bush back in late 2002, early 2003. But he had a choice. Powell, of all people, could have stopped the war drums beating by refusing to support a war that he now says he disagreed with.

Its too late for sympathy for Colin Powell.

This report is not to be dismissed; a NIE is put together for the National Security Council – the overarching security body which the President of the United States himself chairs.

The NIE‘s conclusion is merely common sense. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by “coalition forces” during the so-called liberation of Iraq and its immediate aftermath, and to this day, each and every month thousands of civilians die violently due to the undeclared but raging civil war which is a direct result of Bush’s actions. Each death leaves a trail of anguish, and anger, through much larger family, community and tribal connections.

While the NIE won’t judge the president for his decision to start an illegal, immoral, and unneccessary war, the rest of us can. We can also hold to account Canada’s biggest political booster for the Iraq war, Stephen Harper. (MW: Harper would have sent Canada to war with Iraq; “We support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win,” – Stephen Harper, Wednesday April 2, 2003)

More to the point for Canadians, almost inextricably, Afghanistan appears to be headed to the same unfortunate end as Iraq. Will we merely keep trudging along the same path – the path to failure that the U.S. has already blazed, or will we do something different that leads to a better outcome?