I have not seen anything yet that suggests the Taliban wants to negotiate anything except our withdrawal and their resumption of power. We have already seen how well it has worked out in Swat when the Pakistanis negotiated with them.

If the proponents had a clear idea why we should spend soldiers’ lives and billions of dollars on the mission,. why couldn’t they share that with the rest of us? Instead people who wanted to know the costs, or even how to measure the success of the mission (what were the goals again?) including Layton, were called traitors.

Now we see all of these supposedly sophitisticated opinions about the history of the region (that Harper just got around to reading last week) and which “military historians” are plunking into op-ed newspaper templates across the country to defend Harper’s backtracking were raised by Layton years ago.

Also, I would argue that not liking a party’s position on a given issue does not necessarily make it a failed policy.

You provide no serious evidence to support your thoughts.

In fact, you beg the question.

I hope you’ll forgive me for treating such question-begging and non-sequiturs accordingly.

http://tinyurl.com/yt3rhl

From same-sex marriage to pricing carbon, from the war in Afghanistan to the tar sands, from tightening banking regulations to the need for a massive fiscal package, Jack Layton and the NDP have been out in front on any number issues that they have been derided for at first only to have public opinion and the facts vindicate them in the end.

So who is it exactly who has held the “basic assumption that everything Jack Layton says is ridiculous”? I suspect it’s only the Lib/Con centric media corps lost in their Ottawa bubble because it certainly hasn’t been Canadians.

Similar figures could be produced on so-called “missile defence” and the illegal invasion of Iraq–supported by both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff (the latter having once described Canadians who were publicly opposed to the illegal invasion as supporters of Saddam Hussein). Again, on these questions, the NDP was much more in step with Canadian public opinion than were the Liberals or the Conservatives.

Your reference to the NDP’s level of support at election time, while factually correct, is irrelevant because to assume that fewer than 20% of people support the NDP’s views on military/defence matters because fewer than 20% vote for them at election time is to commit the classic logical fallacy of oversimplification.

Finally, the implication that the media simply respond to–rather than shape–what gets called “mainstream views” will simply not bear scrutiny. (The idea of a “liberal” bias in the media–if by that is meant “moderately social democratic”–is simply risible.) Take one the of the gentlemen I mention above, Michael Ignatieff–one of the principal goals of his public writing, including in supposedly “liberal” organs like the NYT, has been to sideline or marginalize actual left (let alone radical) opinion.

Sorry, kc, but I don’t agree with your analysis of media commentary, nor with your argument about the NDP’s being in or out of step with the general public on matters of military/defence matters.

On a wide range of military- and defence-related issues over the last number of years (from ‘missile defence,’ to Iraq to Afghanistan), the NDP has been right and, as the Jurist mentions above, in line with public opinion as well.

Conservatives and Liberals–often in cooperation not only with each other but also with certain media ‘gatekeepers’–have been wrong.

When New Democrats formally called for a dramatic change of course in Afghanistan at their 2006 convention in Quebec City–after hearing from Malalai Joya, former Afghan parliamentarian–Canadian fatalities were about 1/4 of what they are today. But Jack Layton didn’t have to be “psychic” to see where things were going: he only had to have the courage to face the facts on the ground.

When he said, after the convention that “”There is no sign that it [the war] is making the Taliban weaker or the world safer,” he was right, and the numbers have borne him out: 75 or more Canadian soldiers killed since then, thousands more Afghans killed, tens of thousands displaced from their homes. Next to such human misery, I hesitate even to mention the financial cost.

And now, today, the insurgency is stronger than ever, and some politicians are beginning to admit the obvious–the war cannot be won and some form of negotiated settlement will be necessary.

“Cowardly,” “White Flags,” “Bad for morale,” “Comforting the enemy”–these were the kinds of criticisms of Layton and the NDP that showed up in the Canadian press after the convention, as a quick search of the Canadian Newsstand database reveals.

Meanwhile in Parliament, Liberals and Conservatives in 2006 and 2007, criticized the NDP for its position against the war: Keith Martin said the BQ and NDP were wrongly encouraging doubts among the population; Peter MacKay openly mocked Dawn Black; and Michael Ignatieff implied the NDP didn’t take human rights seriously enough (ignoring the obvious ironies, of course).

The truth is that the NDP and Layton weren’t psychic in their criticisms of the Afghanistan War: they just applied to the question the faculty Liberals, Conservatives and other war-supporters have refused to apply for years now: informed rational thought, applied with principle.

Haha, funny and true. If the NDP wasn’t right so often, the media could give them a free ride like their Liberal and Conservative allies.

English people feel welcome in Dublin and Irish people feel welcome in London.

Not only that, for the most part, the English and Irish today get along just fine. English people feel welcome in Dublin and Irish people feel welcome in Dublin.

I don’t think that’s what Olaf asserted exactly, although knowing him, he’ll gladly let that prevail. I don’t hate conservatives, not profoundly, anyway. I just find them hard to love.

Harper has never even remotely suggested negotiating with the Taliban in any way, shape, or form. This is not the same as surrender, a la Taliban Jack.

Only on a thoroughly warped definition of “the public”. Actual public opinion has been skeptical about the combat mission for years – but thanks to the fact that the Cons, Libs and mainstream media have generally teamed up on the opposite side, the NDP has been one of the few voices actually in line with Canadians at large.