How much longer in Libya?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 2:49 PM - 5 Comments

At the outset of the Libyan mission, the Prime Minister ventured a prediction of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s impending fate.

“He simply will not last very long,” Harper said. “I think that is the basis on which we’re moving forward. If I am being frank here, that is probably more understood than spoken aloud. But I just said it aloud.”

That was more than four months ago. Yesterday, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs used the term “stalemate” to describe the situation. Continue…

End of the U.S. empire?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, July 25, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 32 Comments

John Moore/Getty Images

It took a truck driver from Manchester, N.H., to put the matter succinctly. “Well, I support the U.S. military,” Greg Salts told the arrayed candidates at the Republican presidential debate in the Granite state last month. “But frankly, we’re in debt up to our eyeballs.” Isn’t it time to close some U.S. bases abroad, he asked. A retired navy man named John Brown also wanted to know, “Osama bin Laden is dead. We’ve been in Afghanistan for 10 years. Isn’t it time to bring our combat troops home from Afghanistan?”

Not so long ago, such questions would have come from Democrats and would have been met with charges of disloyalty and taunts of “cutting-and-running” from Republicans. No longer. The Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, said in that debate, “We’ve learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation.”And the Tea Party darling, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, said the U.S. should never have intervened in Libya. “First of all, we were not attacked. We were not threatened with attack. There was no vital national interest,” she declared. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman went even further, calling for a smaller U.S. footprint abroad. “The deployments are mighty expensive,” he said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “We’re going to have to look at the map at some point and reset our level of engagement and our deployments in some corners of the world.”

Welcome to the new U.S. reality. As discussions of national security morph into a debate over spending and debt in a nation still limping out of the Great Recession, questions are being raised about just how big a military America can afford—and what happens if the global cop walks off the job? And they are coming not just from Democrats, whose President is drastically drawing down troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, but also from Republicans who for a decade had rallied around a hawkish view of America’s role in the world.

To appreciate how far the mood has shifted, consider the November 2007 Republican presidential debate in St. Petersburg, Fla., where candidates such as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani sought to out-hawk one another and were pressed by voters on whether they would “make a permanent long-term military commitment to the people of Iraq?” Giuliani urged Americans to “stay on the offence” and not to put their “head in the sand,” like their opponents. “You’ve got a Democratic debate and not a single one of those Democratic candidates used the word ‘Islamic terrorism,’ ” he declared. That phrase was used four times in the 2007 GOP debate. In the latest Republican contest, it was not uttered at all.

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Gadhafi pushes NATO to the brink

By Jody White - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 3:27 PM - 2 Comments

In the David versus Goliath match being played out in the North African desert, the most advanced warplanes of the world’s richest countries pound Moammar Gadhafi’s third-rate army every time it pops its head over the parapet. Libya’s oil-based economy has come to a standstill and its fuel supplies have been choked off. But for all its satellite intelligence and laser-guided bombs, NATO (and its ragtag rebel allies) are unable—or unwilling—to deliver the coup de grâce necessary to put a definitive end to Gadhafi’s 41-year rule.

So while NATO jets scream over Tripoli, diplomats in Europe and North Africa quietly search for a negotiated end to the four month-old conflict. The stakes are high, and middle ground is hard to come by. “Brother Leader” Gadhafi has vowed never to leave Libya, even if it requires martyrdom in the name of Arab nationalism. Meanwhile, NATO is an alliance without a clear raison d’être since the fall of the Soviet Union and a defeat at the hands of such a feeble enemy could bring about its undoing.

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‘Canada’s help is required’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:38 PM - 20 Comments

John Baird explains why we’re bombing Libya.

That’s what took me to Libya late last month. I wanted to meet senior members of the NTC for myself. I must say they and their organization impressed me.

That is not to say that anything to do with Libya in the coming weeks or months will be easy. No one should be under any false illusions of that. Nor is the NTC likely to be a perfect interim government once Gaddafi is gone. They will likely make mistakes. All governments do from time to time. But their intentions are good. I honestly believe that.

Still fighting over Alexander the Great

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

He lived and died more than 2,300 years ago, but still, few can rally Greek and Macedonian nationalists more than Alexander the Great—or Alexander the Macedonian, or, to be safe, simply Alexander.

Alexander ruled Macedon, a small kingdom on the northeastern corner of the Greek peninsula, and from there founded an empire that stretched from North Africa to the Indus River. Macedon existed on the fringes of the classical Greek world, and its system of government differed from those of city states such as Athens to the south. Yet the culture and language that Alexander spread as far as Afghanistan was undoubtedly Hellenistic, or Greek.

His heritage, however, is today claimed by both Greece and Macedonia, neighbours who also dispute Macedon’s linguistic patrimony. Athens has blocked Macedonia’s bid to join both the European Union and NATO, arguing the country’s name implies a claim on Greece’s northern region of the same name. Now Macedonia has unveiled a massive bronze statue of Alexander in the centre of Skopje, the capital. The 12-m-high figure atop a 10-m pedestal depicts a horseman, sword drawn, iconic locks swept back in the wind. Its official name, “Warrior on a Horse,” doesn’t fool anyone, and probably isn’t meant to.

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Canada’s next mission

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 5 Comments

Xinhua News Agency/eyevine/Redux

Headquarters for Canada’s new training mission in Afghanistan smells of fresh-cut wood and is located around the corner from a gymnasium with wall murals that proclaim “Freedom over tyranny” and “Afghanistan rising from the ashes.” The art is obscured by new construction.

Located at Camp Phoenix, a NATO base in Kabul, this is where the Canadian Forces will run the new phase of Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan. The current combat mission in Kandahar province ends in July, but Ottawa has committed to keep 950 trainers in the country until 2014 as part of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan. Most will be based in Kabul, with smaller contingents, including police and medical advisers, in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif.

Col. Peter Dawe, a combat veteran of the war in Kandahar and former commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, is deputy commander of the Canadian mission. Because its commander, Canadian Maj.-Gen. Michael Day, is also in charge of the entire army component of the multinational NATO training mission, Dawe will be running day-to-day operations for the Canadians. “It’s not to dismiss for a second what we’ve been doing for 10 years down south. It was an incredible accomplishment, and I think it’s set the conditions for the surge and the successes that are being achieved down there,” says Dawe. “But this is where the campaign will be won or lost.”

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Defence spending: does the party in power spell the difference?

By John Geddes - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 7:22 PM - 22 Comments

With Canada pulling its fighting troops out of Kandahar this month, there’s growing interest in whether the government’s enthusiasm for defence spending might wane once the heat of combat cools. Over at the National Post, for example, Mercedes Stephenson warns against “nickel and diming ourselves into another decade of darkness.”

That’s a reference to former chief of defence staff Rick Hiller’s evocative characterization of the supposedly dismal era of military spending restraint, imposed by Jean Chrétien’s deficit-fighting Liberal government, which is often said to have brought the Armed Forces such a low point in the 1990s and early in this century.

Voices on the right tend to see the Liberals as inherently unsympathetic to the military, while viewing the Conservatives as naturally inclined to spend more freely on the Forces. But can this pattern be seen in the historical data?

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Canada’s top soldier wants NATO's big job

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, is reportedly gunning for NATO’s top military position. According to sources within the alliance, Natynczyk hopes to become Chairman of the Military Committee, which becomes available in September. In this position, Natynczyk would be the principal military advisor to NATO’s Secretary General, but would need the permission of the prime minister, since Canada would have to pay for his salary, staff and security personnel.  Each Chairman of the Military Committee holds the position for three years. It is currently held by Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, an Italian. The last Canadian to hold the job was General Raymond Henault in 2008. 

National Post

Canada’s top soldier wants NATO’s big job

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, is reportedly gunning for NATO’s top military position. According to sources within the alliance, Natynczyk hopes to become Chairman of the Military Committee, which becomes available in September. In this position, Natynczyk would be the principal military advisor to NATO’s Secretary General, but would need the permission of the prime minister, since Canada would have to pay for his salary, staff and security personnel.  Each Chairman of the Military Committee holds the position for three years. It is currently held by Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, an Italian. The last Canadian to hold the job was General Raymond Henault in 2008. 

National Post

The dissenting Ms. May

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 10:46 AM - 60 Comments

A day after denying unanimous consent to move along a crime bill, Elizabeth May becomes the lone dissenting vote on the motion to extend Canada’s involvement in the Libya mission.

In my case, on behalf of the Green Party and my constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands, I must say no, but I see we have a role as peacekeepers. I believe passionately that we return to our role as peacekeepers as a nation that is so well known around the world for peacekeeping. We have a role within NATO to be the nation that stands and says, enough of the aerial bombardment, now is the time to send in the diplomats. Let us work with colleagues who have some chance of reaching the illegitimate government of Mr. Gadhafi. Let us work with colleagues in the African Union, the Arab League and the United Nations, and be the country that says we do not continue to give a blank cheque to a mission that has no exit strategy.

Standing firm in Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

CPL Tina Gillies/DND/MDN

The staccato chattering sound of machine-gun fire drifts over Canada’s forward operating base at Masum Ghar in Afghanistan’s Panjwaii district shortly after dusk. The prolonged bursts are answered by other angry shots until, after a couple of minutes, the echoes fade away and silence returns. “That’s probably Wilson killing somebody,” says a soldier relaxing on a makeshift bench outside the metal shipping containers where many of them sleep on stacked bunks. Wilson is an American patrol base a few kilometres north of Masum Ghar, across the Arghandab River in Zhari district.

At dawn, from the same direction, the muffled crunch of a distant explosion sends a mushrooming plume of dust skyward above the green cultivated fields and rough mud compounds that spread from Masum Ghar beyond the river. It might have been an improvised explosive device, discovered and intentionally triggered, or perhaps something deadlier. No gunfire follows the blast, only birdsong and the puttering hum of a man coaxing a motorbike along a rutted dirt path.

“It’s the Americans at Wilson,” says another soldier. “They get more contact than we do. It’s closer to the highway, and now, with the prison break, there are 400 more Taliban there.”

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The other war we're in

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 13, 2011 at 9:09 AM - 27 Comments

Ahead of Tuesday’s debate, Campbell Clark reviews the state of the mission in Libya.

This was not the mission Canadian MPs agreed to join when they unanimously voted to back a deployment this spring. Then, the goal was to erect a no-fly zone, shielding Libyan civilians from attacks by Moammar Gadhafi’s air force. Canada would provide a frigate, six fighters, and surveillance and refuelling planes. But in three months, the NATO effort has escalated into a fierce bombing campaign that have left Tripoli buildings in rubble and centred on ousting the country’s long-time ruler…

While the NATO assault has elicited criticism in other countries, politicians in Canada have yet to grapple in public debate with the fundamental questions about the mission’s shifting goals, and the options for achieving them: Should we be in a war of bombing Libya into regime change? And how will it end if NATO’s air war doesn’t drive Col. Gadhafi from power?

The Prime Minister first announced the mission on March 18. The House debated the mission a few days later and the motion that was unanimously adopted afterwards read as follows. Continue…

U.S. Defense Secretary warns NATO of looming irrelevance

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 12:41 PM - 8 Comments

NATO is facing “the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance,” outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned in his farewell speech to the NATO Council on Friday. Gates specifically called out those countries “who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership… but don’t want to share the risks and costs.” Only five of the 28 members of the alliance spend the agreed-upon target of two per cent of GDP on defence, Gates pointed out, and missions like those in Afghanistan and Libya have exposed a shortage of resources.

CNN

Good news, bad news: June 2-9, 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 1 Comment

Good News

Wrongfully convicted in her son's death, Tammy Marquardt is freed. (Lucas Leniuk/Toronto Star)

Boots on the ground

Canada’s combat tour in Afghanistan is entering its final few weeks, but the military is already preparing for its next deployment—wherever it may be. Months after being forced out of their secret staging base in Dubai because of a diplomatic spat, the Canadian Forces have reportedly reached deals to open new bases in Germany and Jamaica, and are in talks with Senegal, South Korea, Kenya and Singapore. As Defence Minister Peter MacKay said, Canada has become a “go-to nation” when it comes to responding to natural disasters and other NATO missions—requiring a much bigger bootprint on foreign soil.

A revamped battle plan

Forty years after Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” a new report has confirmed what police, prosecutors—and traffickers—have long known: we’re losing. Released by a consortium of world leaders, including Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, the report says it’s time to start treating drug abuse as a public health problem, not a criminal one, and consider legalizing certain substances to undercut criminal gangs. The war on drugs has cost billions of dollars and countless lives. But, to borrow a phrase, admitting the old strategy is broken is the first step to recovery.

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Oil and water: Libya's potent mixture

By Ruth Sherlock - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 7 Comments

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

As the Libyan revolution appears to be mired in deadlock in the east, a guerrilla war has sprung up in the deep desert of the south. Home to Libya’s strategic oil and water reserves, this is the crucial forgotten front of the war.

The beautiful expanse of desert around the oasis town of Jalu, held by rebels, lies 225 km south of the front line between Brega and Ajdabiya. Here, the sand dunes have the eerie, silent calm of an abandoned landscape. But on the long, exposed road through the region—the only route north—there are the dangers of an unseen enemy. The area is ringed by forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who have reoccupied many of the nearby oil fields after rebel forces initially seized them. Travelling in small groups, in pickups that hide them from NATO strikes, they launch sabotage and kidnap missions on the roads around the rebel town.

“If you travel in the area there is no guarantee that you won’t meet a Gadhafi man. They roam, maybe 300 cars around, waiting to attack,” says Jalu resident Khaled Qais, 22. Qais was recently stopped on the road by Gadhafi soldiers. “I told them I support Gadhafi, and I raised the green flag. I was terrified.” The soldiers didn’t believe him. He and his three friends were dragged from their car, beaten and thrown into a Gadhafi prison. “I was captured for 21 days,” says Qais.

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'All options are back on the table'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 16, 2011 at 4:17 PM - 5 Comments

According to a leaked cable from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, the Harper government was considering its options in Afghanistan as far back as March 2009.

At a cabinet meeting in March, ministers “agreed that ‘all options are back on the table’ with respect to Canada’s military role in Afghanistan after 2011,” the March 17 cable marked secret says. The cable — among a batch of Canada-related U.S. diplomatic cables released to CBC News from whistleblower website WikiLeaks — quotes extensively from conversations held with a senior adviser from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

“It will take time for the government’s public rhetoric to catch up to this ‘new reality,’ however, requiring some ‘patience’ on the part of allies,” the senior adviser apparently told U.S. officials on March 16.

See previously: ‘The government would look at the possibility’

'A good working relationship'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 33 Comments

Another leaked cable sheds light on our pitched battle with the Russians for the Arctic.

One cable drafted by U.S. diplomats in Ottawa portrays Mr. Harper as dismissing the need for a military response to Russia over the Arctic. It includes an account from a Canadian official of a January, 2010, meeting between Mr. Harper and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in which the PM said NATO has no role in the Arctic.

“According to PM Harper, Canada has a good working relationship with Russia with respect to the Arctic, and a NATO presence could backfire by exacerbating tensions,” the cable states. “He commented that there is no likelihood of Arctic states going to war, but that some non-Arctic members favoured a NATO role in the Arctic because it would afford them influence in an area where ‘they don’t belong.’ ”

'The government would look at the possibility'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 6:08 PM - 7 Comments

Around the same time Mr. Harper said publicly that the post-2011 mission in Afghanistan would be a “strictly civilian mission” that would not require “any kind of military presence, other than the odd guard guarding an embassy,” he apparently indicated to the NATO secretary general privately that he was open to the possibility of a training mission.

NATO’s secretary general pressed Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay in a series of meetings in Ottawa in January 2010 to join its newly established training mission command in Kabul. Anders Fogh Rasmussen “sought Canadian commitment to a post-2011 role in training Afghan security forces as part of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan,” said a cable released by WikiLeaks on Thursday. The Jan. 20, 2010, summary of the discussion from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa noted that “Harper promised that the government would look at the possibility.”

Five months later, the Foreign Affairs Minister dismissed any interest in a post-2011 training mission.

Five months after that, the Prime Minister confirmed that Canada would be pursuing a post-2011 training mission.

Is Libya another Iraq?

By Michael Petrou - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 4 Comments

Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images

A coalition of mostly Western nations, including Canada, has entered a war with loosely defined objectives and an uncertain end.
Following much-delayed approval from the United Nations Security Council for a no-fly zone and the use of “all necessary measures” short of occupation to protect civilians, France, Britain and the United States launched a barrage of air and cruise missile strikes against Libyan air defences, armour and command centres last weekend. Canadian CF-18 fighters flew their first sorties over Libya Monday. Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s expansive Bab al-Aziziya complex in Tripoli was attacked Sunday night—suggesting, despite conflicting statements from nations fighting in Libya, that Gadhafi himself is a target.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs Monday that the Security Council resolution “does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gadhafi’s removal from power by military means.” Britain’s chief of defence staff, Gen. David Richards, said targeting Gadhafi was “not allowed under the UN resolution.” But Defence Secretary Liam Fox said striking at the Libyan leader was “potentially a possibility.”

U.S. President Barack Obama, who for weeks appeared reluctant to involve American forces in the Libyan war, said the mission’s goals centred on protecting civilians rather than regime change. Asked if these goals might be achieved with Gadhafi still in power, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said, “That’s certainly potentially one outcome.” Speaking in Chile Monday, Obama said Gadhafi “needs to go,” but suggested this might be accomplished using “a wide range of tools” besides military action.

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The rank amateurs trying to bring down Gadhafi

By Ruth Sherlock in Ras Lanuf - Monday, March 14, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Out of the clear blue sky came the ominous roar of the incoming bomber. At the chaotic checkpoint in Ras Lanuf, rebel fighters who took the strategic oil port city last Friday wildly fired anti-aircraft guns. Cars blared their horns and skidded away. Men flung themselves behind sand dunes, or vehicles loaded with ammunition. Seconds later, the plane dropped its bomb. It exploded in the sand, 30 m from the road.

Moments before, the rebels had been decrying the disaster that was befalling them 50 km west. There, Col. Moammar Gadhafi had unleashed the full fury of his military arsenal, with warplanes and ground troops repelling the westward rebel advance at Bin Jawad, the last town on the coastal highway before the Libyan leader’s birthplace of Sirte. Rebel forces were hit with Katyusha rockets and airborne missiles. It being too dangerous to even rescue their fallen comrades, fighters were reduced to firing bursts of rifle and anti-aircraft fire into the air in helpless defiance.

For the rebels who rose up against Gadhafi on Feb. 15, the past week provided sobering moments. After gains that saw them taking control of much of the eastern part of Libya, their drive westward toward Tripoli, and uprisings in towns around the Libyan capital, stalled in the face of the colonel’s air power, as forces loyal to the regime launched counterattacks to try to regain strategic assets. In the town of Zawiyah, just 50 km east of Tripoli, taken by the rebels on Feb. 27, Gadhafi launched a devastating assault complete with some 50 tanks. Witnesses spoke of indiscriminate killing, with women and children mowed down in the streets.

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The first step is denial

By Erica Alini - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 11:13 AM - 4 Comments

Robin Hammond/PANOS;

Since taking office 2½ years ago, Russia’s drug czar Viktor Ivanov has been shuttling between Moscow, the United States and Europe, to make the case that NATO’s counter-narcotics approach in Afghanistan is “misguided” and the cause of a 40-fold increase in opium production that threatens to turn Russia into a nation of heroin addicts. Just over a year ago, Ivanov, director of Russia’s Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics, was in Washington telling an audience that the war in Afghanistan created the “perfect conditions for the rise of a global narco-state,” of which Russia is the “main victim.”

But Russian NGOs and health professionals are questioning whether Afghanistan is their country’s main drug problem, or just the government’s No. 1 scapegoat. Anya Sarang, president of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, which advocates harm-reduction policies, says that most of the addicts her organization sees throughout the country have switched from heroin to homemade substances synthesized from opium-based pharmaceuticals like codeine tablets. She says these rough toxic mixes are behind the rise among narcotics users of thrombosis, a condition in which a clot develops in blood vessels, and osteonecrosis, a disease that leads to the breakdown of bones.

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What was that about hearts and minds?

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 16 Comments

Erik de Castro/Reuters

At a summit in Lisbon last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed an agreement with NATO and UN officials that would see international forces begin to hand over responsibility for control of the country to Afghan authorities in 2014. While observers are already wondering whether that timeline is realistic, the real question is whether by 2014 there will anything left of Afghanistan worth handing over.

Since the middle of 2009, the coalition’s strategy in Afghanistan has been based on the counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine that is credited with finally extricating the U.S. from Iraq. Unlike conventional warfare, where the goal is to defeat the army militarily, the idea behind COIN is that you protect the population, provide a bubble of stability and security in which governance and the rule of law can operate. This will win “hearts and minds” and prevent the insurgency from getting any sympathetic traction amongst the people.

When Barack Obama approved the surge of 30,000 additional troops in the country last December, the ambition was to get enough troops walking around in the villages protecting the population while quickly training the Afghan security forces. Obama extracted a promise from Gen. David Petraeus that the strategy would show clear progress within a year, so that they could begin bringing American soldiers home by the middle of 2011.

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Pinky swear

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 11:08 AM - 19 Comments

Lawrence Cannon assures that Canada will withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

“We might be pressured obviously, but I think the prime minister has made this perfectly clear. March of 2014 is when we will be leaving,” Cannon said at a news conference.

Given the precedent in this regard, this almost certainly means we’ll be there until 2017.

The least we could do

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 52 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

Watching Peter MacKay at the press conference confirming that Canadian troops would indeed remain in Afghanistan past the 2011 deadline, albeit in a “classroom” role, I was reminded how much of human behaviour is governed by the furniture.

He was, after all, behind a desk, in a briefing room. There were microphones, and flags, and reporters seated in rows. We are familiar with such scenes, and we associate them with official statements of some seriousness. And so everyone felt obliged to act as if there were some reason to believe a word of what MacKay was saying: as if there were some more-than-accidental likelihood of the policy the government chooses to pursue in future corresponding to the policy being announced today.

Why? Why would we attach any credibility to a formal announcement of policy by a minister of national defence with troops in the field? Just because he said it? There is some context here, after all. The policy the minister was announcing is the diametric opposite of the one that every minister in this government, including the Prime Minister, had sworn blood oaths to for the last two years: that every last soldier, apart from the odd embassy guard, would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by July 2011—no ifs, ands, or training missions. Which policy was itself the diametric opposite to that to which the government had previously committed itself, namely that we would not “cut and run” from Afghanistan before the job was done, that such missions could not be subject to “arbitrary timetables.”

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