Reality check

Canadians were hit hard this summer with a convergence of news stories that amounted to a major reality check, forcing some to reconsider long held assumptions about the war in Afghanistan.

As the Canadian military death toll reached 151, Canadians were alerted to the anger, disbelief and disappointment among western supporters in Kandahar over Canada’s decision to bring home its troops by next summer.

“People are very upset about this. Why leave us?” said Jalani Hamayoun, the former deputy governor of Kandahar and a candidate in parliamentary elections in September.

“It is important for western countries not to repeat the problems of the past. You left us in 1990 and we ended up giving our problems to the world. If you leave Afghanistan, and especially Kandahar, again, there will be more problems for us and for the world. Nobody from Canada asked anyone in Kandahar City or in the remote areas about what Canada should do next year,” Hamayoun said. “The only ones who decided this were Canadians. Yet the ones most affected by this decision are Afghans.”

Then came the Wikileaks, an Afghan diary of more than 91,000 documents that first and foremost revealed the abiding treachery of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence service, the ISI, which has helped the Taliban kill Allied troops in Afghanistan while at the same time soliciting Allied help to battle the Taliban in Pakistan.



The leaks also provided evidence that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won — certainly not with the constraints now in place — and that Afghan leadership is awash in corruption.

With Pakistan offering the Taliban sanctuary next door and the government in Kabul staying in office in order to access Allied aid, the Afghan war is looking more and more like Vietnam, the lessons of which have still not been learned. That is, that liberal platitudes lack the spiritual strength needed to win wars and secure freedom.

In the case of Afghanistan, when NATO is gone, there will be a violent reckoning for those who have sided with the enemy and

little hope for any Afghan who ever dreamed of freedom. “We pray for the Canadians to change their mind and stay,” said a 26-year-old Afghan in Kandahar. “We pray that they don’t forget us.”

Encouraging anarchy

Businesses were damaged and cars set alight. And now the lawsuits against the Canadian authorities have begun. And two months on, no one has yet taken responsibility for the G20 rioting in Toronto.

Who’s to blame? After years of capitulating to the forces of political correctness and relying on “niceness” to see us through every difficulty, we the Canadian people have laid the groundwork for exactly the sort of anarchy witnessed in June.

Indeed, Toronto’s police and civic leaders set the stage for the summit riots by advertising their self-paralyzing tendencies well ahead of time.

In 2009, they signalled the city’s willingness to be victimized by masses of Tamil Tigers’ terrorist supporters who flouted the law by blocking public thoroughfares. Ordinary citizens had to get out of the way, police failed to act and there were no consequences for city managers who aided the lawlessness. Torontonians said little, and adversaries took note.

The story was much the same three years earlier when visitors to an international fireworks competition in Montreal’s Old Port were taken aback by Hezbollah supporters who took over an area near Place Jacques-Cartier in a solidarity moment with terrorists “back home.” According to reports, two anxious police considered the matter, and fled.

Should anyone be surprised then that another boatload of Tamil migrants has arrived on Canadian shores apparently expecting a free ticket to the nation’s bounty and none too shy about expressing their chagrin at learning they would be incarcerated for a period of time?

Does this not reflect a growing impression that in Canada there is nothing to fear from the authorities, be they municipal, provincial or federal, when it comes to ignoring the law?

Such betrayal by authorities of citizens and the rule of law spells licence, particularly among the violence-prone who face non-existent consequences.

Meanwhile, “nice” Canadians remain passive as opinion-making elites encourage the underlying confusion that brings this collapse of will and enforcement, all in the name of unspecified “human rights.”

Whether in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto or Kabul, Canadians now appear unable to distinguish between our enemies and ourselves, dangerously confused about the threats we face, our worth as a society and even our fundamental duty to defend ourselves.

No wonder anarchists believe they have a “right” to create any mischief or mayhem in Canada that suits their purposes.