The war in Afghanistan
General Sullivan send this: "Regardless of who is setting the policy ie Bush, Rumsfield, Armitage, Rice, Powell or Wolfowitz,
this Canadian article sums up the reasons for the HOW and WHY we conducted the war in Afghanistan the way we did". Then
follows a long article from the Ottawa Citizen, of which here is the opening passage:
In a sense, Afghanistan has been a "classic" colonial war. The United States has been sparing of its own troops, instead taking sides and choosing local allies as its proxies, while using its own incontestable technological superiority to help them quickly win. The resemblance to the way the British took India in the 18th and 19th centuries-one tribal patch or princely state at a time-ends there. The Americans have no long term plans to rule the place, and are happy to let anyone else send "peacekeepers".
This is what the Europeans and Canadians turn out to be good for, this time around. We have the equipment, the manpower, and the budgets, to do sentry duties. (As a retired Canadian officer told me after the federal budget was tabled Monday, "It's all very well for the Americans to spend a fortune on defence, they have to defend the free world from terrorism. We only have to defend our own smugness.")
My comment: In fact, peace-keeping is a very dangerous job. There is a linguistic confusion here. "Federal" presumably refers to Canada, not the US. In English and I suppose Canadian English, "to table" means to approve, in US English to postpone. I gather that the Canadian officer was complaining that the Canadian military budget was not as big as he would have liked.
Ronald Hilton - 2/18/02
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