What's Worth Dying for in Afghanistan?

I'm sure we've all seen this nastiness from the Taliban:

... if your government continues a reversed policy, the Afghans will be obliged to kill your nationals, in revenge for their brothers, their sisters, and their children ... Afghanistan looks at all actors that are established in the interest of America with an eye of hostility ... Therefore, you have to convince your government to put an end to the occupation of Afghanistan, so that the Afghans are not killed with your hands and so that you are not killed with the hands of the Afghans.

I don't think I even have to look at what any of teh blogging tories are writing to know the sentiment the right wing will be expressing. It's guaranteed to be of the "never surrender, go get 'em" direction.

What's being said, parsed simply word for word, is perfectly reasonable. Stop killing them and they'll stop killing us. Our forces have been demonstrably killing their civilians and so they've begun killing ours. It's evil, but so are the Taliban. I'm only surprised it took this long. Spain got hit a long time ago.

But there's a price in walking away. We know what the Taliban are doing to their own people - especially their women. We knew about this long before September 11, naturally, but the media only directed the general public's attention to it then, so effectively no one cared beforehand.

So what? Should we be fighting for the freedom of the women of Afghanistan?

A long time ago, when the patriotic nonsense reached a fever pitch in late 2001, a reader of my column warned me that my "tune would change when bombs started falling on Ottawa". I pointed out to him, responding to his Rumsfeldian flourishes, that the Taliban had no reason to bomb Canada. We'd never done anything to them. If they were truly in league with Al Qaeda (which wasn't all that clear at the time, given that the Taliban had offered to turn over Bin Laden) the people they had attacked were the military, political and economic leaders of the United States. This had little to do with the purported religious motivations of Al Qaeda or with any issue in regard to those guys up in Canada.

Well, now they have a reason to attack us, don't they? We've sent our soldiers over to their country and our orders have led to the blowing up of a few weddings. Plenty of people here say that they deserve it. After all, they're sheltering the Taliban, aren't they? Well, no, they're living in a ridiculously crude, theocratic dictatorship and so have no choice in the matter.

We, however, are living in a democracy. That comes with a greater responsibility. We, not our soldiers or our military leaders, are responsible for what our nation does. That means that every one of us had better be deciding, right now, what price we are willing to pay to set free the women of Afghanistan.

And if we do decide that we are willing to take that risk, the risk of retaliation, then we had better whip our politicians and military brass in to line and make sure they are delivering - ONLY delivering - freedom to those oppressed people.

We had better make sure that they aren't just there to deliver natural gas and oil to India and Pakistan.

Because none of us are willing to die for that.

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McKay and the Pipeline: First They Ignore You

"First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win." - Mohandas Ghandi

When we started this war against a nation that had never attacked us, and had only dubious connections to a force that had attacked one of our allies (most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia which is also the source of most of their funding), we were told that it was for democracy and freedom and little girls going to school and rainbows and ponies.

Many of us were skeptical. Many of us pointed to repeated attempts by the U.S. government and multinational companies to build oil and natural gas pipelines from the north of Afghanistan, through the country and down to Pakistan and the Arabian Sea.

Recently, CTV published a graph showing that Canadian soldiers were doing a great amount of their dying where a pipeline was proposed to go from Turkmenistan, through Kandahar and on to Pakistan. Apparently this was sufficient that Canada's Defence Minister couldn't sit still. So it was important to say something.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay insisted Wednesday that Canadian troops are not in Afghanistan to guard a new natural gas pipeline being built through the southern part of the country.

He said fears that Canadian troops may end up paying a hefty price to protect the U.S.-backed project from insurgents are unfounded.

Unfounded, huh? Our soldiers dying along the pipeline route and you want to laugh off our fears as unfounded.

But even then, MacKay is forced to add:

“We're going to try and prevent chaos. If the Taliban are attacking certain places in the country or certain projects, then yes we will play a role.”

So, in conclusion, we can safely say that should the Taliban (for some unknown reason) decide to attack the oil pipeline running through their territory (would they even dare?) then, yes, Canadian soldiers would be fighting and dying to protect an oil pipeline.

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Military won't obey Conservatives either

Whom does our military obey?

Ideally, the military is under the control of the people. This is a central, mandatory rule of democracy. We can't have an autocratic military leadership. Either it takes orders from us, or it ceases to exist. Period.

We found out that this isn't quite true, of course, when the military brass disobeyed our desires and sent our soldiers in to Iraq in support of the U.S. military invasion. (It was billed as a training mission, but this is mere camouflage).

One of the themes of Linda McQuaig's "Holding the Bully's Coat" is that the military brass have too much power to decide their own missions. When the Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell, the Liberal government decided to change the purpose of our military to make it the greatest peacekeeping force, and have the premiere peacekeeping training facility, in the world. The military objected and used its "think tanks" to lobby the media and government so it could continue to have all the fancy gadgets it needed to fight a land war across Europe.

One would have thought, with the Harper Conservatives in charge, with Gordon O'Connor and Peter McKay being such big spenders on behalf of the military, that the senior officers would be more obedient.

It turns out that, no, they won't be. Even though "Arctic sovereignty" was a major platform plank for the Conservatives, the military brass don't seem to give a damn:

The report says Canada Command failed to issue a set of orders that had been planned to help disseminate instructions on Operation Nanook.

Apparently our military brass don't understand how this works. If they're going to play the American Empire game, then their goal as a military is to place special importance on oil and natural gas reserves. Thus Iraq. Thus Afghanistan.

Gentlemen, you only get the latest toys if you can make yourselves useful. Peacekeeping doesn't count. It doesn't get us oil and it doesn't get you the latest toys to play with. There's a lot of oil under that Arctic ice. We just have to wait for it to melt.

I'm sure someone will explain it to them shortly and they'll come around. I just think it's neat to see the military disobeying not just the ignorant people, not just the namby-pamby naive Liberals, but also the Conservatives.

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Free Market Pickup Trucks

The next time someone tells you that the free market will take care of everything, you can always point this article where the following statement is made:

Chrysler announced last November that it will slash production this year, but has insisted it will plow[sic] ahead with a redesign of its Dodge Ram pickup and has not adjusted production to deal with the recent slide in the U.S. market.

Are you watching? Are you paying attention? Gas in the United States is predicted to go to $7. Chrysler is scaling back SUV production. But they're still going ahead with a redesign of a pickup truck.

Why, why, why? They're stuck in the mentality of making lots of money off of giant vehicles. If, they surmise, they could only build an even bigger truck with an even larger engine, then they could save the whole business.

That's why we have governments. That's why governments should be making laws, not just to protect the environment, but to protect the auto worker jobs that we've subsidized and nurtured for so long from the stupidity of the monotone droning of the people who run the auto manufacturing companies.

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Who is fit to run my country?

I've never been fond of the Conservative party. If "Conservative" meant preserving our institutions and balancing our finances, I might find common ground with them. But Ernie Eves and Mike Harris never once balanced a budget and meanwhile attempted to destroy one the great democratizers in our country: public education.

The Liberals ought to be a reasonable bunch. They match progressive social ideas against the creationist, anti-gay agenda of the Conservatives. Unfortunately, they've got a bunch of pro-Iraq war ministers. They were the ones who took us in to Afghanistan and if this map is correct, most of our Canadian soldiers are coincidentally dying where the T.A.P.I. pipeline is going.

So I don't trust either the Liberals or the Conservatives. Both are mired in the pro-war, anti-peacekeeping, big business rules model of governing.

Neither do I like Jack Layton. As much as the NDP are speaking about Afghanistan, they aren't willing to speak the truth about the misuse of soldiers there or in Haiti. If you're not going to stand for the principles of peace and non-aggression, why should I trust you? While they are certainly the least of three evils, they don't seem to have the courage of their convictions.

In the meantime, we're just barely starting to work on getting Omar Khadr out of that hellhole at Gitmo. Abdelrazik is still stuck in the Canadian Embassy in the Sudan because we won't let him sign the affidavit that's just down the hall from him. And while we did eventually get Maher Arar returned to us, he was still tortured incessantly, and apparently with a wink and a nod from our government.

None of these parties or leaders deserve our trust. None of them stand up for the things in which we believe. None of deserve to be running our country.

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Mr. McCain goes to Ottawa

So John McCain, the Republican nominee for president of the United States, came to Ottawa and gave a speech to a group of business-minded people at the Economic Club of Ottawa.

After some back-patting, he gets down to the meat of his discussion, things like "the flows of our energy" which must be a reference to the fact that NAFTA prevents us from holding back the flow of our energy south of our border.

And you can't be a Republican without talking about 9/11, although he managed not to talk about the "spectre" or "wake" of 9/11, he did have this to say:

Our governments have made real progress in keeping our borders closed to terrorists and open to trade.

I could equally well argue that this rock keeps tigers away. I'll sell it to you for five dollars (American money accepted at par).

Already, we cooperate in preparing for emergencies-- exchanging information and manpower to coordinate our response to danger.

Yeah. We're not very happy about that. You see, we think (in our strange democratic way) that the people should be aware what sort of agreements their governments are making - especially if they involve certain kinds of military "manpower" from other countries "helping out". That's why the whole SPP thing has everybody nervous. It was bad enough when NAFTA let American companies sue the Canadian government for demanding that a certain carcinogen be removed from gasoline. Now you bring "manpower" in to our country?

At the same time, Canada and America are joined in other vital causes around the world-- from the fight against nuclear proliferation to the fight against global warming, from the fight for justice in Haiti to the fight for democracy in Afghanistan.

Nuclear proliferation? Are we talking the nonexistant WMDs in Iraq or the nonexistant WMDs in Iran? Or should we talking the new ones that have been added to the arsenals of India and Pakistan? Or maybe the ones Israel has or the new ones the U.S. military is designing?

And global warming? Give it a rest. The last I heard from the Bush Administration was that there was nothing we could do about it so everyone should just learn to live with it.

Lastly, Afghanistan is nothing like a democracy. The place is run by a "loya jirga" of rich warlords embezzling funds out of the reconstruction money.

Canada and America are still fighting in defense of Afghanistan-- in the honorable cause of freedom for that long suffering country, and greater security for ourselves.

Defense. What a word. We imposed a government on the country and put a guy who consulted for an American oil company at its head. And why was Afghanistan long-suffering? Because the Americans intentionally drew the Soviets in to Afghanistan and used it to bleed them dry with Osama bin Laden's fanatics. "Lesser of Two Evils" was the argument, I believe.

It happens that I also regard the prison at Guantanamo as a liability in the cause against violent radical extremism,

That's pretty bland for a guy who was actually tortured in a prison camp. His chief complaint about the prison camp seems to be that it isn't effective. One supposes that if he could find a way to make an illegal, immoral, war crime useful he might not oppose it.

Under U.S. and Canadian leadership, the Montreal Protocol began the process of phasing out gases that were destroying our planet's ozone layer. That cap-and-trade system removed the threat of acid rain.

Are you sure? Can you back up that bit about acid rain? Isn't it also true that most of North America's manufacturing actually moved to East Asia? Wouldn't that have more to do with the pollution reduction?

And now McCain (or at least his speech writer) manages to get subtle.

As you all know, Canada is America's largest energy supplier ... We stand much to gain by harmonizing our energy policies, just as have gained by cooperating in trade through NAFTA ... We have established North America as the world's largest economic market

Do you see how that works? Do you feel the glue on your shoes? The quicksand swallowing your country whole? Yes Canada, little pet, you have all that energy and you're so, very, very important. Let's harmonize, hum a little song together. Look how you get to be a part of this big "North America" when you join us. Yes, so powerful, my little pet, with your quaint "humanitarianism" and your "reconstruction". Yes, rest your eyes and listen to the lullaby. Ignore how your military has stopped doing all that "peacekeeping" of which you were so rightfully proud. The operation won't hurt a bit and when you wake up, everything will be all better.

Doesn't he seem to be pushing NAFTA a little hard, especially to the business community? What's he so afraid of? To whom is he really speaking?

If a treaty allows a foreign corporation to sue a government for protecting the health of the nation, it's a bad treaty. If a treaty is used to prevent a country from safeguarding its natural resources, then it's a bad treaty.

If a treaty needs to be filled out in secret and signed against the will of population with hoards of misinformation in the press, then it's definitely a bad treaty.

NAFTA is a bad treaty. But then, I'm only saying that because I believe in democracy (the will of people) as opposed to "democracy" (supporting the Bush Adminstration and its financial backers in bombing and victimizing whomever they want).

Thanks for coming out, Mr. McCain, but we'll all be very glad to see the back of your part come January.

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Deregulation is just Thievery

I'm beginning to feel that I can make it a blanket statement: "If a man comes on the news espousing 'deregulation', that man is a thief."

It's coming out now, in regards to this spike in the price of oil, that the real culprit is simply deregulation. There's a bit from NBC that you can listen to here. They talk a lot of about "single commodity futures" and the various personalities that were involved in making deregulation of oil trading happen.

But the crunch is not the single commodity future. It's not monopolization (as it was in California). It's deregulation. The "Enron Loophole" as it's being called, allows trade in certain energy futures to be conducted without any oversight of the S.E.C.

It doesn't matter, at that point, what the mechanisms are. Whether it's single commodity futures, sub-prime mortgages or Savings and Loan, if someone isn't watching stock brokers and traders with an eagle eye then we're going to have cheating eventually. Eventually, we'll be hosing the general populace. There are a host of ways to cheat and the average person is absolutely helpless to understand any of it.

That's why the S.E.C. was created - to police a complicated financial system using people who new how the game could be gamed. Take away the S.E.C. and you end up with $140 barrel oil when market principles tell us it should be around $80.

My point isn't just about oil though, it's about deregulation. Deregulation is sold as a way to "increase competition" and let the free market take care of everything. Never, ever believe it.

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Do we still need a Carbon Tax?

The idea of the Carbon Tax is to increase the cost of fossil fuels - or at least the burning of fossil fuels - in order to discourage their use. This is a good idea for a number reasons regardless of your stance on anthropogenic global warming. The contribution of fossil fuels to pollution, terrorism, the Bush Administration and all sorts of other evils is well established.

My question is in regards to how much of a carbon tax were we planning on imposing. This idea had its genesis when a barrel of oil was somewhere in the $20 range. Oil just bounced off $140 per barrel. Were we planning on establishing a tax that would make oil 600% more expensive? I find that very difficult to believe, but I never did see any hard numbers from the Carbon Tax people stating where they'd be placing the tax and how much it would have to be.

My impression is that even with a complete shift from corporate and personal income taxes all the way over to a carbon tax, the effective cost of oil would not be more than the current price.

And is the current price enough to change our use of fossil fuels? Just barely.

And does it make sense to still support a carbon tax, given the crushing effect the current price of oil is already having on the lives of lower income people and the economy in general? My suspicion is that introducing a carbon tax now, piling on top of the soaring cost of oil, would prove to be destructively shocking to our way of life.

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Unions and Goodness

Unions have always been a mixed blessing. Historically, unions of workers have given us a lot of the things we hold dear. Reasonable working hours, weekends, benefits, living wages and worker's rights against abuse are all valuable things. When the rights and wages of the lowest people on the ladder are improved, we get two main benefits. One is that the wages of the rest of us go up. The other is that unions shift wealth toward the poorest which helps fuel our mass consumption driven economy as well as improve the education and health possibilities for those with lower incomes.

It's a much more reliable method of improving things than, say, giving massive tax cuts to corporations and wealthy people and hoping that this magically improves the lives of poor people through some unspecified mechanism (usually given the implication-laden title of "trickle down").

But unions have also used their heft to prevent innovation by mechanization, to help workers do their jobs poorly (thus "dealer prep") and to protect workers who are actually lousy at their jobs.

I read this article today and I found it idiotic.

GM is laying off 2600 workers at its truck and SUV plant and Buzz Hargrove, the super powerful union leader, has declared that he won't let it happen.

Mr. Hargrove insisted the U.S. market could not possibly have declined so sharply in such a short period of time that GM would have to break that agreement.

Is he insane? The market for SUVs and trucks could not have declined? Has he seen the price of gasoline? Of course North Americans are finally getting smarter and realizing that the giant vehicles they drive are expensive and irresponsible.

What is the argument here? That no one saw this coming? What you should have been doing, Mr. Union Leader, is negotiating for the past several years, on behalf of your brothers, to have those factories slowly converted over to efficient passenger cars in advance of this very, very obvious impending crisis.

It's that kind of behaviour that frustrates me. There is a place for the Union concept. Democracy simply can not react quickly enough to protect large numbers of workers from large scale abuse - especially with the penchant corporations have shown for trust violations. A Union or Federation can step in and threaten to halt production in order to extract fairness from the corporation rather than having all of the workers uproot their lives to change jobs.

But this is not it. This is not what the Union should be doing - attempting to stave off the unavoidable tide of change. I'm not too worried though, about the plight of these particular workers. I hear there are autoworking jobs elsewhere:

The dramatic shift in U.S. demand benefits Asian-based auto makers, which have dominated the passenger-car side of the business since the 1990s, when Detroit focused the bulk of its product development and investment on SUVs.

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Beating Our Chests

DTK

The DTK, much like the Canadian military, is stuck on the subject of Afghanistan.

General Fraser on the subject of Afghanistan.

It's hard to find polite words to describe what I think of this particular Canadian General. "On his way out, fortunately" only covers some of my feelings.

He claims that (quoting the article) more Canadian soldiers will be killed but the cost in blood must be paid in Afghanistan unless Canadians want to fight Islamic jihadists at home. "I don't want my sons to be doing what I'm doing here on the shores of Canada", he said. Really? Do you really believe that we'll have Islamic radicals landing en masse in Vancouver if we pull our troops out of Afghanistan? Perhaps he's speaking figuratively.

I can't see any reason for the fanatical members of the religion of Islam to hate Canada or Canadians. Well, wait a minute. I can think of one reason: we keep killing hordes of their civilians in Afghanistan. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, then, isn't it? What he really means to say, in that case, is, "We'd better *continue* killing their civilians here, or they'll get their act together and come get us." Doesn't have the same fiery rhetorical punch, though, does it?

How about this line: "Canadians should actually do something very un-Canadian-like and pound their chests and be proud and tell everyone, because all the other nations down here are talking about Canada."

Um, yeah. Look, Brigadier-General David Fraser, I don't know what part of Canada you're from, but we really don't do the "our military is awesome" chest beating thing around here. We're proud of a lot of things, nation wide, and our military certainly has a proud history in many theatres of operations. But we aren't the "chest-beating" types. You may be thinking of some other country - perhaps with envy. But even our Americans neighbours had to fire Jay Garner when he made the same "let's beat our chests" comment with respect to killing lots of people in Iraq.

I can only hope that the same fate awaits David Fraser. The last thing we need in the Canadian military are generals making public statements about how proud they are to kill people. Yes, it's your job. Yes, you should be proud of your work. But you also have to acknowledge that killing people is nothing to beat your chest about and really indicates that somewhere, someone has royally screwed up.

The General is also irked that the twenty million that has been spent on reconstruction and development in Afghanistan is being ignored by the media. Well, General, there's a reason for that. It's because the government has stated that the military mission over the next couple of years is going to cost over three *billion* dollars. It's a relative thing. When destruction outspends construction by two orders of magnitude, it tends to take precedence in the news.

Lastly, to rub it all in, we bring in the bit about how we're really "peacekeeping". No, General, we're building an oil pipeline. Your right wing rhetoric notwithstanding.

If you really wanted to keep peace, the first thing to do is stop making war.

Greg.

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