Contradictions of the Righteous

(Private Jon Drew of the Canadian Army in Afghanistan , courtesy CTV News)

During my two weeks as a blogger slacker I noted the rise in domestic opposition to the Canadian Forces deployment in Kandahar region of Afghanistan. I am only surprised that it took this long for the dreary left wing of the political spectrum in Canada to raise public objections to what we are doing there.

It certainly seems that Prime Minister Harper's (excellent) decision to make his first foreign tour a visit to the troops and reconstruction teams in Operation Archer (the military code name for the deployment) has raised a clamour from the left.

At first I was a bit confused by the reasons proffered for their opposition. I mean, the Afghanistan deployment has the full blessing of the holy and sacred United Nations and is being carried out through the multilateral action of NATO. One would have thought the imprimatur of the UN Security Council would be sufficient for the UN true believers who constantly prattle on about the fact that the font of all evil, George Bush, did not have the Security Council's permission to depose Saddam Hussein.

The same people who sanctimoniously criticised the United Stated for "abandoning" Afghanistan after the Soviet army fled the scene in 1988 are now hacking away at those governments (like ours) who are standing by her this time in the aftermath of the defeat of the Taliban Islamic regime of terror.

The same folks who claim that there is no justification for the Americans and British, et al, being in Iraq because there was no nexus between Saddam and Osama (an assertion growing more shaky by the day) are silent on the clear, proven, connection between the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar and the leader of Al Qaida, Weird Beard the Cave Dweller.

Those NDP, BLOC Quebecios and Liberal parliamentarians who were silent until now about previous Canadian deployments to Afghanistan under Liberal Prime Ministers Chretien and Martin and about Mr. Martin's decision to increase our current role and numbers in the Kandahar deployment, are clanging bells and beating drums over the absolute need, lest democracy perish, of holding a House of Commons debate on the matter, now that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in power.

Our starry-eyed socialist latte sippers who are so appalled that Canadian soldiers are being sent to the field as honest-to-goodness combat troops instead of peacekeepers, uttered nary a peep when our military was shooting bad guys in Bosnia (which was not a UN operation). Peacekeeping, of course, is not a rational option when there is no truce, the adversary is our sworn enemy, and when he/she is a terrorist determined to enslave, convert or murder whomever stands in the way of their fanatical, hegemonic, theocratic, religious nightmare.

One could continue, but it is very wearing and the evening grows late. Besides, in the end, their opposition to our presence in Kandahar is really just about the great hatred they hold for George W. Bush and all things American. All their huffing and puffing really emerges from that singularly wretched fact.