Canada's Kandahar adventure is effectively finished. Canadian soldiers will continue to die in Afghanistan's south until the mission reaches its official end, 19 months from now. But even Prime Minister Stephen Harper has acknowledged that our efforts there can't be sustained.
The reasons are twofold and intertwined. First, NATO's war against Afghan insurgents is not succeeding. Second, there is not enough political support for that war here at home.
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punditman says: Not unlike Iraq, we have a situation in Afghanistan where occupation forces simply can not sustain a losing strategy. It is not working. The politicians know this. Otherwise, they would not be talking about ending Canada's current combat mission and reverting back to a mainly defensive, reconstructive role. The Harper government is asking young men and women to continue to die for a cause that has no actual end-game strategy.
For the next 19 months, they want Canadian troops to continue to search and destroy and possibly be killed, even though they know that this is probably making matters worse. But hey, it pleases their neo-con buddies in Washington, and they will use this falsified patriotism to try to win the next election! And that's all that really matters.
