Disconnect

I pride myself on being difficult to pigeonhole politically; my limited but deeply-felt disagreements with the NDP and my even more limited but similarly deeply-felt agreements with the Conservatives help convince me that I'm able to consider issues on their merits rather than solely on my bedfellow preferences.

But sometimes I still feel ill at ease when I lift my head from the pillow to see who's next to me, and at no time is that more true than when other side of the bed is being occupied by an Edmonton Sun opinion writer.

I've written about my discomfort with my Afghanistan position before (most recently here), and I don't have much more to say. I'm painfully aware that I'm commenting from an privileged position (there are people - Afghanis and foreigners - dying over there, none of whom are me), and I'm not at all sure that history will vindicate my position. I'm also frustrated by the sparse data available; indeed, the only evidence Mr. Den Tandt cites in support of his assertion that Canadian troops are improving the country are the words of an American general whose job requires him to say nice things about i. the mission, and ii. Canada's role in it.

But I continue to believe that the west had a legitimate national security rationale for violating Afghanistan's sovereignty in 2001 (apart from any humanitarian rationale that may have existed). And the evidence that I've seen - and I cast a pretty wide net in my search for evidence, in diversity if not in volume - continues to support the belief that Canada is doing some good there, even if "victory" is a concept that has lost any meaning that it may once have had. Is it possible that the cost of the mission, in lives, isn't worth the good that it's doing? Sure. And I'm more than prepared to accept that elements of the mission were misconceived, and that it's hitting the wrong combination of development, reconstruction, and security, or that its resources just aren't sufficient to do a proper job of any of those.

But what about those women? A couple of years ago, I heard Sima Samar, then the recently-resigned Deputy President and Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan (part of my aforementioned net-casting). The crowd at the talk was decidedly lefty. And Samar did not disappoint, with a litany of criticisms of the west in its approach to Afghanistan. But in response to questioner after questioner seeking her endorsement for the concept of an immediate withdrawal, she emphatically endorsed a continued Canadian military presence. She was obviously frustrated by the state of women's rights in Afghanistan (and I've not seen much since to suggest that it's gotten any better), but her message was clear: things would get a whole lot worse of the international community ended its military occupation.

My tentative support for the mission is in its seventh year. Is my position the correct one? I don't know. But I'm confident that an awful lot of the positions opposed to mine are the incorrect ones, even if that confidence puts me on the same page as Sun columnists.