Time Immortal

I have little to say that hasn’t been said already, and then with more eloquence, so I will just leave it at this: to all Canadian war veterans, young and old, who have ever taken up arms in a just cause, I offer my deep and abiding thanks.

There haven’t been too many soldiers that I’ve known personally, I have to admit — the only family member I can think of who has served has been my uncle Bob (God rest him). But he, those he fought with, and all Canadian soldiers past, present, and future have my gratitude not only on this day, but every day of every year.

I did not know this, but the math seems solid.

$1,500 per household over a decade works out to $150 per household per year. Assuming three people per household, that’s $50 per Canadian per year. That works out to about 13.7¢ per Canadian per day to run the Afghan mission.

Just to give you a bit of perspective, World Vision — certainly a noble-minded and worthwhile charity — asks for about ten times that daily amount to sponsor a single child.

And what are Canadians getting for that miniscule investment…?

Useful information to keep on hand for the next time one of my Leftward relatives starts to bemoan the cost of the Canadian Forces mission in Afghanistan.

I can’t seem to find mention of this incredible operation anywhere in the Canadian news services. Perhaps I am just missing it, but somehow…well, somehow, I doubt that I am. Our news media here in Canada seems intent on reporting only those things which either make the Canadian Forces look bad, or those things which inspire a defeatist sentiment in the general Canadian public.

Something genuinely heroic, like Canadian participation in Operation Oqab Tsuka — a top-secret, five-day mission to deliver a massive turbine (too large to be taken by air) to the Kaiaki Dam in Afghanistan.

The mission’s goal was to drag a second turbine up treacherous roads, and put it online. The operation was of a magnitude large enough to warrant its own name: Operation Oqab Tsuka: Pashto for “Eagle’s Summit.” Some of the younger soldiers, when they heard about the plan to drive a giant convoy straight through Taliban territory, had another name for it: “Operation Suicide.”

The mission was led by British troops, paid for by the Americans, and assisted by the Australian, Danish, Afghan, and Canadian forces in the region. Its entire route passed through Taliban-held territory, and a part of its task involved the largest mine-clearing operation conducted since the Second World War — this was necessary to get the 200-vehicle convoy the mission was charged with escorting safely through passes and hill country.

The loss of any one of the seven critical trailers would constitute mission failure. A second mission of equal magnitude could be attempted, but it would probably have to wait until spring. This mission was one of the largest logistics operations during the entire war and certainly one of the most important civil affairs efforts. Although it was top secret at the time, news of mission failure would quickly spread. In terms of propaganda value, failure would be a major victory for the enemy.

The Canadians have an excellent reputation among British and American forces, and so the Canucks were tasked to clear the road for the convoy. This was a chain of many links: if the Canadians failed, the mission would fail.

In the end, the Canadians did their job well, under fire or threat of fire the whole time. The convoy got through, enduring numerous attacks from the Taliban the whole way. One soldiers — apparently from Britain — suffered a crushed pelvis when a vehicle fell on him during a work break, but the mission sustained no combat casualties. In return, upwards of 200 Taliban were killed. The turbine was delivered, and over a million Afghan citizens will have electrical power made available to them when it begins operation after its installation.

But you’d never know our boys (and girls) were one vital link in the chain of events that made such a thing possible, at least not from reading Canadian news.

Fortunately, Michael Yon is in Afghanistan to document history as it unfolds.

Interesting footnote: the PsyOps team working with the mission decided to hang banners with verses from the Koran on the sides of many of the convoy vehicles, in the hopes that the presence of the words of the (false!) Prophet would deter the Taliban forces from attacking said vehicles directly. Rather clever.

Because, you know, it wasn’t enough when they whored themselves out to the abortion lobby. Now they’ve filed a lawsuit that could endanger Canada’s mission in Afghanistan…which, apparently, is being seriously considered by a judge.

A top military commander says in a sworn affidavit Canadian troops would have to quit fighting the Taliban if they could not hand prisoners over to Afghan authorities.

Listing a long series of possible embarrassments and defeats, Brigadier-General Andre Deschamps outlined what he says would be the dire consequences, including losing the war, should a Federal Court judge rule in favour of a request by human-rights groups to issue an injunction banning the transfer of detainees to Afghan prisons because of the risk of torture or abuse.

…

Gen. Deschamps sketches a variety scenarios. Taliban fighters might surrender in droves, he warns, if they knew Canada would release them because it could not either hold them or transfer them. “The insurgents could attack us with impunity knowing that if they fail to win an engagement they would simply have to surrender and wait for release to resume operations,” he said in a sworn affidavit.

…

Gen. Deschamps says such an injunction would result in Canadian Forces retreating to secure bases because they “would not be able to capture individuals who pose a threat to the Canadian Forces, our allies or the [International Security Assistance Force] mission.”

Think about how absurd this injunction is for a moment: Canadian forces are in Afghanistan to assist the legitimate Afghani government in policing its own state against Taliban insurgency. The Afghani government has every legal right to demand that prisoners be turned over to them merely and solely on that basis. Until and unless Canadian troops switch to an occupying role within Afghanistan, and thus assume the capability to mete out justice on those taken prisoner during battles — subverting the authority of the aforementioned legitimate government of Afghanistan in the process — they are merely acting in an agentic role to achieve the goals of the Afghani regime.

So it’s not really alarmist to suggest that, were this lawsuit by Amnesty International to succeed, Canada’s mission in Afghanistan would be horribly impaired by the necessary modification to our troops’ rules of engagement…so much so, in fact, that it would likely become impossible for Canada to remain an effective combatant in Afghanistan.

Either that, or the rules of engagement could simply be changed to “take no prisoners” and left at that. But somehow I think Amnesty International would view that as a counterproductive result. I know for a fact I would — the last thing I want to see Canadian troops involved in is the murder of captured enemy combatants.

Fact is, the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan do not have the necessary infrastructure to support the taking and processing of prisoners of war. Even more than that, though, they really don’t have the right to take their own prisoners, because they’re not in Afghanistan serving Canadian interests; they are there to help the Afghani regime secure its state. Almost by definition, any Taliban prisoners taken by Canadian troops should be turned over to Afghanistan for detainment and processing, if in fact we a) recognize and b) wish to promote the legitimate government of that nation and its right to administer law and order within its borders.

I like Drew’s comment at Ace of Spades: “A lot of these so called “human rights” groups aren�t so much anti-Western as they are just plain pro-terrorist.”. I’d even go one further and suggest that there’s an undercurrent of genuine racism (not that lamey-fakey kind that progressives so often accuse other people of) in the Amnesty lawsuit. Implicit in their thinking must certainly be the idea that the Afghani people are simply too unsophistacated to handle anything so onerous as the administration of law and order within the boundaries of their own nation-state.