Canadian Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan (also British and Russian experience) (October 1, 2006)
Hansard Highlights from Sept. 18, 2006
Canadian Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan
Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Superior North, Lib.) acknowledged the death of Anthony Boneca, a Canadian soldier killed in action in Afghanistan on July 9, 2006, who “…made the supreme sacrifice for his country.”
And I guess a lot of these M.P.’s want more sacrifice from soldiers. But I don’t want them to sacrifice their lives or suffer at all. And especially not in order to kill foreign individuals who did not initiate aggression against any of us, or to support foreign governments, or to stir up new foreign enemies.
If you have evidence against some Afghanis for committing the crime on 9/11, then declare them outlaws and try to arrest them. Other than that, it’s just another rotting empire the Canadian government is attempting to shore up.
I would like to withdraw my funding from the Afghanistan mission but I assume the government doesn’t allow me to do that. So I withdraw my sanction from it by not keeping silent about it.
British and Russian Experience in Afghanistan
Reason to hope Canadians don’t repeat history in Afghanistan
Edmonton Journal, July 31 ’06
In 1880, British soldiers looked out from their defences at Kandahar across the desolate landscape of southern Afghanistan, a landscape that concealed a multitude of enemies.
A century later, Soviet troops were having the same experience.
Now it is the turn of Canadian troops in Kandahar to confront both the pitiless terrain and a determined enemy hoping to drive them out of Afghanistan.
This is a helpful article because it explains what motivated the British. It leaves out the covert U.S. intervention that occurred pre-Soviet invasion, but that’s another story.
However, the title and conclusion of the piece are completely the opposite of the historical pattern of the same interventionist mistakes. Underestimating the resistance. Overestimating the value of what Western society has to offer. Overestimating Western power. Underestimating the value of human life. Worshipping force as a means to achieve desirable ends (even if those are genuine) rather than persuasion and peaceful influences. These are all the same mistakes that people who insist on warfare and empire and interference will always make.
Frankly, centuries of warfare and outside interference has made Afghanistan what it is. Leave them alone and let them try to find peace. Ordinary people in all cultures want peace and benefit economically from peace.
Maybe the government should first fix the Canadian criminal justice system for instance before they even start preaching to the world about anything at all, let alone trying to fix Afghanistan. We should also start negotiations with the U.S. and Europe to end the drug war so as to end the high profits from selling heroin (Afghanistan grows poppies).
Mr. Robert Bouchard (Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, BQ):
Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois deplores the deaths of four soldiers killed this morning [Sept. 18] in a suicide bombing that hit a NATO patrol in Kandahar province.
This tragedy reminds us yet again of the danger and the difficult conditions to which soldiers and diplomats working to establish peace, social justice and democracy in Afghanistan are exposed. I hope that their sacrifices will not have been in vain…
Let’s stop the tragedy and the vain efforts to “establish peace” through violence.