The Questions We Should Ask About
Canada’s Afghanistan Mission
October 12, 2006
Last week, a national poll found public support is rising
for the Canadian Forces mission to Afghanistan. Whatever
the results, I don’t put much faith into the polls
conducted so far concerning the mission.
Many Canadians are having difficulty grasping why our
military men and women are in Afghanistan, what they are
accomplishing and why 40 soldiers have made the ultimate
sacrifice.
I have previously admitted my responsibility as an elected
representative and as a government MP to better communicate
the mission’s objectives. However, if the pollsters
want to better gauge Canadians’ opinions on the
mission, they should ask more informative questions.
Under the category of “I couldn’t have said
it better myself”, I would like to share the controversial
yet thought-provoking polling suggestions of retired Major-General
Lewis Mackenzie. Here are the questions he proposes pollsters
ask Canadians:
- Do you support letting the Taliban return to power
in Afghanistan? If your answer is “yes”, please
go on to the next questions.
- Do you support beheading teachers in front of their
class if they permit even one girl to attend?
- Do you support denying all Afghan women the right to
visit a doctor, as there are no female doctors permitted
by the Taliban and male doctors are not allowed to examine
female patients?
- Do you support the government's right to execute women
by blowing out their brains in front of thousands of cheering
onlookers in a football stadium because the victims were
seen in the company of men other than their husbands?
- Do you support the actions of a suicide bomber who,
just before he blows himself up beside elderly Muslims
waiting to obtain papers for a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage
to Mecca, picks up a child and presses her against his
explosive vest before detonating himself?
Pollsters and politicians alike need to remind Canadians
of these realities. Afghanistan does not want to return
to a Taliban rule that promotes these atrocities and it
does not want to resume exporting terrorism around the
world. Afghanistan’s first democratically-elected
leader, President Hamid Karzai, came to Canada last month
and implored us to not abandon the Afghan people and allow
the Taliban to take root once again.
If we did, what would happen to the women who now make
up 28 percent of Afghan’s elected parliament? What
would happen to the roughly two million girls who are
now attending school? What would happen to the 4.7 million
Afghan refugees who have been able to return home thanks
to the stability and security our Canadian soldiers help
to provide?
The most convincing arguments in support of the mission
to Afghanistan have come from our soldiers who have seen
the plight of the Afghan people first-hand and from the
families of those Canadian soldiers who have died trying
to help them.
Our most recent fallen soldier, Trooper Mark Wilson,
a father of two young boys, relayed his sentiments about
the Afghan mission in a letter he sent to his brother,
“I can’t believe they are paying me to do
this. I would do it for free.”
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