Rosie Dimanno: Of yellow ribbons, soldiers, baby-killers

Of yellow ribbons, soldiers, baby-killers
Jun 23, 2007 04:30 AM
Rosie DiManno
City Columnist, Toronto Star

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The Liberals, who sent Canadian troops to Afghanistan in the first place, are now anxious to distance themselves from the obligations, or muddle, they fomented, again purely for reasons of domestic politics. They live by polls and lack the courage of their earlier convictions.

Soldiers have courage. Afghans have courage, on both sides of their insurrectionist divide.

Unlike Canadians, Afghans don't wallow in death, no doubt because they've had three decades of war from within and without. They've also had first-hand experience of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, only the most fanatical eager to resurrect that past, albeit a significant minority are thinking the devil they knew might be preferable to endless violence and siege.

But every time a Canadian soldier is killed, the doubts of a conflicted nation spasm and the same chorus of opportunists kick up their indignation, whipping that pale rider on a horse. Yet these are, to a large extent, the same people who don't really give a toss about soldiers or their families and view dimly the whole military ethos, as if service in uniform were an anachronism.

Canadian soldiers hate them.

At Kandahar airfield, when Layton's face appears on the TV screen, soldiers jeer. When anti-war rallies are broadcast, or reported in newspapers that arrive weeks late, they grow quiet and downcast, feel their willingness to sacrifice all is being undermined and exploited.

Of course, a society has the right to debate and ultimately determine, through elected representatives, whether to accept war. The military serves the government and the government serves the people. It's not for generals to decide whether Canada fights in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

But by the same token, a soldier's death doesn't belong to all of us collectively either, except in the abstract or voyeuristically. Ownership of that grief rests solely with loved ones and colleagues, families and mates. And opposition to the Afghan mission doesn't emanate from them.

The Afghan story isn't exclusively and proprietarily about Canadian soldiers who have died. It's about why the troops are there, what they're hoping to accomplish, their efforts to secure a benighted country and extend the rule of law, the urgency of denying Al Qaeda the strategic foothold they once enjoyed. It's about promises made at the very top of international leadership, by the United Nations and NATO, by custodians of redevelopment who said to Afghanistan: We won't abandon you again.

Nearly six years after 9/11 – plotted in Afghanistan – the country is far from achieving what donor nations and military custodians had hoped. Reconstruction has been laggardly, corruption flourishes.

But those who demand quantifiable benchmarks to justify continued intervention also ignore salient evidence, all that's been achieved by empowering traditional district councils, micro-credit funding of small businesses, schools built and reopened, vital thoroughfares constructed, irrigation systems repaired, national troops trained and mentored and Afghan currency stabilized. Those stories are under-reported because combat deaths and poppy production are so much more dramatic and easier to tell.

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