New Media

Finally, it seems Canadians are winning the battle for hearts and minds on Afghanistan. We’ve already long since won that battle in the country where the actual fighting is taking place (Read the poll numbers Terry Glavin has collected here). Afghans want democracy, don’t want the Taliban and are desperate for international support to help bring these things about. But now it seems even my fellow Canucks are starting to get it. Some signs of progress:

A tireless worker and activist for women’s rights in Afghanistan, CASC member Lauryn Oates is profiled in the Globe and Mail this week as one of the Top 10 To Watch in 2009. An excerpt:

“Canadians seem so focused on the bad, and certainly that is compelling. But for some reason it doesn’t seem to sell to point out all the good things. Just in our small project, we’ve seen incredible changes.”

She said the Afghans she encounters, all ordinary, mostly rural people, are terrified at the prospect of a return to Taliban control.

In the past year, Ms. Oates said, Canadian Women for Women has helped build a new school for girls near Jalalabad from $75,000 raised entirely by Canadian donations.

Contrary to naysayers, Ms. Oates said, ordinary Afghans want international aid and intervention.

“People have this incredible resilience,” she said. “If they’re willing to go on, we have to be behind them. The least we can do is stand by them. This is not about charity or pity. I would never tolerate this in my country.

“I’ve learned how to be a human being there. There is such unbelievable hospitality and kindness, contrasted against such cruelty.”

And in the Georgia Straight blog, soldiers and UBC students Tylere Couture and Sverre Frisch, who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, demolish the foundation of stupidities mouthed by Langara professor Peter Prontzos and offer their own pragmatic assessment. An excerpt from their argument:

These groups have to be confronted with blunt force, the kind of force which requires large quantities of professional, coordinated, and well armed soldiers, not blue helmets under a peacekeeping mandate whose funding is being spent on social projects in Canada. Thus, there is no more a political solution to Afghanistan alone than there is a military solution to Afghanistan alone; the two have to be combined to provide the best possible outcome in Afghanistan.

Canada is in a war against thugs who throw acid in young women heading to school (CNN). It’s a war against psychotic nihilists who use children as remote-controlled suicide bombs (AP). We’re fighting fascists who, when the Taliban owned much of Afghanistan, turned the country into a 5-diamond hotel for international terrorists, while all resources went to subjugating and radicalizing the population.

That part of the world will never have a chance at freedom and a “normal” existence in the community of nations unless we win this fight. I’m glad to see more and more Canadians are on board. If you’d like to be a part of this movement in solidarity with Afghans, here’s your formal invitation to join the cause.

Why bother trying to decipher the motives of the butchers of Mumbai (or worse, go out of our way to actually defend them) when an all-Canadian MacLuhanesque explanation is available? To wit:

* The terrorists targeted Americans and Britons, but were also perfectly willing to slaughter anyone else who happened to be in their way.
* The attackers murdered Jews at a Jewish center that provided services to the local community and tourists
* The terrorists attacked a financial centre of Mumbai
* The killers attacked a hospital maternity ward
* The attack occurred in a country that has overwhelmingly embraced globalization and rejected tribal nationalism

So… why is there any confusion at all about what motivated the killers?

Covenant Zone‘s Vancouver-based bloggers have already done a good job of summing up the trauma of the latest terror attacks in India. I hope more Canadians will extend their solidarity to our brothers overseas.

Indians long ago made their choice about whether to align with the West or the other, mostly less palatable alternatives on offer.

So sad that the enemy will never respect that choice.

The world must stand with India.

The defeated and demented McCain supporters in the USA who still think the rest of their country elected a rabid terrorist must be spitting into their kool-aid. Al Queda’s propaganda machine is comparing USA President-elect Obama to a “house negro” (Globe and Mail) and seemed pretty let down that the new leader has decided not to surrender the free world to a poorly-dressed gang of inbred nihilists.

I question the value of giving anything Al Queda’s propagandists might have to say front-page, 11-o-clock news, Google front-page publicity for any announcement they might want to make. Their rants pretty much follow this magical formula:

1. Declare outrage for the latest Western atrocity, real or imagined… or one that happened 10 years ago. Or 60 years ago. Or 600 years ago. It’s all good, when you’re blowing up the infidels.
2. Be sure to mention that Al Queda is simply reacting to unreasoning Islamophobia… because the pretty-much daily world news reports of Muslims blowing up shoppers, kidnapping reporters, stabbing their own “dishonorable” family members, shooting UN soldiers and declaring jihad on Danish cartoonists are all just war-mongering imaginings of the Zionist-controlled media.
3. Mention a recent newsworthy event so that reporters can be sure you made your statement recently, presumably not too long before you go off to visit your 72 virgin goats.

Here’s hoping Obama can do better than the previous leader of the free world in putting out a more compelling message than the other side.

Six years on from the 9/11 attacks of 2001, Canadians still stand in solidarity with their southern neighbors.