9/11: Views from the left coast

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

Of course, not everyone is on the same page. Mobilization Against War and Occupation, based out of Vancouver, still spews the stale lies about the Taliban being a popular resistance movement valiantly fighting vampiric foreign devils in NATO uniforms. Osama bin Ladin's old allies in the war on civilization may triumph in the end, but will they remember to thank MAWO on V-Day?

Ah, well. I'm sure CUPE is happy to have their support in their revolutionary struggle against the ruthless oppression of Vancouver City Hall.

Then there's the Republic of East Vancouver. Kevin Potvin's socialist rag rails ceaselessly against a 9/11-inspired Islamophobia - a terrible pattern of prejudice that happily for our local Muslim community does not actually exist. Nenonen, take a pill: Calling Muslim terrorists who kill innocent people (mostly other Muslims) barbaric is not bigoted - it's just the way it is.

Of course, entire communities of useful idiots have mobilized around the banner of Vancouver 9/11 Truth, which includes as an unalterable provision of its constitution the following:

In the case of Sept 11, 2001, there exists an overwhelming body of evidence suggesting that (1) the attacks of that day could not have been carried out without complicity from within the highest levels of the US government, and (2) the official "investigation" was in fact a cover-up, by US authorities and media alike. The truth about 9/11 is not known, not because it is unknowable, but because it has been concealed.

Note to nutbars: Even Noam Chomsky calls the theory of US involvement in 9/11 hogwash.

Way to push the edge of the local lunatic fringe a little further out there, team!

Moving the Afghanistan debate forward

I attended a Thursday night debate in Vancouver's Gastown over Canada's role in Afghanistan. Author and panelist Terry Glavin has already summed up the event, and the larger debate, nicely on his own blog.

It is refreshing to see intelligent people able to really discuss the issues that need to be talked about (ie. what the role of Canada's NATO allies ought to be, how we can conduct ourselves according to international law in a chaotic environment against a fanatical enemy, the opium trade, Pakistan, etc) rather than a watered-down sound-byte without any context (ie. should we stay or should we go). Most of the panel agreed that Canada and the world had to stay involved, since simply pulling out all foreign troops would result in a horrendous civil war.

But I couldn't escape the feeling that the people who most needed to be there, the ones who believe that their own commitment to peace precludes the involvement of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, even if a pullout resulted in hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in that country - did not attend.

It would be nice if we had reached a point in the national discussion where we could all at least agree with Terry Glavin and others on the following: The Taliban were and are as savage, cruel, misogynist, violent and cunning as any of the battalions the enemy has deployed, and the people of Afghanistan continue to suffer their depredations. Canada has been honoured with the privilege and the opportunity to be fighting this war on the side of the Afghan people, at the request of the Afghan people, shoulder to shoulder with the Afghan people.

But not everyone is quite there yet. That's a shame.

The drug war and the media war in Afghanistan

The latest media bomb from Afghanistan about Canadian troops abusing prisoners is not good.

The facts as they've been reported thus far don't seem to merit the attention the incidents are getting. Taliban prisoners who were being "non-compliant," "extremely belligerent" and "totally unco-operative" received injuries including "lacerations on L and R eyebrows; contusions and swelling of both eyes; lacerations on L cheek; lacerations center of forehead; abrasions on chin; multiple contusions on both upper arms, back and chest."

It's not on the same scale as the Somalia Affair. It's barely on the same scale as Mike Tyson's ear-biting incident with Evander Holyfield.

But incidents like this don't lose wars. The new American proposal on opium eradication in Afghanistan might.

Canadians ought to be protesting this strategy in the streets, since it (and our current policy) is putting Canadian soldiers' lives at risk. The current strategy of eradicating poppy crops and going after drug smugglers that fund the Taliban only alienates the vast majority of farmers in Afghanistan and takes military resources away from fighting the main enemy.

Allowing Afghan farmers to grow opium, letting NATO countries or the Afghan government buy the crop and sell it to pharmaceutical companies to process cheap Aspirin for the developing world is a win-win-win situation. This idea has been bandied about for at least six months now. It would win the hearts of people on the ground, bankrupt the Taliban and literally take some of the pain out of living in a developing country.