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How many times do “peace” negotiations need to literally blow up in this statesman’s face before he finally gets it?

Once again, Afghan President Hamid Karzai attempts to jump-start peace talks with the Taliban.

And for the umpteenth time, the Taliban tell Karzai and the rest of the world they’re not interested in stopping the violence. And they do it in their usual way: guns blazing, mortars firing, suicide bombers bearing down on unarmed civilians.

When is Karzai going to get it? You don’t negotiate with these people. You hunt the Taliban down and kill every one of them you can find until their last shell-shocked comrades wave the white flag.

Canadians have made huge sacrifices in this country. We have the right to insist the government we’re supporting get on board with a plan for total victory. Completely contrary to what Karzai seems to think, anything less is just going to keep foreign troops in Afghanistan even longer.

Do Canadian political opposition parties really want an election over the partisan-engineered detainee debacle?

Be careful what you (publicly) wish for. You might just get it.

Canadians seem to agree: an election over this issue isn’t what they want. Besides, it’s a distraction from what really ought to be the real debate: precisely what will Canada’s role in Afghanistan be going forward from 2011?

We seem to be headed towards an actual debate about Canada’s role in Afghanistan post-2011. Finally!

Conservatives. Liberals. Please stop waiting for the other side to clarify their position on Canada’s role in Afghanistan and just clarify your own? That would be awfully helpful.

The Approximate Level of Political Debate in Canada

Not quite the end of an era. We have picked up that torch. From the Canadian Press:

He said their “fearlessness in war and selflessness in peace first defined our young nation in the eyes of the world.”

“These Canadians did not fight the First World War to expand our dominion. It was not over old hostilities that they battled.

“No, these young people risked their lives so that other nations could live in the same peace and freedom that had taken such deep root in Canada.

“Fierce warriors with tender hearts, rock-ribbed patriots with a sense of international responsibility, these men embodied a greatness that later generations of Canadians have striven to emulate.”

Indeed.

Further Reading: A Vimy Ridge Commemoration

Trying very hard not to look a gift horse in the mouth, here. The Conservatives’ new commitment of 90 trainers for the Afghan National Army and police, bringing out total commitment to nearly 3000 personnel, is certainly welcome news. This is totally consistent with what is being asked for by Afghans, Afghan Canadians, analysts and others who just want to see that country’s positive metrics (personal freedoms, access to health care and education, sparks of economic development) keep going up in the face of a dedicated insurgency.

That said, why are these new trainers going to stick to what pretty well everyone agrees was a limited and fairly arbitrary deadline at the end of 2011? From my post on the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee blog:

The deadline MacKay and others refer to is the end of our formal support for the Canadian battlegroup’s presence in Kandahar (not necessarily, as some believe, a predetermined end for ALL military support for Afghanistan). Yet a scaled down mission more focused on training, consultation with NATO and the Afghan government and perhaps protection of our own humanitarian aid and development assistance personnel, ought not be lumped into the same pile. Deadlines are fine, but they ought to be informed by the actual situation on the ground, not determined on a whim.

An Overview of Canada’s Training Effort in Afghanistan