Going after Taliban was a mistake, sez former general

A lot of Americans (and Canadians) think that the Canadian Armed Forces kind of let the side down by withdrawing their half-dozen aging CF-18s from the US-led mission against ISIS. When it comes to fighting Islamic terrorism (their argument goes) the Canucks will hold your coat until your nose starts to bleed. This is not true. Let me set the record straight.

True, the government of Jean Chrétien declined to join in Dubya's invasion of Iraq, presumably because they thought it was a huge mistake but (being Canadian) wewre too polite to say more than "We'll take a pass on this one. Maybe next time." The wisdom of this decision is apparent in retrospect. If you don't find it so, take a look at Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. You'll find a link to the full-length documentary in "Republican voters: WATCH 'Fahrenheit 9/11'!", WWW 17/2/16.

All the same, the Canadian government took a lot of flak -- figuratively speaking -- from within and without the Great Not-so-white North. So much so that when the Paranoid States of America decided to go into Afghanistan to chase after Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, they decided they'd better get into the scrap to make up for missing the first round. Little did they know that they'd have to fight not just al-Qaeda but the Taliban, since the Taliban controlled huge swathes of Armpitistan, including Kandahar province, one of the toughest targets. Sure enough, that's where the Canucks wound up. They lost proportionately more soldiers than the USA, beginning with four killed by "friendly fire" from the USAF. Some friends, eh!

Major-General Dave Fraser (seen here getting a gong from former Governor-General Michaëlle Jean) commanded both the Canadian task force and the expanded mission of the "Coalition of the Willing" to extend the authority of former Afghan president Krazi Karzai beyond the capital of Kabul in 2006. That was just over 4 1/2 years into the Afghan war and three years into the larger, bloodier struggle in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Today, in an interview marking the 10th anniversary of the Canadian deployment into Kandahar, Maj-Gen. Fraser had some rather astonishing things to say about the commission. He told Canadian Press that the West made a mistake deposing the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11, and should have simply trained its guns on al-Qaeda. "We thought, naively, that regime change was the solution to the problem," he said. "Looking backwards, I would have actually left the Taliban government in power and said (to them) 'Stay out of the way. We’re here to find Al Qaeda. And as long as you stay out of the way, the special forces will go in there, they will do what is necessary to get Al Qaeda and we will leave.' Had we done that, we wouldn’t be where we are today."

Back then, no-one seemed to appreciate how profound the power vacuum was, he went on, and that the West was creating for itself "a 30- or 40-year problem" not only in Afghanistan but throughout the Middle East.

Maj-Gen. Fraser said the West has only repeated the same mistakes over the last decade. "We repeated it in Iraq," he told CP. "In Libya, we didn’t put any ground troops in and we created an even bigger mess because there’s no government whatsoever in Libya. We went back into Iraq and now for the very first time the international community is beginning to appreciate that regime change is not the solution. [That's] why we’re not pushing to do a regime change in Syria."

Right. Has anyone told the Prez, the Pentagon and the folks at Foggy Bottom about this? To take Maj-Gen. Fraser's argument to the logical conclusion, which is... wait for it... that Western meddling in what is basically a Muslim civil war is only making things worse for the people of the Middle East, and for the West as well? Has anyone learned anything from the events of the last 10 or 20 or 25 years? Errr, apparently not.

Footnote: Is Michaëlle Jean's ADC looking at her chest or what? Whatever happened to Her Serene Highness anyway? Last we heard she was swanning around Paris as the UN's "special ambassador" for her native Haïti. Is it possible she finally went home to share the misery of the poorest state of the Western Hemisphere? Errr, apparently not.