The war against the Taliban is being lost, from every account I can gather (and I’m finding more sources) and I’ve been somewhat amazed by Canada’s willingness to fight the United States’ war for it, while the U.S. diverted a significant force to Iraq. As the casualties have mounted, it appears this has become more controversial. Now Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says that “what does influence him is the notion the Canadian soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan should not have died in vain.” He is thus portraying himself as supporting the military.
This is an argument we keep seeing. In other words, Harper supports the military by sending soldiers to their death in a losing fight. He’s willing to lose an election over this:
If ultimately I were brought down on that, and even defeated on that, I can live with myself. I could not live with myself making a decision on Canada’s role in the world and our strategic and defence interests if I knew I had done that for political reasons that were the wrong reasons. That I could not live with.
This identifies Canadian “strategic and defence interests” with American imperialist interests, even as America is being defeated politically in Latin America and America is about to face a humiliating defeat in both Afghanistan and Iraq. How, again, does this make sense?