Canadian trainers should stay in Afghanistan past 2011: Ignatieff

[CHIMO]

Michael Ignatieff wants Canada to stay in Afghanistan when the combat mission ends to train police and military personnel.

The Liberal Leader is proposing the creation of an institute in Kabul, much like the Royal Military College in Kingston. He is suggesting that Canadians remain for three years, cautioning that the commitment cannot be open-ended.

Mr. Ignatieff outlined his vision in a speech to the National Forum in Toronto on Tuesday. This is the most definitive he has been so far as to what he sees as Canada’s contribution after the military mission ends in July, 2011.

This is all part of the Liberal’s foreign-policy platform, which Mr. Ignatieff is strategically releasing on the eve of the G8 and G20 summits.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/canadian-trainers-should-stay-in-afghanistan-past-2011-ignatieff/article1605071/

It looks like Michael is out of touch with things. And I mean all things.

Kennedy sent observers into Vietnam in 1961. It just escalated from there.

Trainers can't exist in this place without combat. I question his intelligence.

Just have a listen to this piece.

"I Love the US Republic, and I Hate the US Empire": Johan Galtung on the War in Afghanistan and How to Get Out

JOHAN GALTUNG: Now let’s look at it from a Washington point of view: pursuing a victory which will never happen. I’ll say why: 1.56 billion Muslims are dedicated to the idea of defending Islam when trampled upon. Some of them are traveling to Afghanistan. Some of them are doing it somewhere else in other ways. Those ways can become quite disagreeable, as you know.

Point two, there is no capitulation in Islam to infidels. It doesn’t exist. To fight against Christians and Jews—you take the mini-empire of Israel, the regional empire—is not an invitation to a violent confrontation that will end with a capitulation. In other words, the time perspective of the Muslim community is unlimited. I don’t think the time perspective of Washington is unlimited. So you can say, of course, who has the longer time perspective will win. There may be some local capitulation, a white flag somewhere, but by and large the usual scenario of a tent, maybe, with a camping table, somebody diligently typing a couple of copies of a capitulation document and "please sign on the dotted line," forget about it. Forget about it. That’s not the way it happens these days.

So, having said that, victory is out. Of course, the US will not be available for defeat, as, in a sense, it was in Vietnam in April 1975. So withdrawal is the likeliest thing, hoping desperately that the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police will take over the job, which they will, with my knowledge of the situation, not do. They will be aligning themselves with the next stage in Afghan history.

But having mentioned this, there is of course a fourth possibility: United States participating in conflict resolution. So what we have been discussing here, Amy, in Washington in these sessions, have been the details of these five points and other points. And here I would like to enter with a basic point about mediation, we who mediate. I’m an NGO mediator. I’ve done this more than 120 times around the world, sometimes with some success, sometimes not, or to put it more optimistically, not yet success. OK, what we are trying to find out are the goals of the parties. What do they want? I mentioned the Taliban are dead against secularization. I find that legitimate. The US goal of a base, I find it illegitimate. The US goal of an oil pipeline and controlling it, I find it illegitimate, by means of war. But the US goal that no attack should come from Afghanistan, I find completely legitimate.


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/15/i_love_the_us_republic_and
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2010/june/video/dnB20100615a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:23:55