Revealed: The Path to War

The 79th fallen soldier from the Afghanistan war fell victim to a roadside bomb as he was driving supplies to an Afghan army post, just five days before he was to go home

"Loader" said
Wow, it was a powerful show, too bad I had to listen to our former Minister of National Defense, John McCallum disparage the troops by implying they were subservient to the US. It was a poor move to make this economist MND in the first place, but not an unexpected move from Mr Chretien, who showed a disdain for the military in general.

This book comes across as a partisan "whitewash" of two Liberal(Chretien and Martin) government's machinations and duplicities that led to our commitment of combat troops in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan. Defence Ministers McCallum and Graham appear to "walk on water" while General Hillier, many unnamed bureaucrats in Foreign Affairs, National Defence and the Conservative government are blamed for stumbling into and our continuing combat involvement in Afghanistan.

Surprisingly, the real underlying reason we are involved in Afghanistan is given on page 67 by Sheila Copps when she states; "I was at the table(Liberal Cabinet meeting, Feb 4, 2003) when the decision was made, and there were two theatres playing out. One was in Iraq and the other was in Afghanistan and we deliberately made a decision to go to Afghanistan because we knew very shortly down the road we would be asked to participate in a US-led invasion of Iraq which we did not want to do and this was a neat political way of squaring the problem.... of Canada-US relations". It is made perfectly clear that Liberal government leaders were hoping that doing a tough job in Afghanistan would placate the Americans after we refused to support the invasion of Iraq and participate in Ballistic Missile Defence. Senior military officers are blamed for over-zealously advancing this course of action. The book then goes on to say that Canada's generals and admirals tend to be more concerned about their relationships with their American counterparts than they are with their own political masters in Ottawa - is it any wonder when our Liberal foreign policy was predicated on an immature love/hate relationship with the US. There is no discussion on doing the right thing for Afghanistan or Canada.

On page 133 Foreign Affairs are quoted as saying in 2003 that Canada was among the best-equipped militaries in Afghanistan. There is no mention that many CF casualties caused by IEDs could be avoided if Canada had heavy lift helicopters which they did have(Chinooks) until they were forced to sell them in the 90s because of extreme budget cuts. No mention of Canadian combat troops originally deploying to Kandahar in a combat role under US command in 2002 and later in Kabul with dark green camouflage combat clothing and flimsy Iltis jeeps in which at least three Canadian soldiers were killed by IEDs. There is no mention of Liberal opposition to attempts by the Conservative government to speed up the awarding of defence contracts for badly needed equipment in Afghanistan now(eg. replacement Chinooks).

Just over halfway through the book the present Conservative government is blamed for not changing our combat role in 2006 to one of reconstruction and training in other parts of the country other than Kandahar and for extending the mission to February 2009. Easy to say but very difficult to find other NATO countries interested in taking over a combat role and you cannot just pull out and leave a vacuum - it could be deadly for our NATO allies fighting around Kandahar and they would surely question our resolve.

General Hillier gets the blame for signing a flawed original agreement on the handling of detainees in Afghanistan - the reader wonders what one of the authors, the chief of staff to Defence Ministers McCallum and Graham and a professed expert on international security was doing when this supposedly flawed agreement was drawn up and signed.

I will wait until an unbiased, non-revisionist historian investigates and writes a book to get the facts about how we became involved in Afghanistan in the first place and the good things that are being done for Afghan citizens at tremendous cost by our brave and courageous men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. I will not hold my breath.

Alex Mills
The Torch