Harper accused of Afghan about-face

I see at least one big difference. While Harper is saying that teh insurgency can't be defeated, he is still setting clear goals for us to reach prior to leaving.

This is different from the opposition who also claimed that we couldn' t defeat the insurgency, but then just wanted a complete pullout and leave the country to collapse again.

"What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency."

I think it's great that we're finally putting the emphasis on the Afghan government taking ownership of the insurgency.
That shows that we're starting to hand over the fight to the Afghan forces.

My understand is we have been doing this for the last 2 years....

I thought that was the whole point for a long time?
Get the Afghanis to sort out their own shit by training them.

We are not going to radically change a society that wants to remain in the stoneage, and one that's aided by Pakistani fanatics looking for jihad fuelled by narco-profits.

We can carry out our mission and foxtrot-oscar in 2011 like we said we would. It will be up to Afghanistan then to do the rest.

Confidence is not high that things will change there for the better though.

What Harper, go back on something he said in the past or flip flop on an issue? I find that hard to believe...

/sarcasm off

I have a theory that the Canadian public tends to forget things very quickly, Im sure that if we didnt have a death in Afghanistan for a year people would think we had already pulled out. Hell people already have forgotten it was the Liberal government that has sent us there in the first place.

For sure, this is spin.

I think no politicians ever would say that NATO alone could win but now we can set the stage for Canada's withdraw from this mission.

So Boot.. When you find Chretien or Martin's exit strategy conditions, be sure to tell us all.

Where's the flip-flop?
At least he's listening to his Commanders. The Brits said the same thing last year.
For once just take your hatred of Tories out of the equation and look it for what it is. A Prime Minister taking a stance on the advice of the CDS and DND.

Funny he never listened to anyone before. now that george dubya is out, harpers singing a new song. we should have been out long ago.. history has proven nothing will ever be accomplished in Afghanistan.. the only thing we have gained is more debt and more dead Canadians! and for what?

Finally, something we agree on!



Given that they haven't been in office for over three years now, there 'exit strategy' is totally irrelevant.

Where's the flip-flop?
At least he's listening to his Commanders. The Brits said the same thing last year.
For once just take your hatred of Tories out of the equation and look it for what it is. A Prime Minister taking a stance on the advice of the CDS and DND.

From the CTV version of the same article;



http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s ... hub=Canada

For the longest time, he and his supporters have been calling anyone who suggested that we leave Afghanistan traitors, Taliban Jack, you name it, so, yeah, it's a flip flop.

Really, though, I don't know why it's a big surpise, he's flipped on so many other issues that it's old hat nowadays.

We have a mission.
We made international commitments to undertake that mission that Parliament voted on and agreed to. Taliban Jack wanted to discount those agreements. Our mission expires and we leave.

Would you rather we stay?

That's the difference boots. If you ever tried to see things from another point of view you would come across much more credibly on these things.

Just like your precious Liberals.

/no sarcasm intended

Are we leaving Afghanistan?