The Folly of Afghanistan and the Pearsonian Solution
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Can This War Be Won?
By Robert Billyard
Even though Pearson looked like a bookish banker with the disposition of your favorite uncle he was a man of action and fierce integrity, unafraid to “piss†on presidential rugs.
As individuals and nations we sometimes forget who we are and where we are from. Canada’s present role in Afghanistan is miscast and futile. We should invoke the Pearsonian tradition and seek more peaceful and viable solutions.
Lester B. Pearson was the 14th prime minister of Canada (1963-1968) and one of the most dynamic and successful. Though he only held office for five short years and never held a majority he passed copious legislation, including some of our most important social programs in Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan and student loans. He presided over the great flag debate and overhauled our immigration process such that it was no longer discriminatory.
Pearson also had the distinction of sending one president packing and “pissing†on another’s rug.
When French president Charles De Gaulle came to Quebec in 1967 and made his famous “Vive le Quebec libre†speech Pearson was so enraged by De Gaulle’s action, especially in view of Canada’s wartime contribution to the liberation of France, he delivered a scathing speech the next morning that left De Gaulle scurrying back to France, never to return to Canada.
In 1965, at the height of the Vietnam War, Pearson gave a speech in Philadelphia in which he voiced support for a mediated end to the war. The next day in meeting with President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president grabbed Pearson by the lapels and shouted “Dammit, Les, you pissed on my rug!†In spite of this incident Pearson and Johnson remained on speaking terms and the relations between the two countries were generally good.
Interestingly, Johnson did not run for a second term because he knew the war had ruined any chance of him being elected.
Even before becoming prime minister, Pearson distinguished himself internationally.
In 1956 a coalition of Israel, France and Great Britain launched an attack on Egypt in response to President Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez canal; a waterway vital to Middle East and global commerce. When The USSR threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt it was apparent “The Suez Crisis†could explode into a full blown war.
Pearson, then serving as Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs, proposed establishing a United Nations peacekeeping force to intervene between the opposing factions. War was averted, and Pearson later received the Noble Peace Prize.
Pearson was well schooled in the essential value of mediation and multilateralism in the settling of international issues and conflicts. He would be saddened to learn that today the UN struggles and that indeed there is a unspoken ideological war between unilateralism as manifested in US neo-imperialist foreign policy and multilateralist values- at a time in history when multilateralism is more essential than ever.
He would be further disillusioned at the vile behavior of many present day leaders. Even though Pearson looked like a bookish banker with the disposition of your favorite uncle he was a man of action and fierce integrity, unafraid to “piss†on presidential rugs.
What is obvious in Afghanistan is the failure of unilateral American aggression. The solution is multilateral. There should be an unconditional withdrawal of the US military as they are part of the problem not the solution. The country should be made a protectorate of the United Nations with a special task force mandated to stabilize the country. As the chief partisan and aggressor nation in the conflict the US would be excluded from any participation.
This proposal will cause US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton to go into an apoplectic rage. He actively pursues the destruction of the UN but the sooner he becomes a convert to multilateral solutions and their inherent integrity the better the world will be.
It is a mistake to assume what is happening in Afghanistan now is a multilateral effort. Even though Canada and other NATO countries are involved the US military still operates independently and is calling the shots. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was originally conceived during the Cold War as a defense alliance- for the North Atlantic. It has now been subverted into to an instrument of US foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Canada’s Conservative Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor is out buying arms in wholesale quantities for this no win war. This is not to say that Canada’s military does not need streamlining or enhancement but O’Connor is fighting the wrong war in the wrong way for the wrong reasons.
His British counterpart, Des Browne, in a similar predicament admits the deployment of 3300 British troops into the Taliban heartland of Helmand has “energized†the Taliban. Browne, at least, has the wit to realize the age old axiom:-force will be met with force. Unlike Prime Minister Blair he makes the connection that Arab countries like any other cannot be attacked with impunity, there will be reprisals and blowback.
When the London terrorist bombings occurred, only one year ago, the British prime minister desperately refused to connect this event with the fact that thousands of Arabs have been slaughtered in Iraq.
Polls have shown Canadians are deeply split over our country’s involvement in this war and many are unsure as to why we are there. The simple answer is to help the US defray the human and financial costs of this war. The US is desperately short of ground troops as its military commitments are global and there is an acute shortage of ground troops for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
The shortage is so acute there has been an ongoing scandal in the US over aggressive recruiting techniques and the lowering of enlistment standards to allay the shortage. Part of the solution has been to coerce allies, such as Canada, into the fight.
It is an expensive conflict and Canadians are going to see an increasing amount of our tax dollars directed overseas. By various estimates the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts are costing the US almost ten billion dollars a month. It is estimated the Iraq conflict alone will ultimately cost US taxpayers two trillion dollars; expenditures so far are already in the hundreds of billions. The US is gutting its domestic spending, especially on social programs, and is running record debt and deficit to pay for these wars.
Can this war be won?
Not likely, and Vietnam is the biggest reason why. The parallels between this conflict and Viet Nam should spook the most hawkish of hawks.
Like Vietnam, Afghanistan is half way around the world and fighting on such a distant front, even for rich democracies, presents huge and very expensive logistical problems. In spite of pouring endless amounts of weaponry and troops into Vietnam the US could not force victory.
In such conflicts the defenders have a huge advantage (especially where they use guerrilla warfare tactics) as they are fighting on their home turf. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, the defenders have so far stalemated the massive invasion of the US with its state of the art military with rudimentary weaponry and home grown guerrilla strategies.
One of the lesser known issues in the Afghan conflict is that the Taliban use western Pakistan as a training ground, staging area and safe haven. To effectively neutralize the Taliban the war has to be expanded into Pakistan which is a US ally
One of the great lessons of the Cold War era was that it was very difficult for even the super powers to win regional conflicts outside their sphere of influence. The USSR could not win in Afghanistan even though it was a bordering country.
The Korean War, fought under the auspices of a fledgling UN was not won, but an armistice was signed to end the fighting and the two Koreas we know now came into being.
How will Afghanistan end?
Again the Vietnam comparison applies. It was only after the sacrifice of 58, 000 American troops, with 350,000 wounded and the killing of some three million Vietnamese (estimates of Vietnamese dead vary widely and go as high as 7 million) the war was lost.
Unless we come up with more plausible solutions-Pearsonian solutions; Afghanistan and Iraq, like Viet Nam, will come to an end only when the human and financial costs become unconscionable and the travesty is no longer politically saleable.
Pearson also mentored three future prime ministers as cabinet ministers: Trudeau, Turner and Chretien. His legacy can also mentor aspirants in the present Liberal leadership race if they are willing to show similar courage and conviction in addressing the folly of Afghanistan.
Robert Billyard is a writer and artist residing in the bucolic hinterlands of Mission BC. He has an abiding interest in politics and social issues and reads extensively on these subjects. Accused of being a nationalist, a small “l” liberal, a socialist and a boat rocker-as well as a boat builder- he might nod in agreement. Robert is a member in good standing of the Liberal party.
@ July 18, 2006