Oh Canada!

Stephen Harper's panel on the Canadian Afghanistan military mission has reported. Here's my reaction to this particular bit, quoted from today's Vancouver Sun newspaper (Arm-twist NATO: Manley - Mike Blanchfield, Canwest):

Manley said Canada's efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan cannot be completed by February 2009 and there is no "operational logic" to pulling troops out on that date. An immediate withdrawal would "squander our investment and dishonour our sacrifice to date."

The report also talks about 'defining' or 'refining' the goal of the mission. Hello? At the cost of close to 80 lives of Canadian military members and countless Afghan citizens we can talk about defining and refining our goals? That aside, back to the above quote. Squandering our investment? Dishonouring our sacrifice? I believe in my bones that the greatest dishonour to the sacrifice of lives on both sides (but from my perspective as a Canadian-particularly the lives of Canadian military) is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In case you've never heard it before, that's the definition of insanity! So we'll sacrifice more of the same, in the same manner, with the same results. Do we consider the abbreviated lives of all these men and women to be an 'investment'. If we're going to use that language of finance, what's the return on that particular investment? How does that manage to 'appreciate'? I don't have an answer for that. I'm pretty sure all those 'experts' don't either.