The Afganistan Withdrawal Hornswoggle

For years now, we the public have been told that 2011 will be our last year of involvement in Afganistan.  As most are likely aware, this is no longer the case - Harper has announced that we'll be keeping 400 Canadian soldiers there to operate in a training capacity, and the Liberals countered his announcement with the suggestion that we should increase that number to an even thousand because...  well, because they're Liberals and the Liberal party is pretty shit right now.

Of course, this move surprises no one who's been paying attention.  Pogge pointed out, way back at the beginning of October, that the official line from both U.S. and Canadian governments weren't really meshing well with their own message:  namely that our planned withdrawal was putting the mission at jeopardy, that "it will be impossible to replace Canada's more than 1,000 combat troops without diminishing forces elsewhere in the country."  The reason this objection didn't make much sense is that our withdrawal was meant to occur at the same time as the planned drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan - which suggests that, in truth, the U.S. Government has little intention of actually reducing their forces.

The number of troops we're going to be keeping there during this farce of nation-building is yet to be determined - don't think for a second that the four hundred number Harper gave is in any way accurate, not with the Liberals giving him ample opportunity and excuse to boost that upwards considerably, nor with the concerted campaign to convince us that we really actually don't want to pull out anyway.  Our withdrawal may not even end up as a drawdown, at this rate.