The Afghanistan Mission and the Liberal Party

 It's been quite a week for the Liberal Party.  It's also been quite a week for anyone who, like me, grows increasingly sick of Ignatief's weak, half-arsed "third way" leadership.

Now, like most Canadians I've never been particularly fond of Dion as the party leader, but Iggy's making me look back at Dion's brief days with nostalgia.  Thanks to Ignatief, the Liberals have come to be some of the Conservative Party's staunchest allies.

Oh, I know it doesn't look that way on paper.  At least, not with a cursory glance.  Pay attention, though, and you'll notice a pattern of Liberals being conspicuously absent from strategic votes - witness the way the vote for Bill C-300 went down (and that was their own bloody bill!) - making their efforts to battle Conservative policies highly disingenuous.  They're letting the CPC basically get their way with everything, from privatizing Crown corporations, to weakening environmental laws (even those related to offshore drilling, of all things), to killing important progressive legislation, and now their efforts even include extending the Afghanistan mission by a good three years.

Last week, I blogged about this last issue briefly, but I feel the need to return to the topic for a variety of reasons - one of which is the fact that even Warren Kinsella has come out against the Liberal handling of the Afghanistan issue:

You know, I was busy with last night’s gig (and a big shout out to my buddy BCL, who came by to take in the show) and feeling sorry for myself for my Man Cold©, so I didn’t get a chance to fully reflect on the following:
1.  The Prime Minister said last Fall that our combat mission in Afghanistan would end, and would be “a civilian humanitarian development mission after 2011.”
2.  The Liberal Party’s leader said this Spring that his party also favoured “a different role focusing on a humanitarian commitment” after 2011.
3. “Humanitarian.” They both used that word.
4.  After the Liberal leader abruptly changed his mind about all this “humanitarian” stuff, so did the Prime Minister.  Both of them now favour extending the war, and yet more combat roles for at least 1,000 troops.
5.  There’ll be no debate about any of this in Parliament, which is, you know, the Supreme Legislature of the People.  No one seems to give a shit about that.
6.  To drive in the final nail in democracy’s proverbial coffin, the Prime Minister emasculates his Minister of Defence, and sends out his press secretary to tell the rest of us that we’ll be at war for a few more years.  On political info-tainment shows.
7.  Got all that?  Whiplash-inducing reversals on all sides, open contempt for the legislature, cabinet ministers neutered in public, unelected hacks wielding the power of the executive.  Oh, and, more war.
8. More war.  Just like that, in the week where we are all supposed to be remembering why war is a bad thing.
9.  And political people actually wonder why both the Liberals and the Conservatives are dropping below 30 per cent in the polls, and why the NDP is moving up.  And they wonder why people are growing more and more cynical about democracy, and democratic institutions, and are angrily lashing out at politicians.
10.  Wonder no more.

For context, this is the same Warren Kinsella who's long been a Liberal party hack and even a high-ranking campaign coordinator.  Him coming out so strongly against a party's stated position is very rare.  So rare that I don't think it's ever actually happened before.

So, why would the Liberals stake out such a terrible position?

Basically, because Iggy, much like his "third way" liberalism, is stupid.  I strongly suspect Iggy was trying to stake out a position that would attract Red Tories of the CPC (the old guard who are supposedly non-crazy) away from Harper's neoconservativism and toward the Liberals.  Basically, they wanted to out-conservative - or at least pre-empt - Harper.  "Extend the mission with 400 troops?" they asked, scoffing, "Why, stop being such a girly man, Prime Minister!  You should have a full thousand!"

The problem with this plan is that it can't possibly work.  Harper's the one who made the announcement of the extension - trying to impress the less-than-30% of voters who actually like the idea by throwing a larger number out isn't good enough to attract them away from the CPC, because pro-War has long been the CPC's territory.  Harper basically has two choices at this point - he can say, "Nah, 400 will manage," at which point the pro-War crowd will continue licking Harper's feet and praising him for his wisdom, or else he can say "Sure, a thousand's even better," at which point he'll have conquered the idea as his own and the Liberals don't get any credit for it.  (Turns out, Harper actually said both, in the order I listed above.) 

 But by even making the suggestion in the first place, the Liberals can't speak out against the idea of the extension without coming across as a bunch of waffling wimps.

Which, of course, they are.

Which is why, of course, this is exactly what they did

“How many trainers? Where are they going to be? Are they going to be out of combat? How much is it going to cost? Why is it impossible for this government to give simple answers to clear questions that Canadians need to have answers to before they can approve any mission by this government,” Michael Ignatieff demanded.

These are meaningless and weak questions, and Ignatieff doesn't actually expect any answers - at this point it's just flailing.  Even NPD turncoat and third-way liberalism champion Rae admits that the Liberals can't do anything to really fight the CPC on this issue:

But, for now, they are hostages to Conservative policy, as Mr. Rae admitted. "We have done an unusual job for an official opposition and we are not -we are not in a position to negotiate a plan, we are not in a position to do anything...," he said after Question Period.

I've seen it speculated that the real issue here is the Liberal war chest.  Namely, that it's empty - if they were to go to election too soon, the party would implode from lack of funding.  So, they move politically rightward at every chance, hoping to eat away at CPC support, while biding for time to refill the war chests.  This hasn't been working, of course, because war chests get filled through strong leadership and brave ideological stances - something good leaders like Layton and Harper* have understood for some time.

Honestly, the state of the Liberal party, the poor leadership Iggy's giving them...  It really makes me miss Cretien.  Pepper-spray and all.

*Here I use the term "good" to mean "effective," not "kind" or "righteous" or the like.  Which should be obvious, since Harper's one of the few politicians in North America I'd unironically describe as evil.