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July 29, 2005
Wormtongue
Self-described terrorism expert, Eric Margolis believes Canadians are at higher risk with the deployment of troops to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
I am going to have to stop reading the news for some time because this sort of statement is too problematical for my blood pressure. Let us dispense with this nonsense briefly.
First, Canada has had troops in Afghanistan for years now. We are already named as targets for al Qaeda and consequently are already at risk. The worst one could say is that our decision to continue fighting somehow puts us at greater risk.
Second, Canadians were murdered at the World Trade Center in New York by men harboured by the de facto Afghan government. They murdered Canadians before we decided to fight them and the men who sheltered them. All too many share Margolis' view of a fantasy world where effect precedes cause.
Third, Canadian troops are not in Afghanistan to "kill Afghans" anymore than a police officer forced to use a firearm is shooting at "Canadians". Margolis' conflation of the men who terrorized Afghanistan with the people they terrorized is a grotesque distortion.
Finally, Canada, along with the rest of the world, did almost nothing to help the people of Afghanistan for so many years some there welcomed the Taliban and their Pakistani funded stability. Such was the peace of the damned. If we were to once again abandon Afghanistan to its fate, a fate some ghouls so evidently relish, we would only be turning them over to the very men who have and continue to threaten us. Our fight to defend Afghanistan from the Death Eaters is a fight to defend Canada from the men who will presently be targeting ordinary Canadians. To Margolis, the answer is the same recourse to surrender, retreat and indifference that leads him to speak of our danger as if it was a new thing to us. As if Hama or Srebrenica or Darfur or Rwanda or so many other places of atrocity had never existed.
We should be proud of what Canadian forces are doing as they pass through fire and death in Afghanistan. They deserve better than to be so ill used by a witless worm. Better he should be silent and keep his forked-tongue behind his teeth.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 29, 2005 08:14 AM
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Comments
Isn't it amazing that idiots like Margolis can be both banal and stupid at the same time...
Posted by: Jay Currie ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ghostofaflea.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 29, 2005 03:50 PM
Did Margolis get the licence number of the truck that just hit him?
Posted by: Damian Penny at July 29, 2005 04:42 PM
Eric Margolis is suggesting that Canada's legitimate and moderately prosecuted military mission to Afghanistan is justification for both attacks on our troops and terrorist attacks at home. His moral equivocation of terrorist murder and mayhem with the lawful incursions of our troops is nauseatingly familar. The fashionable condemnation of our side is a repeat of the odious 'root causes' and ' we had it coming' epithets from the post-September 11 period.
The ability to equate such a position with principled progressivism is a characteristic of Margolis and his fellow flagellators. Parallel to their elevation of their own confectionary logic is their absolute certainty that the Bush-Blair commitment to Western security is a low intellectual exercise. Apparently a refusal to admit that terrorists' murderous thuggery is a rational reaction to authorized Western military action is proof positive of our leaders' stupidity. What haughty nonsense .
crossposted on July 28.05 at http://barrystagg.typepad.com/
Posted by: Barry Stagg at July 29, 2005 04:57 PM
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