Harper seeks Dion's support on Afghanistan:
... there appears to be a major sticking point around the classification of the Canadian commitment as a combat mission, meaning that soldiers conduct offensive operations.Manley's report said it is impossible to make the distinction between a mission focused on training the Afghan National Army and a combat mission because training takes place on the frontlines. The Conservative government agrees with that, but the Liberals do not.
"We don't want a combat mission after February 2009," Dion said.
Whether that gulf is bridged and becomes purely semantic, or whether it ultimately tanks negotiations between Harper and Dion, remains to be seen, but the Liberal leader said he would take up Harper's offer to have talks.
The government believes there is a difference between Dion's position and that of deputy leader Michael Ignatieff and foreign affairs critic Bob Rae. In public comments, the latter appear to have left room for reconciliation with the government's direction on the mission.
No kidding.
That the government are plotting to exploit the curious presence of hawks at the highest levels of the Liberal caucus -- that we need to know.
But we also need to think about the curiosities themselves. The most likely heirs-apparent in the Liberal Party of Canada are two guys who don't sound so different from Dick Cheney when they talk about Iran, so why should they even attempt to sound intelligent about Afghanistan?
Things are bad, but with Rae or Ignatieff, things could get worse.
I recognize that this is a small gesture, but would anyone as horrified as I am by the choice between Harper and Rae/Ignatieff remember, on 9 February, to go to this place (click on button below) and seek out the category called "Most Regressive Progressive"? You know what you have to do.
While you're there today, btw, you could nominate some of the good grils and guys as well. We at the POGGE Institute don't qualify, but we are friends and supporters of these awards. And we are inspired to watch the nominations flooding in. Did you know there were that many brave mouthy chicks in this country? It does my heart good just to look at the lists of nominees.
So just what *is* Rae's position, and is it the same as Ignatieff's?
Back in June 2006, when he was running for the Liberal leadership, Bob Rae 'profoundly' disagreed with Michael Ignatieff on Afghanistan.
Here's a clip from the Edmonton Journal, June 11, 2006, page A5:
WINNIPEG - Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae expressed "profound" disagreement with rival Michael Ignatieff over the combat role of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan Saturday, warning troops may be seen as "an army of occupation" and lose their longstanding role as peacekeepers.
His remarks came during the first official all-candidates' forum that pitted nine candidates against Ignatieff and Scott Brison, the only two of the 11 leadership candidates who supported the minority Conservative government's recent motion in the Commons to extend the Afghan mission by two years to 2009.
"The risk that we run by turning ourselves into a combat force that's engaged in counter-insurgency and counter-guerrilla forces is that we will in fact lose our way as peacekeepers and as people who believe in the maintenance of peace," said Rae, a Toronto lawyer and former Ontario NDP premier.
Is Rae now lining up with Ignatieff in support of the Manley report, which calls for an indefinite extension of the 'combat mission' Rae once claimed to oppose?
The Manley report, after all, says no clear line can be drawn between combat and training, that traditional peacekeeping is a thing of the past, that no end-date can be set for the Afghanistan mission, and that the counterinsurgency combat mission will therefore continue indefinitely, though supposedly better managed and with the burden shared more equally among NATO partners.
That would seem to be quite a shift from the position Rae took while a leadership candidate.
Thanks, as always, Stephen, for setting things out so clearly.
We do have to know, don't we. But how can we, while the Liberal leadership are all still playing their polite games, pretending to support the leader?
I pick up my hints about Rae from what he has said, eg, in 2006 about Lebanon and (plz remind me) somewhere about Iran. I feel, listening to both Rae and Ignatieff, that I am living through some horrible replay of the last seven years of the Bush administration.
Harper is subservient to BushCo, but I don't think that he has ever had a profound commitment to any foreign policy beyond North American greed/continentalism. He will do what he is told to do in the rest of the world, but he doesn't much know and he doesn't much care.
Rae and Ignatieff, unfortunately, do know some things, if not enough, and do care, too much.
PM Iggy? Please! I'm trying not to have nightmares, over here!
As for Rae, I will have to do some research there. Like Stephen, I was not aware of a switch in his position on Canada's role in Afghanistan (at least, since his statements in 2006).
Like you, I recall that Rae made some disgusting comments after the 2006 collective punishment of Lebanon. Dion, OTOH, submitted a reasonable op-ed about Lebanon that really set him apart from Rae and the Ig. Well, at least on this stuff. I guess that's something. Sorry I don't have links at the ready: this must've predated my obsession with del.ici.ous bookmarking!
GDK
Stephen and Kitty, I'm doing my research now, as I should have done before I wrote, o' course.
We could do worse than start with this post of pogge's: wherein Rae ends up agreeing with the Cons and BushCo that it's only torture if certain people do it.
Rae was also super-keen to take on that job as constitutional adviser to the puppet government of Iraq, which struck me as a first step down the slippery slope. No, let me revise that: it struck me as the first step off the sheer precipice.
Speaking of precipices, skdadl, here are Dion & Rae, speaking today on the party's Afghanistan position(s):
Dion's unequivocal assertion [that combat must end in 2009] appeared to clarify the Liberal position, which has been confused since last week's report by the Manley panel on the future of Canada's role in Afghanistan.
However Bob Rae, the Liberal foreign affairs critic, said the party won't take a "precipitous decision on anything" until it sees precisely how the government intends to act on the Manley report.
Meanwhile, it was reported on mike Duffy's show this afternoon that Rae is leading the negotiations with the Conservatives on the issue.
Gah! He said precipitous when he meant precipitate! Gah!
OMG, that is one of my major buggywugs. Forgive the pedantry, but I just want to curl up on the floor when people do that.
Rhodes friggin' scholar, too. Gah.