Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Canuckistan:
Stephen Harper is leaving the door open once again to extending Canada’s military participation in the costly Afghanistan war.
When the Official Opposition NDP pressed the Prime Minister on Wednesday about reports the United States has asked Canada to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Mr. Harper said the government would ”œexamine all options.”
[...]
If the Prime Minister extended Canada’s military deployment beyond 2014, it would be the fourth time he has prolonged the soldiering commitment to Afghanistan ”“ including 2006, 2008 and 2010.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Mr. Harper denied reports the United States has asked Canada to keep special forces soldiers in Afghanistan past 2014, his latest promised date for withdrawal.
As our new Leader of the Official Opposition aptly noted during Question Period yesterday, Canadians “want this mission to end. It was supposed to end in 2006. It was supposed to end in 2009. It was supposed to end in 2011. It is supposed to end in 2014. When will it finally end?””
Oh, and that last excerpted bit I highlighted, where the PM denies reports that Uncle Sam is trying to keep Canada in the Great Game for another Friedman or three? Methinks Mr. Harper is being a little coy. Mealsothinks that it’s a damn good thing Afghanistan is (for now, anyway) almost completely under the Campaign 2012 Village radar.
Because, considering the collective combat exhaustion of the USian polity, the last thing the Obama team needs are ill-timed reports that it’s secretly planning to continue America’s excellent (and highly unpopular) imperial Central Asian misadventure past it’s latest expiration date.
…of the units that are likely to be tapped to stay?
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Are you merely a garden-variety autofellating troll or simply the resident douchebag?
I don’t mean to be a dick (ok, maybe I do — but it’s nothing personal, merely an unfortunate stylistic quirk), but if you have a point to make then make it or kindly GFY.
Matt, meet JPD. JPD, meet Matt. I’ve known you both online for longer than I care to think, respect you both immensely for your critical thinking and knowlesge bases, and know you can both be abrupt and abrasive when you’re being a smart-arse. JPD, you asked for it this time, dude
.
I think you guys should mentally wipe the above, and try again with a “let’s see if we can be constructive” exchange.
Regards, Steve ENE
Of course, I happen to be the resident douchebag that actually knows how the units that are likely to be tapped to stay actually fit in to our overall defence structure. This is one of the types of things these units were designed for. Don’t just use this as outrage fodder – to be there or not is not a simple question that is well served by being used as a political football.
For the record, unless we’re just talking about embedding some JTF-2 folks into a CJSOTF I would presume that we’re looking at a package of JTF-2, CSOR and maybe even some 427 Sqn folks [I know at least some of those guys know their way around a CH-47]. If we’re just talking about embedding some operators, it’s a no-brainer – if it’s bigger, it should be something that we’re a bit more wary of. (Some of us have been around long enough that we remember the talk about having to have our people fight to the coast for evacuation if it went to the shit in Yugo. It didn’t sound like the most fun idea in the world…)
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
approximately how many soldiers would be involved in CJSOTF, JTF-2, CSOR and maybe even some 427 Sqn folks as well as CH-47?
“OTP – Occupy The Patriarchy” ~ me
(like me) so don’t worry about. Macho sparring is just a natural outcome to Canada’s complete elimination from the hockey playoffs this year.
The big thing about Matt’s arrival, imo, is that he had three, count ‘em THREE diary elevations to the Front Page in one single day. This ain’t chicken soup.
So welcome, Matt, and don’t make a mistake about JPD. He’s a battle axe whose cryptic posts will sometimes drive you crazy but he actually knows what he’s talking about – well, most of the time anyway.
Hey look — actual, substantive dialogue! Highly preferable to reflexive, eat-a-bag-of dickitude.
Seriously though, despite my glib facade, I sincerely appreciate any and all additional info/background (esp insider info) regarding this. I tend to examine these sorts of issues from more of a (yes, partisan) political rather than policy-based frame, but believe policy should obviously inform (if not entirely drive) politics, and, thus, political writing. Anyway, thanks to everyone for the warm welcome — even JPD.
(I suppose.)
Also, those who care to get to know me further can check out the archives of my blog, bastard.logic, and also my 4.5 (!) year tenure at the late, lamented Comments From Left Field. Oh, and Twitter — can’t forget that (much as many would love to).
all Matt’s posts will front-page. I invited him to come to the Agonist as a front-page writer, as someone I’ve known and trusted as a writer and content-producer for a long time. So that you regulars and new visitors will have more to read, and stuff.
Yr makin’ me blush, Steve. And that’s no little feat, considering my complexion.
Assuming a JTF-2 / CSOR team without organic air and other assets, could be a bit under 200. Less than 100 would be pushing it if one wanted to maintain good op tempo. Were one to put together a full task force that had all organic support, could run as much as 400 – 600.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
…we’ll have to get to thinking more seriously about things like this. The piece that you produced above was frankly pretty generic – change the name of the pol to Bush or Blair and the country to Iraq or any other that people have their knickers in a twist over and it would be just as informative. Sorry if that comes across as harsh, eat a bag of dickatude, but from where I’m sitting the piece misses the substantive points that bear thinking about.
1. What does it mean for the Afghanistan campaign if the transition is to go from large footprint conventional forces to a smaller SOF footprint?
2. What does it mean that they are asking Canada and Australia to do this? Where is any mention of the British? They have substantial assets of exactly this type and are the other nation (along with Canada) that is fully interoperable with US SMUs – is their participation already a given? If not, wouldn’t that be an intriguing and potentially informative why not?
3. What does Canada get out of this if we agree to participate? How big a political chit does this translate into? What are the implications – both for us and the Afghans – if we decline? What are the risks that we’ll be associated with if we agree (e.g., how many Afghans are going to eat it as collateral when the inevitable consequence of what will have to be increased reliance on air assets happens)?
4. much, much etc.
The harsh welcome was my early morning, low charm way of establishing: a) whether you had read David’s piece that was the prime mover for this, b) knew enough about the issues that you understand the context but simply weren’t mentioning it, and c) expressing my opinion that this was something of a generic, political piece and that the issue deserves a good deal more thought.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
ok. parsing for tact toward a newbie (parsing a newbie for tact something different, don’t know yet), would that be so bad??? (Yes, I am tut-tutting)
———————————————————————–
“From where I’m sitting the substantive points that bear thinking about.
1. What does it mean for the Afghanistan campaign if the transition is to go from large footprint conventional forces to a smaller SOF footprint?
2. What does it mean that they are asking Canada and Australia to do this? Where is any mention of the British? They have substantial assets of exactly this type and are the other nation (along with Canada) that is fully interoperable with US SMUs – is their participation already a given? If not, wouldn’t that be an intriguing and potentially informative why not?
3. What does Canada get out of this if we agree to participate? How big a political chit does this translate into? What are the implications – both for us and the Afghans – if we decline? What are the risks that we’ll be associated with if we agree (e.g., how many Afghans are going to eat it as collateral when the inevitable consequence of what will have to be increased reliance on air assets happens)?
4. much, much etc.
The harsh welcome was my early morning, low charm way of expre
ssing my opinion that the issue deserves a good deal more thought.”
What am I missing here, Dave?
The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory
The cost benefit yield was poor. If you wish to assign blame, look to those who think that single note explication (e.g., oil, any single “-ism” in all situations, etc.) is acceptable. Doesn’t take much of that before those who were previously quite willing to take the effort to make it tactful don’t bother. Folks want to be thoughtful, my tact will go up dramatically.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
It is, however, true.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
I know you to be tactless and very informative. I remain unconvinced that what is bowdlerized in my version it is anywhere near as important as you feel it is.
But then, I’m a US citizen- and we’re the ones with all the non-sports wars going on.
-mole
The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory
OK, guys – knock off the love-tapping or I’ll buy the two of you an Amulet of Mara.
A bit off-to-the-side but very much relevant to any “what can’t special forces do” discussion: James Joyner channels Major General John Toolan. Pretty much none of this stuff is amenable to solution by special forces of any nation, unless they’ve also taken to wearing their underwear outside their tights.
I’d add that Afghanistan will rely on the US for air defense, C3I, a lot of its logistics and, of course, pots of funding. Pretty much where Iraq was before it kicked the US out, true – and Iraq has survived, sorta, kinda, so far…
But as Iraq also taught us – none of that shit’s worth squat if there’s no locally political solution. Again, SOF aren’t renowned for their diplo-skills.
…the edits I’m afraid. I think I understand what you mean, but I don’t agree. I know it isn’t very tactful to say, but my view is that writing that doesn’t teach the reader something is something of a waste and says that the writer primarily values the reader as an audience, not as a group of people to be engaged. I’m sorry to continue to be harsh on Matt’s writing (particularly given that I am very reticent to devote the time to writing pieces of my own anymore), but this seems to me to have been a political piece, treading a familiar path at the expense of the potential of greater understanding. As a reader, I find that a lot more troubling than lack of tact. Something that makes me think, that’s precious – something that doesn’t, that says that it was about the writer, not about me and the writer.
That was probably a deeper plumbing of my quite cynical, battered by experience, inner thought processes than you really needed.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
eom
…I believe good dialogue to be collaborative. That requires effort and it means that the effort has to be roughly equivalent such that each party contributing gets something out of it roughly commensurate with what they invest. For me, that means more than saying why a given pol is bad – it’s a given they’re bad – I want to know about the implications, the details, the things I haven’t seen and don’t presently know. If I have to agree or disagree with someone’s political position to get something out of it, that says something pretty bad about the state of politics and why we engage in dialogue.
Not sure that that made any more sense, but I do hope it was at least tactful…
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
We’ve barely started to date.
Not least, I have to get less bitchy.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
but most of the people I hear now are screamers,
I’m not talking about this site or this thread in particular below.
____________________________________________________________________
Information or arguments delivered clearly and without too much “heat-static” or self-importance is what makes me think and teaches me a lot.
Usually I either ignore the hot side-conversation-putdown self-puffup unless it’s part of a pretty powerful argument, or I just stop reading.
I used to work in IT disaster recovery at a large, very nasty, investment bank where every other phrase was “fucking moron”.
My job had a lot of picking up the pieces after nobody listened.
That’s my cynical experience, different from yours.
The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory
eom.
The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory
for all of us.
…The site has seen better days and the domain name, which still retains significant value – carrying a 6 out of 10 Google page rank for what it’s worth – could do someone or some group great in the upcoming general election and moving forward.
The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory
Blogging traffic across the board is down over the last couple of years as a few mega-sites vacuum up all the traffic the smaller fish used to get. That’s why I’m very aware that if The Agonist is not only to survive as our playground at all but to grow we need quality, reliable diary content – in quantity – every single day. (Also, we need modern wysiwyg diary editing and commenting, and easier registration that even so doesn’t allow in tons of spambots – we’re working on it, guys.)
Please do not comment on my posts any further. I have no desire to parse relevance from your asshattery. Apparently you think you’re King Shit of Fuck Mountain here.
I don’t care.
Really.
HAND.
but it’s too early for this bullshit.
I’m done with him.
CFLF’s traffic also dipped due to sporadic posting over the years, especially post-Obama. For whatever reason we couldn’t seem to sustain the momentum of regular content production after Kyle Moore (who did the bulk of posting) left, following the ’08 contest. There were several times where one of us would attempt to restart the engines, but obviously all for naught.
…but I am someone who apparently knows a lot more about this specific subject than you. I’m sure there are lots of subjects that you know a lot more about than I that I would like to know about.
What I am saying to you in my rather ruminating, way too little sleep way (reflecting back on a trajectory of discourse in this venue that goes back a decade) is that this forum is likely somewhat different from others you have been part of, in that you have to be even more a part of it – it isn’t ideally a place to talk at people (though we certainly all do that from time to time), one has to talk with them. In an environment where everyone is freely giving of their time that means that you have to engage them such that they benefit from the time they put into it.
I’m sorry, but the benefit wasn’t clear to me in your initial piece and, if I can offer a gentle broader critique, that has frequently been somewhat the case from some the new folks who have come on board with more purely political posts. I’m deeply appreciative of the effort folks put into trying to build a new vision, my point is that in my opinion what what makes this place different and has sustained the community over a long period is the informed give and take and that can be difficult for new folks to see without someone specifically pointing it out. I could pretend that there was some long soapbox Socrates point to my initial post, but really you just pissed me off – on this specific issue, I was around when Christ [or Bob Fowler - inside joke] was a corporal. In my opinion, if you want to thrive here you’re going to have to deal with critical people like me – I may be an asshole about it but I was honest enough and willing enough to take the time to give you feedback I think you’ll benefit from. What next, up to you. Best of luck.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
I won’t tolerate them directed at my staff but I won’t tolerate them directed at the membership either. Enough. There’s always a settling in period and the Agonist regulars are notorious for giving newbs a hard time but this has gone too far. Matt, you need to apologise for the name calling.
apologize for escalating a silly tiff beyond all reasonable boundaries.
I look forward to your contributions.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
and I was thinking that after I got the chores done…, cleaning up the horse manure…, and a few cold beers…, that I could get back here and really stir the shit…, by jumping right in betweixt the two of you’s. Maybe next weekend : )
Write on partners.
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