An Attempt to Remove All Reminders of Stephen Harper's War

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

On June 3, 2008; Canada's then Ambassador to Afghanistan, Arif Lalani, was interviewed on a U.S. radio program via telephone.

What the morning talk show host, Renee Montagne, wanted to know was why Canada was suffering a disproportionate number of losses in the war. The highest ratio of all NATO forces.

Whenever you hear that a NATO soldier has been killed in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar, it's probably a Canadian soldier. Canada only has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan but they are fighting in one of the most dangerous regions of the country. So while Canadian troops make up only a small fraction of NATO forces, they've suffered the highest number of fatalities proportionately. (1)

Soon after being elected in January of 2006, Stephen Harper made Afghanistan his first official visit anywhere as prime minister. There he gave his now infamous "cut and run" speech, which was simply a scaled down version of one that George Bush had presented at the U.S. Naval Academy* a year before.

"You can't lead from the bleachers. I want Canada to be a leader," Harper told about 1,000 troops at the Kandahar airfield base the day after he arrived on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan. "Your work is about more than just defending Canada's national interests. Your work is also about demonstrating an international leadership role for our country."

"There will be some who want to cut and run, but cutting and running is not my way and it's not the Canadian way," he said, to a round of applause. "We don't make a commitment and then run away at the first sign of trouble. We don't and we will not, as long as I'm leading this country." (2)

Up to that time, 10 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat had been killed, and 26 Canadian soldiers had been injured. But that was about to change. To impress George Bush, Stephen Harper sent our men and women into the most dangerous areas of battle. According to Rick Hillier: "It was Stephen Harper's decision to move Canadian troops from Kabul and reposition them in southern Kandahar province, where they are now at much more danger of being killed by roadside bombs." (3)

And speeches were not the only thing Harper borrowed from his mentor. He also made the decision to discontinue flying the flag at half mast as a show of respect to fallen soldiers, and forbid the media from capturing for history, the images of flag draped coffins.

"Look, don't bring the Airbus in, or if you bring the plane in, turn it away from the cameras so that people can't see the bodies coming off, or do it after dark, or do it down behind the hangars, or just bar everybody from it," Hillier quotes the PMO staffers as saying. "They clearly didn't want that picture of the flag-draped coffin on the news."It is Canadian military policy that every Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan will be honoured as a war hero. Harper's disrespect for soldiers was the last straw for Hillier and prompted his early retirement at the age of 53. (4)

Harper expected backlash for this decision, from the media that he had already silenced, but was unprepared for the reaction of Canadians, especially from military families.

Nothing "casual" About Our Losses

Last week Canada revealed itself once again as a truly unique nation. In a world where dead warriors are commonplace and taken for granted, this country stopped, paid attention, lowered the flags and gave full military honours to four soldiers, who died inexplicably and tragically at the hands of our allies. (Lesley Hughes, April 2002)

Hughes was referring to the "friendly fire" deaths of four Canadian soldiers, the first reports of our country's losses in this war. And a nation mourned. Bill Leger, the father of Sgt. Marc Leger, spoke in reference to Stephen Harper's 2006 decision to ban the media from covering the flag draped coffins of fallen soldiers:

"... in 2002 it was a great thing for us to have the media there. It was something that we felt at that time, and still feel the same way, that it was a Canadian thing. It was something that we wanted to show all Canadians what the cost of their liberty is. It's nothing else but that. And it's still heart-warming to see the faces and everything else when people were lined up on the 401, in 2002, all the way from Trenton to Toronto. They wanted to be there. They had to be there. I was told that often, over and over again. And those are the memories that I have, and those are the things that I carry with me all my life." (5)

And Leger's mother was interviewed more recently:

Ask Claire Leger what the past decade has meant to her, and she'll tell you a story of abiding sorrow ... After the tragedy, Leger and her husband Richard planted four small Canadian flags in the garden of their home near Ottawa, in memory of Marc and his comrades, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, 24; Pte. Richard Green, 21 and Pte. Nathan Smith, 26.

Seven years later, the Legers haven't sought ''closure'' from their grief. As the war years have ticked by they've maintained a steady vigil, dutifully marking the death of every Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. ''Every time I have to go put a little flag in our garden, it feels like I'm burying our son all over again,'' she says. ''I send a card to every family that loses a soldier and I often get a card back, with a picture of their son or daughter.''''There's less and less attention paid to those who are killed and it's heartbreaking to me,'' says Leger. ''I wish I could share with other families the support we had when Marc died. We were embraced by Canadians. That's what kept me going - I felt people actually cared.''Leger is a fierce critic of what she considers an unwinnable war, and says Canada's participation has made us ''puppets'' of the Americans. (6)

Stephen Harper then did an about face, finding a way to make himself look good, and with the help of the ad firm Hill and Knowlton, quickly turned the war into a giant photo-op. Canada had not witnessed a propaganda campaign of this magnitude since the last world war. But it was not about "King and Country" this time, it was about Stephen Harper and ... well ... Stephen Harper.

His first defense minister, Gordon O'Connor had been an employee of H&K, lobbying for military contracts. In the United States, the ad firm was well known for using dirty tricks to sell wars:

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. (7)

Canadians were no longer going to oppose the war. Belligerent nationalism would reign supreme, and they were going to instead cheer from the bleachers. Rah, rah, rah!

And what did they use to whip us into a frenzy?

Hill & Knowlton's yellow ribbon campaign [my emphasis] to whip up support for "our" troops, which followed their orchestration of Nayirah's phony "incubator" testimony, was a public relations masterpiece. The claim that satellite photos revealed that Iraq had troops poised to strike Saudi Arabia was also fabricated by the PR firm. Hill & Knowlton was paid between $12 million (as reported two years later on "60 Minutes") and $20 million (as reported on "20/20") for "services rendered." The group fronting the money? Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a phony "human rights agency" set up and funded entirely by Kuwait's emirocracy to promote its interests in the U.S. (8)

So in Canada, H & K not only had one of their own (O'Connor) as Minister of Defense, deciding which of their clients got what military contracts; they were also able to sell a yellow ribbon campaign that had been mothballed, to a country not known for outward displays of such aggression.

And to make sure that everyone stayed on message, Stephen Harper completely controlled the media, by completely controlling that message.

The Harper government used a pervasive message-control tool to persuade Canadians their foremost purpose in Afghanistan was building schools and fostering democracy rather than waging a war that was turning bloodier by the day.

An investigation by The Canadian Press shows the Conservatives systematically drafted “Message Event Proposals” as part of a quiet campaign to persuade Canadians their country was primarily engaged in development work to rebuild a shattered nation rather than hunting down and killing an emboldened insurgency.The government used MEPs literally to script the words it wanted to hear from the mouths of its top diplomats, aid workers and cabinet ministers in 2007-2008 to divert public attention from the soaring double-digit death toll of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. (9)

And when reports began to surface as early as 2007, that Canadians could be charged with war crimes:

WASHINGTON–Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office used a "6,000-mile screwdriver" to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs official who was then based in Kabul. The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, told the Toronto Star that Harper's office in Ottawa "scripted and fed" the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse "at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero."

"It was highly unusual. I was told this was the titanic issue for Prime Minister Harper and that every single statement that went out needed to be cleared by him personally ... [my emphasis]" (10)

In February, the Hill Times reported on the suffering of our men and women who saw service in Afghanistan:

More than 6,000 Canadian Forces members and discharged veterans who are receiving physical or psychiatric disability benefits from Veterans Affairs Canada have either served in Afghanistan or have a disability that has been related to their service in Afghanistan, the department says. The majority of the soldiers receiving benefits are likely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or war-related psychiatric conditions, according to global figures the department and the Canadian Forces provided The Hill Times. They also do not appear to be included in Afghanistan combat or non-combat casualty figures the Canadian Forces compiled, even though the veterans and serving members who have psychiatric conditions likely have them as a result of serving in the Afghan war. (11)

And when this report came out, Harper's head media cheerleader, Jane Taber, turned it into a hyper-partisan sideshow. I have never been so ashamed.

So given Stephen Harper's callous disregard for human life, and anal control of the media, should we be surprised to learn that he is now attacking our veterans? Should we be surprised to learn that he has fired the man advocating for them? Or should we be surprised to learn that he has forbidden our broken soldiers from telling their stories?

A half dozen Afghan war veterans who wanted to talk about how their injuries affected their lives were told by senior military staff they were not to attend a press conference held earlier this week by Veterans Ombudsman Pat Stogran. The instructions come as the debate over how injured veterans are being treated reached a highpoint in Ottawa earlier this week, when Stogran held a news conference and criticized Veterans Affairs Canada and the government for not doing enough for the country's injured military personnel. Other veterans, no longer serving in the Canadian Forces, also spoke out at the conference about the failure of government to provide for them. (12)

Are you mad yet? Are you ashamed? Are you Canadian?

This may have been Stephen Harper's War when he changed our direction from Peacekeepers to Peacemakers, but this is now our war, as we go into battle against a government who would allow our veterans to be treated like this.

Are you in?

Footnotes:

George Bush (April 2005): "Some are calling for a deadline for withdrawal. Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops are sincere — but I believe they're sincerely wrong. Pulling our troops out before they've achieved their purpose is not a plan for victory. Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a signal to our enemies — that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends... To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)"

Sources:

1. Canada Bears Brunt of Fighting in South Afghanistan, Interview with Arif Lalani, National Public Radio, June 3, 2008

2. Canada committed to Afghan mission, Harper tells troops, CBC News, March 13, 2006

3. A Soldier First, By Rick Hillier, Harper Collins Publishers, 2009, ISBN - 13:9781554684915

4. General Rick Hillier criticizes Stephen Harper, Lilith News, October 20, 2009

5. Canadian Government Imitates Bush Regime: Dishonors Their War Dead Too, Afraid To Let The Public See The Cost Of Empire, Associated Press, April 26, 2006

6. Afghanistan war: Canada's defining event of past decade, By Richard Foot, Canwest News, 2009

7. How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf, Center for Media and Democracy

8. How Bush Sr. Sold The Bombing Of Iraq, by Mitchel Cohen, December 28, 2002

9. Ottawa’s Afghanistan message: It’s development, not war, Government scripts told top diplomats how to frame the mission, Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press, June 7, 2010

10. PMO issued instructions on denying abuse in '07: Former NATO official says response to reports was 'scripted' in Ottawa, By Mitch Potter Washington Bureau, November 22, 2009

11. Afghanistan veterans on disability now 6,000 Forces, Veterans Affairs reluctant to disclose casualty records after eight years of war, By Tim Naumetz, the Hill Times, February 8, 2010

12. Wounded vets claim they were muzzled by brass: Soldiers were willing to discuss injuries, but steered away from ombudsman's press conference, By David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen, August 21, 2010

Family Squabbles With a Twist: Arthur and Peter Kent

I've posted on the two Kent brothers recently, focusing in part on how different they are.

Arthur Kent is a seasoned journalist who has broken ties with the corporate media, so can report on issues more honestly and openly.

Peter Kent, on the other hand is a true, blue Reformer, and his actions against Lesley Hughes revealed that he had shed any credibility he might have once had as a journalist.

Arthur Kent has also been openly critical of the Harper government for supporting the corrupt Karzai regime, among other things. And he has warned our ambassadors in the past about the drug trade in Afghanistan.

They just refused to listen and Harper forbid them from speaking of anything nasty

AS KABUL FELL, DIPLOMAT TOOK TAINTED KARZAI’S KEEPSAKES
Ambassador Covered Up Cracks In The Regime
Arthur Kent
November 24, 2009

But Arif Lalani and his superiors in Canada’s Conservative government were staunch in their support for Karzai - and busy staunching unflattering facts about his ministries and security services, as has now been confirmed by a Foreign Affairs whistleblower.

Richard Colvin, a senior field investigator who went on to serve as Lalani’s number two at the Canadian Embassy, has accused officials including Lalani and David Mulroney, the former head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Afghan task force, of censoring his reports about the abuse of prisoners transferred by Canadian troops to the Karzai regime’s security services ....

Jane Taber now discusses this family squabble in the Globe. Well worth a read.

Prorogation riles many Canadians - and splits the Kent family
Jane Taber
January 15, 2009

Peter Kent isn’t feeling the love from his little brother these days.

Arthur is the brother in question – an award-winning foreign correspondent, whose reporting (and good looks) during the first Iraq war earned him the nickname the “Scud Stud.”

Arthur Kent is based in Calgary. Besides making documentaries, he has of late been writing thoughtful but extremely pointed pieces critical of Stephen Harper and his government’s decision to shut down Parliament. He says the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament to try to contain the damage from the fghan detainee inquiry ....

When Canada Was a Democracy we Were Able to Ask Questions

What happened to us? I mean seriously, what happened to us?

I came of age in the 1960's and we questioned everything. This questioning gave rise to the civil rights movement and a new approach to looking at the world.

But we've now gone back to the 1950's, where we believe everything our government tells us, even when much of it is absolutely ridiculous; and allow them to make decisions for us, simply because we're obviously too lazy to make them for ourselves.

Even the seemingly progressive thinking George Stroumboulopoulos, is framing his questions to George Galloway in the video above, with the usual rhetoric. In my day Stroumboulopoulos would have been considered a stooge, yet he's now one of the more enlightened in the media.

Now don't get me wrong. I like George. He's certainly a breath of fresh air compared to people like Rex Murphy, but he's got to do better than this.

When Jason Kenney banned George Galloway from visiting Canada, he claimed it was because he sent aid to Palestine, and they are in his estimation terrorists. Yet Kenney spoke at a rally of the Mujahedeen Khalq. When it was pointed out to him that they were on Canada's Terrorist list, he shrugged it off, claiming not to know.

I think he banned Galloway because he spoke out against the war and our involvement in it. This is a government that does not allow dissent. You're with them or against them. If you question the war, you're a 'Taliban dupe'. If you question Israeli aggression, you're anti-Semitic.

Journalist and former CBC personality Lesley Hughes learned this the hard way.

In April 2002, after hearing of the deaths of 4 Canadian soldiers, as a result of so-called 'friendly fire', she sat at her computer and wrote a column encouraging Canadians to seek the truth about our involvement in Afghanistan.

At the time, her column reflected the feelings of many Canadians. We were angry and grief stricken and started looking for answers. Yet six years after this piece was written, born again Reformer Peter Kent, pounced on it; trying to paint Hughes as not only anti-Semitic, but a nut for listening to experts, who had many questions about this so-called 'war on terror'.

Because of Kent's actions and his close ties to the entertainment industry, formally known as the Canadian media, (He was an executive at CanWest Global) the press went nuts. Hughes had been running as a Liberal in the 2008 election, but because of Kent's insanity, she not only was removed from the race, but lost her career in the process.

And all because she wanted us to seek the truth. Oh, the horror!

The irony of course is that, Kent's brother, Arthur, is very outspoken on Afghanistan. In fact, he repeatedly warned this government that they were propping up the corrupt Karzai regime, when it had no legitimacy in that country. He also warned our ambassador about the drug trade, and Karzai's involvement in it; and helped with a video 'Freedom From War'. Is he a 'Taliban dupe'? Hardly.

We are pouring billions and billions of dollars into this war. Money that we don't have, but have to borrow. And we are losing too many of our soldiers. When are we going to start asking questions?

We have got to start to RETHINK AFGHANISTAN!

Afghanistan and the Drug Trade. Who Are we Protecting?

When the story first broke about former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier leaving sensitive NATO documents in the apartment of a girlfriend, the media became focused on the sexy side of the story, ignoring most of the important issues. Like what was in the documents, and why is he taking them home?

But the woman in question, Julie Couillard, revealed something else that Bernier had told her, stating on national television that Maxime had said “the war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with building democracy in that country but has to do with the global control of the opium trade. It’s a drug war.”... "the War In Afghanistan was about the control of the global opium trade, not democracy".

According to a United Nations report in 2006:

UN anti-narcotics chief calls for wide-spectrum action against Afghan opium production

Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, is already a “narco-economy” and risks becoming a “narco-state,” with drug production its largest employer, the top United Nations drugs and crime fighter warned today.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa called for a wide range of international action to curb production, trafficking, demand and accompanying corruption, terming the reduction of heroin demand “the mother of all drug control challenges.”

“Afghanistan has already become a narco-economy in the sense that drugs are now Afghanistan’s largest employer, income generator, source of capital, export and foreign investment,” UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa told a ministerial conference in Moscow on drug trafficking routes from the country. “It has become a narco-society in the sense that many Afghans are now hooked on the drug money and now it risks becoming a narco-state,” he added.

“Pyramids of protection now connect the upper world of the Afghan establishment to the underworld of Afghan mafias.”

Seasoned journalist Arthur Kent, shown in the video above, is also concerned with the drug trade and made his concerns known to our ambassador in Afghanistan, Arif Lalani; when he first arrived. He told him that there members of the Karzai government involved in the illegal drug trade, but his warnings fell on deaf ears. Now remember, Arthur Kent is the brother of Reform-Conservative Peter Kent, so this is not a partisan issue.

The New York Times recently reported on the issue, but are suggesting that the Taliban are the only ones involved and that the drug trade is supporting their forces.

WASHINGTON — The United States-led counter narcotics effort in Afghanistan, viewed as critical to halting the flow of funds to the Taliban and curtailing corruption, lacks a long-term strategy, clear objectives and a plan for handing over responsibility to Afghans, the State Department inspector general said in a report released Wednesday.

The report said that military and civilian anti drug programs lacked clearly delineated roles, and that civilian contracts for counter narcotics work were poorly written and largely supervised from thousands of miles away.

We learn that there are new anti-drug initiatives, but are they really working? This from the Associated Press on December 24, 2009: US anti-drug effort in Afghanistan criticized
Afghanistan produces roughly 90 percent of the world's illicit opium. By MATTHEW LEE

WASHINGTON — The State Department's internal watchdog on Wednesday criticized the agency's nearly $2 billion anti-drug effort in Afghanistan for poor oversight and lack of a long-term strategy. The department's inspector general said the Afghanistan counter-narcotics program is hampered by too few personnel and rampant corruption among Afghan officials.

The inspector general's report also noted that despite a consensus among U.S. agencies that eradicating poppy fields is essential, the focus has shifted to interdiction of drug organizations and alternative crop projects ....

One more reason to RETHINK AFGHANISTAN!

Did Canada's Ambassador to Afghanistan Know About the Widespread Corruption?

On the first of November, an article appeared in the New York Times entitled: With Karzai, U.S. Faces Weak Partner in Time of War

WASHINGTON — With the White House’s reluctant embrace on Sunday of Hamid Karzai as the winner of Afghanistan’s suddenly moot presidential runoff, President Obama now faces a new complication: enabling a badly tarnished partner to regain enough legitimacy to help the United States find the way out of an eight-year-old war.

It will not be easy. As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai’s forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud (aka: Karl Rove does Afghanistan) to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?

Veteran journalist Arthur Kent (shown in the above video) raises similar concerns about Canada's promotion of this corrupt government, and lays at least some of the blame on our former ambassador to Afghanistan, Arif Lalani:

He was the smooth-talking Western ambassador who gladly accepted trinkets and praise from the enfeebled president of Afghanistan.

Indeed when Canada’s Arif Lalani was marking the end of his Kabul posting on July 31, 2008, he made sure that a Canadian photographer was on hand at the presidential palace to snap him receiving a medal from a gushing Hamid Karzai.

By that time most other foreign governments were distancing themselves from Karzai’s teetering regime.

Western diplomats, including Canadians, were advising their political masters to discipline Karzai and his ministers, or risk seeing the government's tenuous legitimacy collapse completely.

But Arif Lalani and his superiors in Canada’s Conservative government were staunch in their support for Karzai - and busy staunching unflattering facts about his ministries and security services, as has now been confirmed by a Foreign Affairs whistleblower. (Meaning Richard Colvin)

The Canadian Press also reported that the Harper government personally backed a man who had a reputation for torturous acts. This would of course have put our troops in even more danger. Those same troops that Harper and his gang of thugs are now trying to hide behind.

OTTAWA–A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn't defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government.

The revelation about Asadullah Khalid, who stayed on as governor two years after concerns about his notorious reputation were raised, opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.

So is is possible they didn't know?

That seems highly unlikely, given their tight control on communications. But Arthur Kent also reveals that he interviewed Lalani soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, and was very clear about what was going on. And yet we continued to give the Karzai government millions of dollars in 'aid' without any records of what he was doing with our money. This is unacceptable.

This reporter’s meeting with Ambassador Arif Lalani in May of 2007 revealed much about the man and his remit from the Harper government. He was new to Kabul, and responded to my request for an interview by suggesting that we meet for tea.

I invited him to the Serena Hotel, which at that time had not yet been targeted by Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen.

At first, Lalani was all questions. But gradually, he became pensive and aloof. He clearly didn’t enjoy hearing about the exploits of the regime’s rogue Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet, or the harrowing experiences of Canadian law enforcement advisers, who were trying to trace police funding under Interior Minister Zarar Muqbul.

I told him about the heroin trafficking scandal at Kabul Airport, just down the road. And was he aware that the Pentagon was filling the pockets of Hamid Wardak, the son of the regime’s defence minister, with contracts for his father’s Afghan National Army?

It's definitely time to RETHINK AFGHANISTAN!