The inevitable response

It didn't take long for Harper's Bush-lite rhetoric to be met with a similar response to the one received in the U.S., as CBC reports on relatives of Canadian casualties from Afghanistan who want to see the mission properly debated:

Cpl. Jamie Murphy died in a suicide bomb attack near Kabul in January 2004. Two years later, Murphy's mother says his death still haunts her...

She said memories of her son's death are revived whenever she hears of new casualties.

"It is really hard to know that there's other guys and families in the same situation that we're in, and we are still in it, and it will never go away. Never."...

Skeffington's son, Dale Newbury, is a military mechanic who served in Afghanistan last year and is scheduled to head back to Kandahar in August.

More than 2,000 Canadians will be deployed near Kandahar this year, but Skeffington thinks Canada should instead be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan...

"They did go at first for peace and now it's war. I really don't agree with them being there. It's our sons and daughters."

In keeping with the U.S. experience, I suppose this is the cue for Harper and his apologists to claim they have a much better idea what's best Canadian military personnel than would some mere close relative of troops currently in Afghanistan. The question now is whether we'll pay more attention to the people closest to the issue, or whether our own coverage (like that in the U.S.) will be dominated by claims that war is good, and questioning the war bad, for those who fight it.