Building on successes

The NDP has already won plenty of positive press for its stance on Afghanistan - with Barbara Yaffe's column today making for the most recent example. But based on a new push today, it looks like the NDP's strategy to date has only been the start of a serious challenge to the Cons' message about Canada's combat role.

Let's start with the highlights from Yaffe:

New Democrats, crowded on the political left by Liberals and Greens, are distinguishing themselves with a bold, common-sense position on Canada's Afghanistan mission...

New Democrats, alone, have drawn a line in the sand, insisting the mission, as it's being carried out, is deeply flawed and that Canadian troops should come home. (Google: "Commons, standing committee, defence, Afghanistan.")

The party details a logical, realistic position in an 11-page dissenting opinion to a June 18 report on the deployment by the Commons committee. It followed several months of hearings...

The NDP report notes that many other NATO countries have expressed a reluctance to partake militarily.

Without any clear objectives being debated and a consensus emerging as to what is to be achieved, "Canada has wandered into an international conflict in the middle of Central Asia with little control over the direction of the mission, or with much influence on its strategy."

The NDP's blunt conclusion is one that is mighty hard to refute.

While that kind of positive press is well and good, it can never hurt to provide some added support for one's position. And Jack Layton is pushing for Canada to both point out the civilian casualties which have resulted from combat in Afghanistan, and encourage a strategy to reduce the harm now being done to Afghan civilians:

Jack Layton, the federal NDP leader, will call on Stephen Harper today to demand that U.S. and NATO forces cease air strikes in Afghanistan...

Afghan elders and villagers in two regions, in western and northeastern Afghanistan, claimed on Saturday that 133 civilians were killed in recent air strikes. "Canada should lead the way in demanding a halt to these air strikes," Layton told the Star...

Layton plans to speak with Harper today, asking him to instruct Canada's representatives on NATO's North Atlantic Council, which manages NATO's day-to-day operations and meets two or three times a week at NATO headquarters in Brussels, to call for an end to NATO and U.S. aerial bombing.

"The increasing death toll of Afghan civilians is something Canadians don't accept," Layton said. "Across the country people have told me spontaneously that destruction of villages was not what they expected to be part of the Afghan mission in which we're participating."

Now, it doesn't seem particularly likely that the Cons will bother acting on Layton's request. But any failure to do so will call attention to a couple of factors which the Cons likely don't want brought into the public eye.

First, it seems obvious that the Canadian public's level of support for continued combat depends in large part on the particular angle being discussed. And it's hard to imagine an issue which would result in a stronger backlash against the Cons' position than their giving tacit (or worse yet, public) approval to avoidable civilian casualties.

Second, the Cons have staked their entire foreign policy on the premise that Canada should be willing to sacrifice diversity of interaction and multilateralism in exchange for what's supposed to be increased influence with the U.S. and other like-minded countries and entities. But there's a conspicuous lack of evidence that Harper's efforts to echo or even outdo his southern soulmate have actually given Canada the slightest bit of ability to influence the actions of the U.S. or anybody else.

And Layton's call will bring that fact to the forefront. After all, even if the Cons aren't the least bit willing to challenge the status quo, any discussion about whether Canada should attempt to bring up the issue leads naturally to the question of "would they listen even if we asked?"

It may well be that even the Cons would answer "no" in order to avoid pressure to follow Layton's lead. But that answer in particular, in addition to the question in general, can only highlight the implausibility behind the Cons' worldview. And the more attention Layton can direct toward the Cons' own self-delusions, the less likely we'll be to have a Con government in power too much longer.