On posturing

The media spin on the Cons' Afghanistan posturing has been so painful over the past couple of days it's hard to know where to start in critiquing it. But for a relatively easy target, one could do worse than the Globe and Mail's coverage today:

The federal government moved yesterday to extend Canada's military mission in Afghanistan to 2011, prompting both the Conservatives and the Opposition Liberals to descend into political posturing that could define a coming election campaign...

Although both the Tories and the Liberals pledged an interest in co-operating on the issue, it took only a few hours before MPs began trading abrasive rhetoric.

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan accused the Liberals of sympathizing with the Taliban when he was asked about the policy of Canadian soldiers transferring captured prisoners into Afghan hands.

"What we will not do is what the agent for the Taliban intelligence agency wants us to do over here, which is release to them information on detailed operations in the field," he said in the House of Commons.

Although the Liberals were less caustic, they were nonetheless steadfast in rejecting the idea of a combat extension.

"We have a motion that we cannot accept today," Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion told reporters in British Columbia. "We'll come with our own proposal next week and we'll let Parliament do its job."...

Mr. Dion said his party "is never afraid" of an election, but that his priority was to make Parliament work.

Mr. Van Loan also said the government wants to work with the Liberals.

"The government does not believe the mission in Afghanistan should be a partisan political issue," he said. "It is an issue that transcends partisan interests. Too much is at stake."

But he also attacked the Liberals for wanting to avoid combat.

"You cannot leave our troops as sitting ducks in the field to be killed by the enemy in a dangerous part of that country."...

Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said that while the government's motion suggests a willingness to compromise, Mr. Van Loan's partisan remarks leave him pessimistic the two parties can come together.

"We are anxious to work with the government to find a respectable, honourable compromise that serves the national interest. But you can't go into the House of Commons and be told you're the Taliban information service."

In sum, the actual messages between the Cons and the Libs were fairly clear. Van Loan, while claiming to want to cooperate, repeatedly accused the Libs of being Taliban sympathizers who want to see Canadian soldiers killed; in response, the Libs registered their vague disapproval of the Cons' stance, as well as far too much willingness to play along with Harper's motion, without trying to cast personal aspersions.

From my standpoint, it would make sense to draw a strong distinction between those two strategies. But as far as the Globe is concerned, the Libs' mere disagreement with the Cons' policy choices is reason to lump both parties together in terms of "posturing" and "abrasive rhetoric" - with only the slightest allowance that their failing to accuse the Cons of being in league with the Taliban might make them "less caustic".

If there's any lesson the Libs should be taking from this kind of coverage, it's that their usual strategy of planning to offer a position at some point in the future is seldom worthwhile: better to actually take a stance which allows them to respond with some strength to shape their side of the message, rather than having the media lazily lump them in with the theme set by the Cons due to their own failure to provide anything of substance. And in a later post I'll deal with the folly that both the Libs and some in the media have shown in thinking that any attempt to negotiate amendments to the wording of the Cons' motion is worth bothering with.

But that doesn't let the Globe or other media outlets off the hook for drawing exactly the kind of false equivalency that allows the Cons to avoid answering for their consistent efforts to eliminate any real debate about Afghanistan in favour of baseless personal attacks. And the less the media is willing to single out the Cons for much-deserved criticism, the more likely it'll be to have to deal with even more stonewalling and falsehoods from the Cons in the future.

Update: pogge has more.