Tomorrow, at about 2pm, a plane carrying the remains of three fallen Canadians will touch down in Trenton, ON. They were killed in Afghanistan late Tuesday by a roadside bomb as they returned from dismantling another roadside bomb. With great ceremony and dignity the caskets will be borne to waiting hearsts and family watched from a respectful distance by the press and the public.

A motorcade will form, containing the hearses, the families, military escorts and eventually police. The motorcade will travel the portion of Canada’s busiest highway known as the Highway of Heroes where Canadians will turn out on bridges along the route to show their respects to these brave men who went to this far off land in the belief they could make a difference.

Last week during an interview on CNN Stephen Harper, as he is so want to pontificate, pronounced the Afghanistan war unwinnable. On the face of that statement, it must have really left ours and other troops wondering just what the hell they are doing there. Part of the problem is that Harper was so busy trying to be a big man on stage that he didn’t give much thought to what he had to say.

If the definition of “winning” is based on the terms of a conventional war, he’s right. Afghanistan, like Iraq, are not conventional wars. They are wars against an enemy that is rather loosely definied and clearly not organized enough to fight in conventional terms. Unconventional wars aka insurgencies demand a different definition of ‘winning’. Read the rest of this entry »