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.

Ramp ceremony in Khandahar, AfghanistanA 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’.

Harper should have been this clear with the Canadian people a long time ago. Instead he waits until he’s on a foreign stage to make his pronouncements. Attempts by the Opposition parties over the years we’ve been involved in Afghanistan to get some admission by the Harper government that this war would not be ‘won’ in the conventional sense has been met with various rhetoric, from calling them defeatists, lacking support for the troops and even being Taliban supporters.

He should have been crystal clear to Canadians and to the troops who are fighting this war. Winning would not be the surrender of the Taliban and their acceptance of western democracy in their war ravaged country. Winning would be NATO troops being there in numbers large enough and long enough for Afghans to have a stable form of government and enough well trained security forces to protect their own people.

Harper has failed to realize the Canadian people are not stupid, we can figure out that as long as forces like the Taliban and Al Queda can operate with impunity that there is a threat to western countries. The lack of honesty by the government has led many to view the work of our troops and the losses as being in vain.

There has been areas of progress in Afghanistan and now that at least one NATO country, the United States, has made Afghanistan the focus it should have been a long time ago, there is the possibility of more progress with more boots on the ground. More NATO countries need to step to the plate and do more. The effort needs to be more focused on the end game, the establishment of security and the building of Afghan forces and infrastructure.

Retired Major-General Lewis Mackenzie writes in today’s Globe & Mail:

I have repeated ad nauseam that “victory” for the NATO forces will be our departure from Afghanistan with an Afghan security force capable of dealing with a much reduced counterinsurgency threat. Many nations are functioning today with insurgents trying to disrupt their populations with little effect while life and business continue as usual: Spain/ETA, Colombia/FARC and Peru/Shining Path provide at least three convincing examples.

Acknowledging that the Afghan insurgency will never be defeated in the near term is merely reality. But it can be made irrelevant, and must be. Canada has played, and will continue to play, more of a role than most in this undertaking.

Our troops have historically and even today managed to punch above their weight when given a mission to do. They pour their heart and soul into doing what their country asks of them. The absolute least we should demand of the governments who send them on those missions is honesty about the endgoal of their mission. No Canadian soldier should ever die in vain.

The wife of Warrant Officer Dennis Brown, one of the soldiers returning tomorrow, called on the government on Wednesday to not give up on the mission:

“We may not be able to beat the Taliban. There’s lots of things in our life we can’t beat. … But do you give up? Do you stop? Absolutely not,” Mishelle Brown said. “One person can’t make a difference. But if we band together, we can.”

Ms. Brown was responding to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent comments on CNN that Canadian and other foreign armies can’t beat the Taliban.

The government needs to set the goal clearly in view and we should stay the course until the goal is met. Failing to do so, will have not only Canada’s soldiers dying in vain but those of our allies.

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