You (apparently) can't handle the truth!

As was depressingly predictable, the current Canadian government has conceded that their public can't stomach what actually needs to happen in Afghanistan, and from here on they will sugarcoat our mission accordingly.

The mantra almost from the time the Conservatives took office had beent [sic] that Canada had a responsibility to ensure Afghanistan didn't revert to the status of a failed state that could serve as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against North America.

That rang hollow in the ears of many Canadians, a fact that Harper has apparently come to appreciate.

"What we've actually found is: when you argue our self interest, that's actually less appealing to Canadian public opinion than the argument that we are actually concretely helping the Afghan people with their lives," he told a panel discussion of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, an American policy group, in Bucharest. [my emphasis]

It didn't help that former defence minister Gordon O'Connor once told an Edmonton audience that our presence in Afghanistan was about retribution for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. (CTV News 7 April 2008)

I kept that last bit because I like it, being true and all, but God forbid anybody should say such a thing. Since then of course our reasons for being there have blurred a bit, something the big boys have obviously noticed.

The bold section I delineated underscores the whole problem of the Western democracies: we no longer (if we ever did) have any idea of our self-interest, let alone what might be in it, even less the intestinal fortitude to do what might be necessary to further or protect it.

Not a lot else really to say about that at the moment, but I thought it was an excellent example of why very little ever really gets done without a huge hue and cry from various self-interested groups (if it gets done at all). Canada has no sense of it's own direction, purpose, identity, etc., so we're hijacked by any mouthy crew with an agenda.

It also necessitates that our government insult our intelligence with pap, because that's all the chattering classes can take. There's no room for independent thought in politics and little in the major media outlets, but it's my self-appointed job to pick up that slack for them. As the fancy strikes me of course...