Canadians in Afghanistan

My friend Christie Blatchford's illuminating stories about her past three weeks in Afghanistan, embedded with the Princes Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry have caused me to think about what Canada is doing there. The PPCLI is Canada's most famous and rightly distinguished regiment, having an outstanding battle record from the First and Second World Wars, and Korea. We have put our best soldiers out there, so if anyone can succeed, they can. But have they? Will they?

Many other Canadians also question our presence there, and the politicians of the left are attempting to make political hay from these doubts.

In her story in the Globe today, Christie recounts how a school in Kandahar was closed for some time as a result of a "night letter" posted on the door by the Taliban, threatening the students and teachers with death if they attended the school. It remained closed until an Afghan National Police post was established next door, at which point the students and teachers felt safe enough to return.

This story makes it clear that Taliban terrorists are still able to operate with impunity in the second largest city in Afghanistan. They have not been eliminated despite years of occupation by a variety of forces, including ours.

My first reservation about our role in Afghanistan has to do with the government we are supporting. The media reports have been filled in the past week with the case of Abdul Rahman, on trial for his life before the official courts of Afghanistan, for the crime of converting to Christianity. It now appears that due to international outrage at his case, Rahman will be found to be insane, and released. We can expect to hear of his murder at private hands soon after, unless he flees the country.

The biggest source of revenue of the Afghan government is heroin. Afghanistan is one of the major world sources of opium, the product from which heroin is made. Should we be supporting a government that kills Christians and supplies the world with heroin?

When I was prosecuting narcotics dealers in Vancouver I thought it made more sense to simply purchase the entire crop of opium poppies in Afghanistan and Burma, and burn it each year. It would be cheaper than all the police and court effort to interdict the heroin supply around the world, and would provide the impoverished countries with the revenue they needed. I still think this is a good idea.

My second reservation relates to the approach being taken to destroy the Taliban.

There is no doubt that the Taliban should be destroyed. Its members cut off the fingers of women wearing nail polish, kill children for attending school, oppress women savagely, and commit numerous murderous crimes against the people. The Taliban is barbaric, primitive, vicious, and fundamentally evil. It and all its members should be destroyed, or the people of Afghanistan will live forever in abject terror as slaves to a psychotic cult.

It should not be forgotten though, that one of the most successful revolutionaries in history, Mao Tse Tung, said that the revolutionary (read terrorist) should be a fish in the sea, swimming invisibly in the school of fish. That is what the Taliban does. Its members live in the Afghan population, and the chances of a PPCLI patrol finding them is poor indeed.

It is only the Afghan people who can eliminate the Taliban. They must rat them out to the occupying forces, who must in turn deal effectively with the information, and protect the informers. In addition, the Afghan government must develop a trained, indigenous Afghan anti-terrorist force to go after the Taliban.

If our role there is to assist the Afghan government to develop its own anti-terrorist forces, then I think we are doing the right thing. If our role is to occupy the country and chase the Taliban with our own forces, I think we are engaged in a futile and never ending task.

If our role is to protect the Afghan population to the end that the people have the confidence to inform on the Taliban, we are doing the right thing. If our role is simple protection, without encouraging the people to get involved in anti-Taliban measures, then we are not doing much that is useful.

I do not support the current clamour for a Parliamentary debate on our mission in Afghanistan. That would be nothing more than a pointless opportunity for the loud Left to cast doubt and demoralization on our efforts. The mission is the government's responsibility. It behooves the government to think about what we are doing in a clear headed way, and to ensure that we are giving the right direction to our military mission.

I hope that the Harper government will remove my doubts.

Explaining Canada's medicare

A new friend of mine, who is distraught over the bureaucratic mishandling of her elderly mother's needs in the Calgary Health Region, asked me for information on how our government monopoly medicare system was established. This is what I wrote to her:

Canada's most socialist province, Saskatchewan, produced Tommy Douglas, who became a socialist premier there. He pushed government medicare, which became the law in the early 60's.

Medical care is a provincial responsibility. Trudeau, whose early writings and conduct make it clear that he was a communist sympathizer, wanted to consolidate power in Ottawa, and more particularly in the Prime Minister's Office. Since the federal government had more taxation revenue than the provinces, a deal was made between Ottawa and the provinces, whereby Ottawa would fund 50% of medicare by payments to the provinces, in return for which the provinces agreed to the Canada Health Act, which gave control of medicare to Ottawa.

Over the years Ottawa has chiseled its way out of the deal, and now funds only 14% of medicare, while still controlling medicare and maintaining the government monopoly by way of the Canada Health Act.

The Liberal Party has positioned itself for a long time as the champion of medicare, and has spread lies and used phony scare tactics to get votes, claiming that the other parties would destroy medicare, and Canadians would die of neglect because they would not be able to afford "American style" medical care.

The fact is that Canadians are dying every day because under government administration our medicare system is providing poorer and poorer service.

Because of the long and relentless campaign by the Liberal party, Canadians have been indoctrinated with the idea that government monopoly medicare is the only way to go. In fact the only other countries in the world that have government monopoly systems like ours are North Korea and Cuba, both of them totalitarian dictatorships.

At present, the Liberals, and NDP both have a dogmatic belief in the government monopoly medicare system. The Conservatives under Harper are stuck with the system for now because Canadians are so brainwashed about it that to make a change would produce hysterical reactions from the media and public.

Fortunately both Quebec and Alberta are working on new systems to improve the service to Canadians combining public and private medicare. It will, however, take a long time for the system to improve.Probably when the baby boomers start needing medical service and find how lousy it is for them, they will wake up to the fact that an alternative system is needed.

Government monopoly medicare is just one of the damaging legacies of the Liberal Party, which is the most corrupt political organization this country has ever seen. It is not just that they are corrupt. They are incompetent too, and have either stolen or utterly wasted billions of taxpayer's dollars in the past 13 years. All of this money, if left in the pockets of the taxpayers, could be used by them to get the health care they want and need, and I think you will see the Conservatives, if given a chance, moving in that direction.

Many arguments are thrown up to preserve the present government monopoly on medicare. One is that a lot of doctors will opt out of working in the public system, because working in a private system will give them better pay, and therefore a private system should not be allowed. I don't think that will happen. The situation we have now is that many Canadian trained doctors leave Canada for the US, because they can earn more there. If the opportunity existed in Canada for them to earn more, I think most of them would stay here, rather than pull up roots to go to the US. We would thus have more doctors, and the current extreme shortage would be alleviated.

Surely all educated and experienced people must realize, if they do any thinking at all, that to add a thick layer of government administration to the delivery of medical services has to add a great deal to the cost of delivering those services.

You have seen the Calgary Health Region office. All the salaries of the people in that large building, which services only Calgary, take away from the dollars available for real health services.

That's the way I see it.

Brian