Pro Patria
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Kate | Thursday, August 18, 2005 |
A Canadian reservist (just home) from Afghanistan.
I guess there will always be those who don’t really want to see what is really going on around them. When I went to the orphanage this morning and dropped off $600 US for the director to purchase a washing machine, some carpets, a couple of fans and a couple of hundred dollars worth of food, I really didn’t feel that I was “bombing the children.” After lunch, when I went to the 6 room school house that we have built with money raised by and from the soldiers of Camp Julien and their families, I didn’t really feel like I had “bombed the schools.” And in a couple of days, when I drop off at a needy mosque the brand new generator that was donated by a thoughtful citizen back in Canada, I probably won’t feel as if I have “bombed the holy places.” When I see the Engineers risk their lives to go out and collect up hundreds of kilograms of mines, RPG 7 rounds, and various other lethal munitions and blow them up, I don’t feel as if we are holding this country back. When the MP’s here on the camp go to the local police stations and provide training on proper search and arrest procedures, I don’t see that as contributing to the problems here. When the Health Services people here go out and provide cross training to the medical staff at the medical facilities near the camp…again I fail to see how we’re the problem.
About the Author: Kate is a freelance commercial and automotive airbrush artist living in Saskatchewan, Canada. She was one of the original guest bloggers at OTB in November 2004 and soon joined the permanent stable, contributing through January 2007.
Eventually, she turned to writing full time at her own blog, small dead animals, which was voted the Best Canadian Blog in the 2004 Weblog Awards and has been generally considered that country's best blog ever since.
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I guess I missed out on just who was saying the U.S. was "the problem" in Afghanistan.
Must not be keeping up with my Canadian antiwar agitprop.
I guess I missed out on just who was saying the U.S. was âthe problemâ in Afghanistan.
Must not be keeping up with my Canadian antiwar agitprop.
Anderson - It would help if you actually clicked on links provided.
Here is what Pro Patria was responding to. It was a comment made on his blog by a poster (Goallll1) who accused him of bombing Afghanistan:
hi
u get for what killing afghans
u came to mi country for osama(ur own creation) but ur doin other activities , leve mi country as soon as possible , don force us to fight against u people as our grand father fight against great-britin & our parents against russian , plz leve us ,
This is all drama created by to billionares families bush-osama .
don wast ur life for politions,if u forget vetnam than stay in mi country for another,
what u done untill now in afghanistan???????????????
ask ur heartbobm on childern
bobm on our holy placess
bobm on schools
we hate the ocopaide forcess in afghanistan if u don leve after election we will fight our freedom fight against u
Now War nO Drama
just leve us
Published By Goallll1
Seeing as how this was a response to a specific comment wouldn't it make sense to include the context in the post?
Otherwise the quote really rips a new one in that strawman.
And of course, until Iraq became an issue three years ago, the usual suspects were singing the Q word (quagmire) about Afghanistan.
But that's gone down the memory hole now, I see.
McG, we made some rather sad errors in our conduct of the Afghan war, but who were the "usual suspects"? I was all for charging into Afghanistan and coming out with Osama's head on a spike, and I would support declaring war against Pakistan tomorrow on much the same basis (assuming that their army/intel boys are indeed sheltering OBL).
As for clicking through, mea culpa, but one freak on a comment thread is not a body of opinion worth taking note of. Come now, people---if you want to get upset about a potential point of view, type it into Google, and damned if somebody won't turn out to think just that.
For ex, here're some dingbats for you:
And as they stood around â there were no speeches â they expressed opposition not just to the controversial war in Iraq, but also to the war in Afghanistan, which polls indicate was overwhelmingly supported by the American people.
Several felt that in the days after September 11, the United States went too far by attacking Afghanistan. "It was the Taliban and Osama bin Laden," said one woman. "So why didn't we just go after him? Why did we attack the whole country?"
"I didn't like us doing that," said another woman.
"I'm opposed to war generally," added a third woman. "I believe that both of those wars [Afghanistan and Iraq], but Iraq especially, are wrong."
I assume that their errors of fact and judgment do not need pointing out to OTB readers. But 3 ladies in Alabama (!) do not add up to "the usual suspects."
Not only 3 ladies from Alabama, but an entire movement. Hell, you could have recorded those words from a CIndy Sheehan speeech!
"An entire movement"? Like I said, it's a big country.
Both the Afghan and Iraq wars have been mismanaged to some degree, but the former was definitely both justified and necessary. You're not going to find more than a fringe in the U.S. to disagree with that, whereas at least half the country seems to think that the Iraq war was a mistake.
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