Leaving aside everything else momentarily, how are we supposed to take Dion now saying that they will agree to keeping troops in Afghanistan until 2011? Was he not serious when he said that they needed to be out by 2009? Has he changed his mind? If so, why?
Surely it's not because he doesn't want an election now. Surely not.
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Aren't both parties playing politics with Afghanistan? That's my perception, and if I'm right, it's pretty disgusting.
Deleted another version of this comment to fix a typo.
Not sure about that.
It does seem like the Cons are legitimately attached to the Afghan mission. The Libs have been going on and on about how we need to pull out in Feb 2009, and now they back away from that? That's what puzzles me.
Admittedly, I don't know the inner workings, but all I can know at this point is what I read in the papers, and that's my op.
The thing that interests me about this is that it seems to be an equal about face for the Tories, and nobody seems to mind. For the past couple of years they've been saying that you can't set a firm end date, because you can't guarantee that the Taliban will co-operate with it, and now the government has set an end date. But the official story is "Dion caves again". This is what a reputation can do. Two guys compromise, one guy softens his image as a control freak, and comes off as a statesman. The other confirms his reputation for indecision, and looks weak.
As far as why it happened, I think it's partially to do with not wanting an election, but not entirely because one leader or another is worried about losing one. An election that would decide whether Canada stays in combat or not would give the Taliban a lot of good reason to spend 7 weeks targeting the Canadian electorate, trying to inflict enough damage to sway the result. The military had been sounding that warning, and I suspect that was part of the calculation for both leaders. Now that's enough of not being a cynic for today, especially since this is already much longer than the original post, which must be a violation of blog etiquette.
Yeah, Ryan says what I meant. Haven't the Cons been basically talking about an indefinite mission? These 2011 and 2009 dates popped up in response to political exigencies, didn't they?
And why would a longer comment be a breach of etiquette? I've never heard that before. I'd expect most bloggers would appreciate a lengthy response.
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