Afstan: Government getting better at making case

Saw Minister of National Defence O'Connor and Parliamentary Secretary to the PM Kenney on CTV's Question Period (their story at link). Mr O'Connor about the best I've seen him--pointing out his efforts at the recent NATO defence ministers' meeting in Slovenia to get NATO members (i.e. Germany, Italy, France and Spain) to loosen caveats on how their troops are used by the ISAF commander. Craig Oliver not too awful.

Mr Kenney made a point--which the government should have been doing months ago--of emphasizing that ISAF is a UN Security Council mandated operation. He's sharp; no wonder the PM gives him such exposure.

Mr Oliver referred to the fifth anniversary of the "invasion" of Afghanistan. So I sent CTV Newsnet my standard letter, copied to Messrs O'Connor, Kenney, MacKay and Sen. Kenny:

But there was no invasion of Afghanistan.

Before the fall of Kabul, and of most of the rest of Afghanistan, to the insurgent Afghan Northern Alliance in November 2001--and the consequent collapse of the Taliban regime--there were no foreign regular combat formations in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance did receive air support and assistance from special forces (both US and British); that however is not an invasion. Substantial foreign ground combat forces--including Canadian--only entered the country after the Taliban had been deposed by indigenous Afghan forces, and those foreign troops entered with the agreement of the Northern Alliance.

It is most unfortunate that the mythical "invasion" of Afghanistan has become common currency amongst journalists--and this is no mere semantic quibble. Describing what the US and UK did in Afghanistan as an "invasion" tends to equate those actions in people's minds with the real invasion of Iraq. That equation implicitly and wrongly calls into question the legitimacy of NATO and Coalition actions in Afghanistan, which have been authorized unanimously by the UN Security Council.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at October 8, 2006 03:59 PM