Canadian Prime Minister: We’ll Never Win In Afghanistan
Good thing Obama didn’t ask Stephen Harper for more troops while he was up in Canada.
Remember way back in the early days of the Obama administration when the president went to Canada on his first foreign trip and as soon as Afghanistan came up in the concluding news conference, the well-briefed new U.S. leader pre-empted a key question by saying he had not asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper for more Canadian troops?
Good thing.
Because, as it turns out, Prime Minister Harper thinks victory for the allies in Afghanistan is simply not going to happen. In a fascinating and surprisingly candid interview with CNN’s ever-thoughtful Fareed Zakaria on “GPS,” here’s what the leader of the United States’ closest military ally there said:
“In fact, my own judgment, Fareed, is, quite frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency.”
Coming just days after Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. combat troops into that forever-fighting land as a mere holding action, pending further study and possible additional deployments, that’s got to be a stunner to the new White House team.
Given that The One just sent a bunch more troops to Afghanistan, I doubt this comment will be nearly as important to the media as it would have been under Bush.
Personally, I think Harper is wrong. I think we can win in Afghanistan, just like we won in Iraq. And I actually think that Obama’s “troop surge” into Afghanistan is a good first step into that direction. What will be telling is whether or not Obama has the sort of leadership Bush did to stick to what he’s set out to do even in the face of harsh international and domestic criticism.
My guess is that he isn’t made of that stern of stuff, but I hope (for Afghanistan’s sake) that I’m wrong.
