Failure, failure, failure, and still more failure

Return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear (January 2008):

Are we winning the battle against the insurgents in Afghanistan?

Almost any Canadian soldier, diplomat or NATO official asked that question invariably answers: Yes, we are, but there is still a long way to go.

Ah! But what a difference (damn near) three years can make!

Third, there were leaks about a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the combined findings of all 16 US intelligence agencies. This key intelligence report is explosive and may not be fully revealed.

The NIE reportedly asserts that the $13 billion a month Afghan War is at best stalemated; at worse, Western occupation forces are on the defensive and their vulnerable supply lines increasingly threatened. Taliban is expanding its control, particularly in northern Afghanistan.

Claims by US generals that “progress” is being made in the war are false.

Ah yes. Failure, failure, failure, and still more failure. But remember kids, Michael Ignatieff ruefully came around to acknowledging that the pro-peace side was right about Iraq (you know, as well as on Afghanistan) and he was wrong. But he was wrong for all the right reasons and we were wrong because we're all a bunch of stupid doody-heads.

Unlike, say, Bob Rae, who is presently yammering about his latest collections of nonsensical scribblings saying that we can't impose democracy on people, we just have to keep blasting them to pieces when they fight back against corrupt, brutal puppet governments that we impose upon them. (Some will argue that Rae is not calling for this, but I assert that Rae's saying we cannot disengage from Afghanistan after all this time and all this failure is precisely calling for more of the status-quo. It's the same old "responsibility to protect" bullshit that these liberals use to rationalize the same old imperialism.)