Canada 'at war' in Afghanistan
nationalpost: Peacekeeper nation at war in Afghanistan
Canadians are accustomed to seeing their armed forces keeping the peace overseas. But as Canada's short, bloody history in Kandahar shows, our troops are, for the first time since Korea, at war.
Yesterday's suicide bomb attack, which killed Glyn Berry, Canada's senior diplomat in Afghanistan, and wounded three soldiers, is the latest in a bloody string of attacks. Kandahar has already been the scene of most of Canada's nine dead in Afghanistan since 2001 -- more casualties than any other recent military mission.
And although Defence Minister Bill Graham warned last fall, "the public needs to be prepared for the sight of body bag coming back from Afghanistan," the news of the new attack still struck hard yesterday in and around the sprawling Canadian Forces Base Edmonton, home to many of the troops now in Kandahar.
"It kind of hurts because it could be family of people I'm working with here," a butcher at Sobey's Namao Centre, just outside the base, said yesterday, when a reporter informed him of the suicide attack. He said troops shop at his Sobeys, and spouses of soldiers work in the store.
The butcher, who asked his name not pe published, said he opposes Canada's involvement in Kandahar. "I don't think we should be sending our troops over there. I don't think it's our fight."
Kim Nossal, a political scientist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., said Canadians need to wake up to the fact that the country is at war.
"In southern Afghanistan we are in a war situation and people need to start talking about it," he said. Read more
Canadians are accustomed to seeing their armed forces keeping the peace overseas. But as Canada's short, bloody history in Kandahar shows, our troops are, for the first time since Korea, at war.
Yesterday's suicide bomb attack, which killed Glyn Berry, Canada's senior diplomat in Afghanistan, and wounded three soldiers, is the latest in a bloody string of attacks. Kandahar has already been the scene of most of Canada's nine dead in Afghanistan since 2001 -- more casualties than any other recent military mission.
And although Defence Minister Bill Graham warned last fall, "the public needs to be prepared for the sight of body bag coming back from Afghanistan," the news of the new attack still struck hard yesterday in and around the sprawling Canadian Forces Base Edmonton, home to many of the troops now in Kandahar.
"It kind of hurts because it could be family of people I'm working with here," a butcher at Sobey's Namao Centre, just outside the base, said yesterday, when a reporter informed him of the suicide attack. He said troops shop at his Sobeys, and spouses of soldiers work in the store.
The butcher, who asked his name not pe published, said he opposes Canada's involvement in Kandahar. "I don't think we should be sending our troops over there. I don't think it's our fight."
Kim Nossal, a political scientist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., said Canadians need to wake up to the fact that the country is at war.
"In southern Afghanistan we are in a war situation and people need to start talking about it," he said. Read more
posted by exoplanet at 4:03 PM
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