Missionary Zealot

Odd beyond belief how the liberal heart yearns to salve the hurts of those who wouldn't blink twice at doing them right royal physical harm. There's always some explicating criteria for another person behaving in such a puzzling way. Some dreadful event in the past groomed that person to become the social psychopath that he has become.

It is far nobler, therefore, to look beyond the intransigence of those dedicated to violence, and find in them a gentle spirit appealing to understanding and forgiveness.

Canada has positioned itself, as an ally to the United States and a member in good standing of NATO, within a country where clan and tribal aggression, violent brutality, suppression of any vestige of human dignity, oppression of women and children, and religious fundamentalism rules the lives of all through the vulgar decision-making of tyrants and clerics.

Canadian troops remain for the present, in Afghanistan, battling what is termed an 'insurgency'.

This insurgency is comprised of battle-hardened mujaheddin, tribal fighters for holy jihad who view interlopers, foreigners, and above all foreign troops within their historical geography to be an unforgivable assault on their way of life. In this they are certainly not wrong. Foreign troops stationed anywhere, in a country that wishes to govern itself, represent an insult and an assault on sensibilities.

That the religious fanatics seek to re-impose an inhumane radical version of Islamic sharia on the ordinary people of the country is one piously-reasoned argument for the continued presence of such foreign troops. The underlying and most urgent reason being, of course, the containment of religious fanatics who are not content with restraining their activities to the soil they inherit, determined to import it violently abroad.

It is, in fact, the determination of the Islamist jihadis to wreak vicious atrocities on countries far from their own that initiated the incursion of Western and democratic countries' militaries within Afghanistan. But the country is one long accustomed to brutality and oppression, not only from without but also from within. The quality of life taken for granted elsewhere has been absent there.

And the endemic poverty and brutal oppression by tribal warlords over the population, and the traditional corruption and the heritage of brutality has been a reality of life there. Seeing that reality, the humanitarian ethos of democratic societies impel them to attempt to aid the country in teaching civil and humanitarian rights, in building civic infrastructures to enhance lives, and opportunities and futures.

The very fact that so many foreign countries are involved in Afghanistan, teaching civil authorities, the judiciary, the public, the military, mentoring as they can and hoping for success, celebrating that greater numbers of children, including girls are finally attending school, will not, cannot turn around millennia of traditions. It is difficult to speedily impose another mindset, another set of values and traditions.

Comes one such as Richard Colvin, formerly stationed in that country with Canada's Foreign Affairs, a man whose personal agenda is one of rigid righteousness and determined entitlements, and suddenly Canada finds itself locked in an opportunistic, political battle between its political factions.

Canadians would not ever willingly surrender themselves to complicity with torture. Conditions in which they find themselves in an unorthodox theatre of war can compound their vulnerability to appear to being complicit with torture. Such an appearance can be exceedingly embarrassing to a government which wishes nothing whatever to do with such practises, and attempts to do what it can to avoid any such appearance, let alone reality.

Do we really, truly, need someone like this man who insists that his rigid interpretation of events is correct, and that of all others, from diplomats to military to politicians is wrong, wrong, wrong? This man with the indomitable will expressing his missionary zeal to appear as an apologist for the weak and the vulnerable, condemning his government and its mission presents as the Taliban's single best weapon of propaganda.

Really, is a demoralized military, embarrassed government and unsettled diplomatic corps the best performance that Canada can put forward? Kudos, Richard Colvin.