Darkening clouds at year's end

While many of us, in the low light of late December, were composing our New Year’s resolution for a trimmer 2008 (while bulking up on more seasonal goodies), threatening international clouds were thickening over our prospects for the new year.

The instability of Pakistan, the dogged persistence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the continuing low grade killing in and the destruction of Iraq, the impoverished conditions for a lasting peace in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the building pressures in the Sudan, and the crises in Kenya all bode poorly for the world.

That much, if not all of this, will be the legacy of George W. Bush, whose foreign policy worsens the more it attempts to succeed. It remains the sad truth of our times that voting machines in Florida in 1996 may have pre-empted the 21st century.

Seldom in American history has the vain stupidity and psychological desperation of a single actor, albeit advised by those whose motives remain suspect, done so much damage to the promise of humanity. Indeed, it has been quite some time since the good intentions of large communities of religious devotion, in the U.S. and in parts of the rest of the world, have gone so wrong. That most of these failures can be traced to a blind faith in and a rush to liberal democracy is even more discouraging.

Normally, Canadians weather such storms by a sophisticated finessing of irrational forces. But our warring in Afghanistan, led by a Canadian government governed by the Bush administration’s reading of foreign affairs, in a language that is well short of adequate for sophisticated analysis, with a dumbed down contempt for criticism and an oversimplified sense of duty, have rendered such finesse unavailable.

Enemy of historical purpose and resilience

Now we might be able hold our collective breath until the election of a Democrat to the White House. But the simple fact of the matter is we remain at war with an enemy of historical purpose and resilience, with millions of dollars in the drug trade at stake and with a version of Islamic jihad that trades upon the blinding anger of perceived and real injustice. It’s a war buttressed by the exploitation of a sort of male aggression to which the young are particularly vulnerable, and it’s being played out on a border area (between Afghanistan and a weak state in Pakistan) that provides a clear military advantage to the other side, who enjoy a sophisticated organizational capacity.

Our Prime Minister has suggested that ordinary Canadians just don’t understand our mission in Afghanistan. Such comments are meant to encourage us, in greater numbers, to defer to his leadership, and they are meant to create a sense of being an insider among the press, which too often has less insight and critical thinking skills than it needs, coupled with a vain desire to see media as a powerful intellectual elite. (If you doubt this then review the early work of the American press on weapons of mass destruction.)

Enter John Manley into this mélange. His role, at least in the hope of the Conservatives who appointed him, will be to convince us to extend our military presence in Afghanistan by introducing of a new vocabulary of justification of the war, one that should give us deep Orwellian shudders.

I wish I had more faith in Manley. But I recall two impressions from a presentation he gave to students a number of years ago. The first was his romantic sense of where he was when the twin towers fell, revealing, to my mind, a desire to be part of a turning point in history that is far too often dangerous to the rest of us. The second, if I may be so bold, was my sense of his limited depth and critical skills on the issues of international politics.

There is perhaps only one thing worse than acting on the views of a democratic population concerned and even confused by world crises, and that’s to trust those who claim to understand them, but don’t.