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Date Posted: 13:18:53 12/03/01 Mon
Shades of dissent
Like air hissing from a shrapnel-punctured lung, support for the pulverizing of the poorest nation on earth by the richest nation on earth is slipping away.
The Winston wannabe, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, begged his increasingly skeptical countrymen this week to remember how they felt watching the planes fly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
"Never forget those answering machine messages. Never forget how we felt imagining how mothers told their children they were about to die," said Blair as he warned that suspending the bombing would play into the hands of the terrorists. British opinion polls show 54 per cent favour a pause to allow humanitarian aid to reach millions of starving Afghans.
If support is fading in Britain, a country which likes nothing better than giving its impudent foes (who begin at Calais) a jolly good thrashing, rest assured it's crumbling elsewhere.
And little wonder. Almost eight weeks into what most of us assumed would be a superpower's precise surgical operations to eliminate Osama bin Laden and his henchmen, this campaign is looking more and more like the fumbling of an apprentice butcher who fears for his fingers.
We were told this was war. But what kind of war is it when our side shows an unerring ability to score bull's-eyes on Red Cross facilities and no talent whatsoever for tracking down the evil ones? Jeez. An army of FBI agents can't find some whacko in a white coat who's running around New Jersey mailing anthrax. And we're supposed to believe they can pry bin Laden from his mountain hidey hole with precision-guided munitions?
This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Brimming with righteous anger, armed with every high-tech tool imaginable and braced by a wave of global sympathy, the world's greatest military power should be busy erecting Burger Kings in conquered Kabul and holding victory parades in New York City.
I thought for sure the supermen of Delta Force would have hauled back bin Laden, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and, for good measure, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, for a quick trial and a snappy public electrocution with President George W. Bush, a guy who knows plenty about these things, yanking the lever while massed choirs sing God Bless America.
Instead we have generals holding news conferences where they insist no Americans have died in battle and no helicopters have been lost to enemy action. We didn't get the job done. But hey, look on the bright side. Our people and their expensive gear are safe and sound.
The other day we witnessed the demeaning spectacle of an American admiral complaining that the Taliban were tougher than expected. Has this guy ever read a history book? Or a CIA report on how its Afghan clients sent the Soviets packing?
And now the National Post reports the Pentagon is contemplating a full-scale invasion (read quagmire) next spring if the current campaign fails to achieve its objectives.
Can you believe this? The superpower that was prepared to battle the mighty Soviet Army in Europe at a moment's notice now wants to take the winter off to crank up a conventional assault against poorly armed religious fanatics in one of the planet's most backward countries. The army that fought panzer divisions to a standstill in the snow at Bastogne in January of 1945 is now an army that doesn't want to fight in an Afghan winter.
The optics are terrible -- stone-age David versus space-age Goliath -- and can only get worse as the civilian death toll mounts and we see more haunting images of innocent babies mangled by bombs dropped with impunity.
If the warnings from humanitarian organizations are right, millions of Afghans could starve or freeze to death this winter in that shattered land. What do you do? Feed and cloth them during the blizzards. And then bomb and shell them as soon as the nice weather returns?
CAW Local 444 president Ken Lewenza was castigated this week for criticizing the bombing. Say what you will about the guy. But it takes guts to express a contrary view in this rabidly intolerant climate. It would be so much easier just to keep one's head down.
We should remember this. Dissent is healthy. Dissent is the emergency brake which keeps governments from flying off the rails. Tolerating dissent is what our democracy is all about.
And if we keep dropping bombs from safe heights instead of launching waves of daring commando raids to find and eliminate bin Laden and his followers, Lewenza's view will find plenty of company.
We're reluctant to shed a single drop of our own blood in pursuit of infinite justice. Some war.
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