Globe and Mail
With Remembrance Day approaching, Canadians should reflect on their country’s role in this continuing conflict.
Day: November 9, 2012
Canada in Afghanistan: The Need to Remember, and Lessons Unlearned
Editor’s note: A version of this article appears in today’s Globe and Mail.
Remembrance Day is approaching.
Despite some 160 dead, several thousand wounded, and perhaps tens of thousands afflicted with continuing psychological disorders, the extent to which Canada’s long and costly engagement in Afghanistan has faded from the public mind is striking.
Major questions, ranging from the handling of detainees to the decision to pursue aggressive counterinsurgency warfare in Kandahar, remain unanswered.
Yet there is no appetite, particularly at the political level, for a searching retrospective.
Absent a full public enquiry into Canadian involvement, it may be that the most that can be salvaged from over a decade of war will be the possibility of avoiding similar mistakes in the future.