Afghanistan: Mission Impossible?

For CTV the answer is no.

For the government the answer seems to be yes!

As many of you know the Senlis Council, out of Britain, has issued a report that is very critical of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. I have seen several blogs that have already commented on the report itself so I won't bothering commenting on it.

However, what I find interesting is the reaction of CTV to this report. I was watching Newsnet and they had Craig Oliver duly report on the Senlis Council findings in a two minute segment. Then they had an "expert commentator" come on to talk about it. I recognized this guy as a staunch supporter of the Afghan Mission extension from the night of Mr. Harper's "debate and vote" on the mission extension a few weeks ago. It does not take a rocket scientist doing brain surgery to figure out his reaction to the report and I found it very convenient that Sandra Janssen spent more than 5 minutes asking all of the right questions to facilitate his attack on it. So, even though I already knew this, CTV seems to believe that the mission in Afghanistan is good and winnable.

However, I believe the government just made a tacit admission that they do not agree with that assessment. The very next story was the announcement of the purchase of new helicopters for the CF. During that announcement our Defence Minister stated that one of the reasons why they are needed is they will help save Canadian lives in Afghanistan by saving Canadian soldiers the need to travel by road.

If the only way for Canadian troops to be safe from attack is to fly over the countryside then it is reasonable to conclude that the countryside is not secure and that war is not going as well as we have been lead to believe.

And the governement appears to agree, at some level, even if they do not realize it.