Canada will leave Afghanistan in 2007

This post is purely speculative and I hope you will indulge me as I engage in a little conspiracy theorizing. However, I believe the scenario I am going to describe is plausible.

I believe Stephen Harper's commitment to Canada's presence in Afghanistan is not a strong as he would have us believe. Under the right conditions he will "cut and run".

He has been setting up the right conditions for the last several weeks.

The first step of his plan has been to ratchet up the heat on NATO to provide more support for Canadian troops in Afghanistan. He has had his doggy eyed Foreign Minister publically complain about that on a number of occasions. The European NATO countries have been understandably reluctant which has allowed Mr. Harper to attempt to deflect some of the blame for the lack of success away from him to those European laggarts. However it also sets up the next month.

His second step is to cancel the EU summit. This step has a two fold objective. First to alienate the Europeans. Second, to not take away from the impact of step number three.

Which is to use the NATO meetings in Riga to make another high profile request for more support in Afghanistan. Now considering their current reluctance and the fact he has just snubbed them for the EU summit the European members of NATO will turn him down, politely to be certain, but the message will be clear enough. Such a rejection will be front page news all over Canada and the Harper government will use that as propaganda fodder throughout December to set up the final part of the plan.

Which is to announce, in late January, the withdrawel of Canadian troops from Afghanistan for later in 2007. His argument for the flip-flop will go something like this.

Canada is more that willing to do its part in Afghanistan, indeed we have been doing more than our part, but we cannot do it alone. Without the support of our other NATO allies Canada's position is untenable in the long run so Canada cannot stay. If NATO does decide to do more in the future Canada will stand side-by-side with our NATO allies.

Then in February he will announce a budget which will "fix" the "fiscal imbalance" and have all sorts of tax cuts. Then he will arrange his own defeat in the House and have an election.