Daily Digest December 14, 2008

The DAILY DIGEST: INFORMATION and OPINION from ST. JOHN'S to VICTORIA.
ARCHIVED at http://cdndailydigest.blogspot.com/

EDITORIAL PAGEs

CHARLOTTETOWN GUARDIAN -
Another miscalculation by Mr. Harper?
The appointment of 18 senators goes against the PM's goals of Senate reform.

TORONTO STAR -
Questions linger in stun gun death

Obama's 9/11 challenge

TORONTO SUN -
Now is the time to get the funds flowing
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/editorial/

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS -
The real child-care challenge
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/the_real_child-care_challenge.html

And the winner is? Gilles Duceppe!
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/and_the_winner_is_gilles_duceppe.html

Senators can still be elected
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/senators_can_still_be_elected.html

CALGARY HERALD -
Who's minding kids and how?
  http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/minding+kids/1074716/story.html
 
Death threats cannot be protected speech
  http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/Death+threats+cannot+protected+speech/1074717/story.html
 
CALGARY SUN -
Security up in the air

EDMONTON SUN -
Trusting a Liberal leader is a stretch
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/Commentary/2008/12/14/7744396-sun.html


ISSUES

AFGHANISTAN -
More bombs and troops will not help - we can't win this war. So what can we achieve?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/14/war-afghanistan-lesson-conflicts-deaths?showallcomments=true

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Raids on NATO Convoys Crippling - Analysts
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45107

New Nato supply route to Afghanistan to open in 8 weeks


ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
To stimulate or not to stimulate: What'll the feds do?
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081212/eco_stimulus_081214/20081214?hub=Canada

Cost of auto industry aid could exceed any benefit

CAW warns plants could go south

Taxpayer group slams auto bailout

Looking at the recession as an opportunity

Bailout is bootless if cars cost more to make than they're worth
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Bailout+bootless+cars+cost+more+make+than+they+worth/1073933/story.html

White House: No decisions yet on auto bailout
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/White+House+decisions+auto+bailout/1073028/story.html


HEALTH CARE RELATED
Study links hormone pills, cancer


FEDERAL POLITICS
Harper won't find Ignatieff so easy to push around
http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/Harper+find+Ignatieff+easy+push+around/1074196/story.html

How the West was lost


PROGRAMMES
What the military gives you when they don't give your son back

Disabilities savings plan set to roll out

Toy recall targets 42,000 toxic items

RCMP labour reps to fight pay increase cutbacks
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081213/rcmp_wages_081213/20081213?hub=Canada


OPINION AND INFORMATION
How we live in an undemocracy
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/553477

Why 2008 is high water mark for Quebec influence
http://www.calgaryherald.com/columnists/2008+high+water+mark+Quebec+influence/1074718/story.html

World's males are under siege


INFOS 
Les immigrés criminels dans la mire
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/National/2008/12/13/005-immigration-projet-pilote.shtml

Crise politique à Ottawa
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/dossiers/crise-a-ottawa/

Des coups d'épée dans l'eau
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/opinions/editorialistes/andre-pratte/200812/14/01-810275-des-coups-depee-dans-leau.php

Ignatieff est-il l'homme de la situation?

Ignatieff est-il l'homme de la situation?

BELOW(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)30)(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)30)(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)30)(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)(30)30)(30)(30)(30)(30)

THE AFGHAN MISSION

Canadian Forces's Afghan Mission is settled, right? We will take whatever losses come between now and 2011and then withdraw from the present active combat role. In that CAN Preparing to Hand Over Command of K'Har Troops to USA very shortly and that "The new commander in Kandahar will be an American and he imagines this leadership "would fit into the more aggressive category." that role may be very active over the next two years.

The 2011 exit date that is presently Canadian policy is under stress. Over time pressure will increase.

The rationale to be found within the The "Conference Papers: Blueprint for Canada-US Engagement under a New Administration" http://www.carleton.ca/ctpl/conferences/ConferencePapers.htm includes this "Since Canada is one of the few "western" countries that possesses both expeditionary capability and a high degree of inter-operability with US forces, it is likely that the United States will continue to seek Canadian cooperation in off-shore deployments in the future. There are two reasons for this likelihood: Canada does have a capacity to aid the United States militarily and Canadian participation adds legitimacy to US operations."

These two articles Blueprint for getting Obama's ear: Keep our troops in Afghanistan and "Afghanistan mission far from over" http://www.torontosun.com/comment/editorial/2008/12/13/7737491-sun.html argue continued involvement is necessary.

There are currently three actions underway by the United States:  A "surge" of troops as they are freed at present from Iraq,  working to establish paid tribal militias as auxiliary forces which (were what in reality brought a reduction in violence to Iraq to this point); Predator Drone attacks against Taliban and Al Quaida leaders in Pakistan.

Rather than having been defeated the insurgents have instituted a new line of attack which, while considered as of marginal consequence by American spokesmen, is view otherwise by analysts "Taliban Raids on NATO Convoys Crippling - Analysts"
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45107

The following expresses views differing from the long range positives about the future which are the continuing expressions of opinion from decision makers both in Canada and the 'States.

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More bombs and troops will not help - we can't win this war. So what can we achieve?
Comments (10) Go to all comments on one page
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/14/war-afghanistan-lesson-conflicts-deaths

    * Peter Beaumont
    *
          o Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
          o The Observer, Sunday 14 December 2008
          o Article history

With each death in Afghanistan - civilian and military - it becomes more of a commonplace to say this is a war that can't be won. The same British officers who said the Taliban had been decapitated say these days there can be no victory of the kind normally envisaged. Yet still more US and British soldiers are heading to this war.

Then what?

The answer is that no one directing the war in Afghanistan really knows. All that is on offer is the attempt to impose a military solution on a conflict which - like so many modern wars - cannot be settled by arms; which cannot be won; and which, in too many ways, has long been lost.

Part of the problem is the conceptual one that has burdened our political classes for so long with ideas about what 'victory' and post-conflict reconstruction mean. It is a legacy of the Second World War, when the terms of victory and capitulation were indeed total. Combined with the recent doctrine of Western military-humanitarian intervention, our leaders have yet to understand how dangerous the limitations of this approach are, so convinced are they that it cannot fail.

But most wars do not end like the Second World War, or even with a successful negotiation between the two sides. Instead, they grind to a halt with a peace settlement that is incomplete, and whose partiality contains within it the conditions for a return to violence. Afghanistan, like Congo and Iraq, is one of these conflicts.

And what politicians on both sides of the Atlantic - President-elect Barack Obama included - have yet to understand is that easy victories on the battlefield and quick-fix reconstruction efforts are no answer to so-called 'frozen' conflicts where long lasting and pre-existing ethnic, sectarian and political competitions are either unfrozen or exacerbated by the intervention. In the case of Afghanistan the warning bells were being sounded by astute observers within 12 months of the Bonn Agreement of December 2001 that had been designed to end two-and-a-half decades of Afghan conflict.

Even then the risks were clear: a dangerous competition for power and the spoils of international aid at the new political centre; the hazard of renewed conflict that would follow the failure to mediate between Pashtu interests in the south and the new centre; and the potential for renewed social strife.

Inevitably, as all dangers have come to pass - warlordism, corruption and institutional failure. They have acted as the accelerator for the renewed Taliban insurgency that began in 2006 and that has succeeded, not simply by force of arms or the existence of a haven in Pakistan's tribal areas, but because many Afghans have been persuaded that the Taliban is a better bet than the corrupt and incompetent regime of President Hamid Karzai.

The response has been the usual kneejerk reaction in these circumstances - to bomb more, to send more soldiers and to prop up further a largely discredited government.

The only real question now is whether it is too late to salvage anything from this mess. The answer is that it may be. The lessons of recent conflicts is that there is a short and finite period for reconstruction and peace-building to gain traction. And what is most crucial is not necessarily grand structural projects. What is necessary is to identify and then mediate areas of dangerous competition - what some specialists call 'conflictual peace-building'.

The problem is that as the conflict in Afghanistan has been escalated by all sides, the room for such strategies has been squeezed out. And with the US committed to sending ever more troops to Afghanistan in pursuit of the hubristic notion that the surge worked in Iraq in absolute terms, rather than simply freezing the lethal competitions there until after a US withdrawal, then all that seems certain is more war and further death.

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