What happens in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan

Despite the mission’s having been green-lighted by Liberals, both Liberals and the left-wing NDP opposition pushed the Conservative government into defining an end date for the Canadian presence in that country. The Conservatives gave in, also because a growing number of Canadians had become extremely disillusioned with soldiers dying in a faraway land, and as things stand right now, Canadian troops will be pulled out of Afghanistan in 2011.

Now, however, the Conservative government is faced with serious accusations over a mission started by their Liberal predecessors. First raised as an issue by an Ottawa-based (and Muslim) university professor, then followed up by extensive investigative reports by one national newspaper, there have been reports that Taliban insurgents captured by Canadian troops and handed over to Afghan authorities have been tortured.

One diplomat, Richard Colvin, for example, has testified to Parliament that every single one detainee so far has been tortured. Statistically, this is highly improbable and incredible, which makes the rest of Colvin’s testimony seem sensationalist at best, or an odd way of attempting to further his career at worst.

What is Canada to do? The mission in Afghanistan is not just a weekend of fishing where fish are caught and released again. This is a fight against terrorism and a culture that still lives in the Stone Age. If Canada apprehended the Taliban terrorists and put them in a prison not unlike Guantanamo, it would face international condemnation from bleeding hearts the way Americans have been castigated over their special prison. Handing them over to their own people, the Afghan authorities, does not seem to work either, because Afghans, if we are to believe the allegations, tend to torture their own kind. So, that would really leave only one option: kill every Taliban you find and avoid all further hassle. Surely, this is not what the bleeding hearts and Taliban sympathizers had in mind either.

It should be quite simple, though. Canadian (or NATO) troops catch Taliban fighters and hand them over to their own authorities. Whatever happens to them then is the responsibility of the Afghans themselves, and not that of Western troops. What happens in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan, or so one should think.

The feigned outrage of the left over the “detainee issue” should not surprise anyone. They merely use this issue now to score political points against the Conservative government. In fact, the lefties attacking the government are hypocrites. Where were they – Prof. Attaran, NDP leader Jack Layton, etc. – ten years ago, say? When the Taliban tortured and slaughtered women and others in their own country, those bleeding hearts never spoke up. It seems that women being stoned to death or decapitated by the Taliban were of no concern to the likes of Attaran or Layton. But woe anyone who so much as inflicts a tiny paper cut on a Taliban terrorist.

As usual, lefties shed tears for criminals and terrorists, but not their actual victims. It was alright for the Taliban to torture, maim, brutalize and slaughter their own people, but the mere (unproven) suggestion that those monsters have been getting a taste of their own medicine – which is, indeed, quite possible in the Stone Age culture that is Afghanistan even today – now makes their blood boil with fury and (fake) indignation.

Attaran’s and Layton’s hearts ache because some evil terrorists – and killers of Canadians! – may have received rough treatment at the hands of their own people. Their hearts never cried out for the thousands of victims of the Taliban, because back then, there were no political brownie points to be had. As one newspaper columnist wrote the other day, about ten years ago, Afghanistan would be mentioned in Canadian newspapers around 25 times or so; now, the country warrants something like 600 mentions a day.

If sympathizers and lefties like Attaran and Layton had spoken out against the atrocities of the Taliban years ago, their concerns would be a lot more credible today. Driven by a wild desire to topple the nasty Conservative government, lefties are only too willing to make common cause with the very people whose sole purpose in life is to kill us infidels in the West. That makes them even more despicable than the Afghan jailers (and torturers?).