Foreign Policy and Canadian Commentary on the Afghanistan War

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Notes

1. Cohn (2008).

2. Blanchfield (2008). Noting the turnaround in Prime Minister Harper's earlier attitudes regarding Afghanistan policy, Senior8 commentator on Cohn's piece spoke for many in seeing the war as subsumed to the imperatives of winning the election.

3. CBC News. (2008); “MacKay opens door to talks with Taliban” in http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2008/10/05/layton-afghan. That same day a Canadian soldier was injured when a roadside bomb exploded west of Kandahar. More than 100 Canadian soldiers have now made the supreme sacrifice.

4. Dyer (2007, 255); El Akkad and Galloway (2008, A9); Heinrich (2008).

5. Gray (1992, 16).

6. Note the recommendations for how to improve communication strategy made to the government of Canada in “How Are We Doing in Afghanistan? Report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defense” tabled in June, 2008. See http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/defe-e/rep-e/repo9jun08-e.htm. Even the somewhat whimsical Walrus magazine offered Hugh Graham's thoughtful “Road of Fire: The war in Afghanistan will be won or lost on Highway 1,” (2007, 34–6).

7. This phrase is borrowed from American journalist Haynes Johnson's description of the Reagan Presidency. Johnson (1991, 1992).

8. See also the review of The Unexpected War in Policy Options/Options Politiques, February, 2008, p. 91.

9. Stein and Lang, passim, 1–90; see also CBC News in Depth at http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/timeline.html; Report of the Standing Senate Committee, 4–6.

10. CBC News in Depth, op cit.

11. Walkom (2008).

12. On these charges see brief reports in “Embassy's 20 Most Influential Books,” October 10, 2007 at http://www.embassymag.ca and Les Peate's review in Esprit de Corps: “Whose War Is It?” at http://find articles.com/p/articles/mi_6972/is_2_14/ai.

13. This charge has been ably refuted. See Roussel and Boucher (2008, 165–87).

14. Cohen (2003, 2004, 62).

15. Minifie was the CBC's Washington correspondent for many years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He forged his suspicion of American militarist tendencies by first-hand observation of the tactics of then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. See Minifie (1960, 1965).

16. Note the provocative title in Barry and Bratt (2008, 63–89).

17. Dyer (2006, 39); see especially Brian Jenkins in “Lessons for Intelligence in the Campaign Against al Qaeda” at http://www.rand.org/commetnary/030106VC.html; http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/18249/preventing_terrorist_attacks.html

18. Rohan Guanaratna, Singapore-based author of Inside El Quaeda interviewed on Charlie Rose, July 13, 2004.

19. “Pull out or else, Taliban warns Canadians: letter from militants vows more Canadians will die unless troops go,” quoted in Cohen (2008).

20. Newman (1995, 81).