Remember when they used to decapitate dethroned kings?

I never thought Paul Martin was a decent human being, so I don't have anything of his to shred. But his recent attack on the Afghanistan mission is obscene. He was the one who sent the troops there in the first place. Yes, the mission has become more dangerous in the past few months, but that's why we sent soldiers to the region. If everything was peaceful we could have just sent the best bureaucrats our nation has to offer.

The Canadian left is just lazy. Although they are the first ones to say that our national identity is being destroyed by the imperialists to the south of us, they seem to see nothing wrong in forever taking the American left's battles and making them their own (like bringing up abortion during election campaigns). They look south and see the great fodder that the Iraq war provides in attacking the Bush adminsitration. Bush got the Americans into a controversial war, for the wrong reasons and then ran it badly (they claim). You can't just take this analysis, stick it on top of the Afghan war and make Stephen Harper into George Bush. The far left has been playing this game for quite some time, acting like the Afghan war is a war of choice. But now it seems the likes of Paul Martin want to get in on it too. He obviously can't play the "I oppose this imperialist war" card that the pacifist set get to play, but he can claim that the war is being mismanaged by the incompetence of the current leaders, like Democratic congressmen who originally supported the war and now have to run for re-election.

It is helpful to recall that the Afghan mission is NATO supported, U.N. approved and came about after Islamic warriors took over a nation, turned it into a theocracy, and allowed terrorists to run training camps and use the country as a staging ground for an attack on our closest ally (an attack in which Canadians were murdered). There is also the little matter of the fact that they denied their citizens even the most basic rights, and turned the women into property. But I've seen no recent evidence that the Canadian left actually cares about helping the citizens of the world (whining about globalisation doesn't actually make people's lives better).

I don't quite understand why Paul feels the need to comment anyway. Yes, he was the one who sent troops to Afghanistan, but it's hardly like he has to protect his legacy as Prime Minister. Standing in line and waiting your turn does not a legacy make.