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LETTER TO EDITOR: OTTAWA XPRESS

Morgan Duchesney: 2008

Before I offer my critique of the Support Our Troops slogan, I wish to state that I admire the courage and dedication of our combat troops serving in Afghanistan and, yes, Iraq too. But they are not there to protect us from the Taliban. If the Canadian government objected to the activities of the Taliban, why didn’t they send in the Airborne Regiment 20 years ago? Those guys had a talent for direct action. The Taliban are engaged in precisely the same activities in the early ’80s as they currently practice, they just had a different name. Back in the 1980s, the anti-soviet Mujahadeen were great heroes to the West. The Taliban are their descendants and are equally hostile to the presence of foreigners of any ideological bent.

The excellent humanitarian efforts of our soldiers are commendable but have been arranged as a public relations exercise to distract attention from the main mission: pacifying Afghanistan for its future as a natural gas conduit. . Our troops are there because Afghanistan has great geopolitical and economic importance to the dominant nations of the West, full stop.

Soldiers don’t create public policy. If they did, the Canadian Armed Forces might be active in other locations of less geopolitical importance like Burma." The slogan Support Our Troops offers no coherent explanation for what the troops are actually doing but simply assumes that whatever they do is good because they are “our” troops. This is a simplistic fallacy of reason called the Appeal to Emotion. Such tactics are employed by tyrants to distract and shame their critics. It has been happening for thousands of years.