In the Line of Fire

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But the attacks have cast the piercing light of public scrutiny on a mission that was approved with little attention and almost no debate, and some Canadians have begun to wonder whether the effort is worth it. "Canada should pull its troops out," York University professor James Laxer wrote in a commentary in the Globe and Mail last week, arguing that Canadians "are not engaged in peacekeeping" but participating in a war aimed at establishing U.S. "hegemony" in that part of the world.

The rising casualty count has prompted a barrage of calls from opposition M.P.s for a parliamentary debate. But stung by a backlash from Canadians angered by what they consider a betrayal of the soldiers risking their lives overseas, Liberal and New Democratic Party (N.D.P.) critics now claim they were not asking for a vote to terminate the mission--just a more thorough exploration of the rationale for war. "We still don't know exactly what the terms of engagement are, under whose auspices we are operating," says defense critic Dawn Black of the N.D.P. Acting Liberal leader Bill Graham says his party still has "total support" for the Afghan deployment--not surprising, since he announced it last May as Defense Minister in the previous government. A debate, he says, would only help "Canadians better understand what is at stake."

So far, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has stonewalled the critics, pointing out that all parties supported the original deployment during an earlier "take note" debate last November. "It is not this government's intention to question this mission when our troops are in danger," says Harper, who added that the perception of a "lack of resolve" would weaken troop morale.

Behind the political posturing, however, is a growing national anxiety that Canada's military is heading into risky, uncharted territory and talking more brazenly about it. Defense chief Hillier warned last year that Canadian Forces would be involved in killing "scumbags" as they ramped up their participation in the global war on terrorism. David Fraser, the tough-talking new commander of the multinational brigade, pushed the envelope even further when he asserted this month that the Canadian mission in Afghanistan was part of the "evolution" of the nation's military toward the "harder side" of peacemaking. "We're going into [the Taliban's] yard," says Brigadier General Fraser, who commanded the Mechanized Brigade Group in Edmonton, Alta., before his assignment to Afghanistan. "We're going to start kicking them." Those were unfamiliar messages for Canadians accustomed to seeing themselves in the post-cold war world as benign peacekeepers. And it has enraged critics who say the Afghan enterprise was wrongheaded from the start. "Trying to stabilize an environment like Afghanistan isn't doable in a war-fighting situation," says Peggy Mason of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Ottawa. "The government has to explain right now why we're there, and it has to be more than simplistic stuff saying 'It's our war too.'"

The issue threatens to polarize Canadians, who are suddenly confronted with the realities of a strange and distant war. "There's more of a compelling interest in Afghanistan than any other mission we've been in over the last 15 years," says David Rudd, executive director of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies in Toronto. "We've seen what an insecure Afghanistan can produce in terms of terrorism against North America, but the previous government never explained it to Canadians." According to an Ipsos-Reid poll this month, support for Canada's deployment in Afghanistan has dropped to 54%, down from 66% when the first substantive military mission was sent there in February 2002. (An earlier contingent of Canada's secretive special-forces unit, JTF2, arrived in late 2001.) Canada's subsequent participation in the ISAF force based in Kabul was regarded as a piece of shrewd North American gamesmanship: former PM Jean Chrtien, who had angered Washington with his refusal to participate in the Iraq war, was able to claim that Canada's Afghanistan commitment made it impossible to send Canadian soldiers elsewhere in the Middle East. Since then, including this month's toll, 10 Canadian soldiers and one civilian official (from the Foreign Affairs Ministry) have been killed and 40 Canadian soldiers injured. As the casualties mount, warns Rudd, Canadians need a full national hearing on Afghanistan before Ottawa decides whether to extend Canada's mission beyond its scheduled pullout date next February. Adds Rudd: "I think if the resources are there, it's worth it to stay longer. But we can't maintain that level of commitment indefinitely--and I don't rule out that some people may begin to ask whether we're on a fool's errand."