National Affairs
'Tacky timing' and 'sheer stupidity'
Claire Hoy

Everybody knows the old saw that "when the going

gets tough, the tough get going." Everybody that is, except NDP Leader Jack Layton. and run."

How else to characterize his shameful charge that our brave troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan are on the "wrong mission," this on the very day that four of those Canadians were killed fighting for our cherished ideals of freedom and democracy?

Talk about tacky timing. Not to mention sheer stupidity. Layton's complaint is that the focus on the Afghanistan mission should be on humanitarian aid, reconstruction and a comprehensive peace package. He's even willing indeed, anxious to sit down with the Taliban and negotiate a deal. Can he be serious? Apparently. Does he not understand that the Taliban and groups like them have no interest in negotiating anything with us? Does he not understand that by mouthing off he is not only playing into the hands of the Taliban and perhaps undermining the morale of our troops who surely deserve our support rather than partisan approbation?

Even Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjah, not always a man noted for a common sense approach to issues, understands that on the day that four soldiers died bringing the death total to 31 it's "not the day to express doubts.

"We knew there were going to be casualties, and it's painful every time there's a casualty or injury to our soldiers. But you cannot every time there is a serious loss begin to say 'Let's pull out.'" Exactly.

Does Layton not know or does he not care that the Taliban, those people with whom Layton wants to break bread with, operated one of the vilest regimes in the world when they were in power?

How can Layton leader of a party which brags that it is "The Better Choice for Women" want to sit down with people who, as the National Post summed it up in a Saturday editorial, "banned women from most jobs; prevented girls from receiving any education past primary school; forbade women from going out in public without a close male relative and banned women from appearing in public without being covered in a burqa from head to toe. An exposed wrist or ankle was enough for a woman to receive a public beating by religious police."

Or, as Human Rights Watch said, "The Taliban have sought to erase women from public life." And that's not even counting the brutality they inflicted on political opponents and religious and ethnic minorities of all genders and ages.

The big argument used by Layton and the NDP against helping the U.S. unseat Saddam Hussein was that it had not been endorsed by the United Nations.

Well, the Afghanistan mission the result of a specific request for help from the first-ever elected government of that country has been endorsed both by our NATO allies and the UN. So much for consistency. The truth is for Layton and his fellow travelers, it's appeasement at any cost. Worse, Layton and his party officials have accused Prime Stephen Harper of bowing to U.S. President George Bush in his foreign policy. What a cheap shot. This mission first endorsed by the Liberals when they were in government has nothing to do with Bush. It does, however, have everything to do with our responsibility as a free and prosperous nation to join our many allies and do our part. And sometimes, unfortunately, that part includes taking up arms against those whose only goal in life is the death of everything we in the West believe in.

As for Layton's spurious argument that the mission should be less about fighting and more about rebuilding, well, there are two things to say about that.

First, how do you rebuild when you've got a resurgent army attacking and attempting to destroy everything you do?

And second, to the extend it is possible given the realities on the ground; Canadians have been busy helping to repair the damage to that country.

In a Monday opinion piece in the Toronto Star, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay who has witnessed the progress first-hand writes that "because of the work of our Canadian Forces members, girls are now going to school ...Wells are being dug and pipes installed to bring water to villages. Roads are being resurfaced so that farmers can get their vegetables to market."

There's more too, but you get the point. Layton, it seems, doesn't. He should be ashamed of himself for playing cheap politics on the emotions over the death of soldiers and for shaming a proud Canadian history of getting going when the going gets tough.