Since 2001 Canada has been at war with Afghanistan. The costs are staggering. Over $18 billion has been spent by the Canadian government, 129 Canadian soldiers have died and exponentially more Afghans (the actual total is unknown).

Like many wars before it, Canadians were in Afghanistan to bring freedom and democracy. With the most recent election fraud, there is no semblance of democracy in Afghanistan. The warlords who were initially our enemy have become ‘respectable’ Afghan politicians. To add insult to injury, our aid money is being doled out to Karzai and his friends.

Women’s rights have also not been improved. Recently rape within marriage and a ban for women to leave their home without their husband’s permission has been legalized. There have even been accusations that current human rights conditions in Afghanistan are worse than when the Taliban was in power.

The US military chief even recently said that the Afghanistan situation is “serious and deteriorating”. Yet predictably the solution is to send over even more soldiers. Obviously nothing was learned from Vietnam.

With the recent election talk, it has become apparent that Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff are both war mongers. If Ignatieff gets elected prime minister nothing will change on the Afghanistan front.

Both Harper and Ignatieff agree that Canada’s military will be out of Afghanistan by 2011. Of course Canada will be still there after 2011 to help rebuild Afghanistan and their democracy. Though we haven’t been much help in either of these areas thus far, we will still pretend. Don't worry, Canadian food, construction, and defense organizations and consultants will still be well fed, just not the Afghans.

Though Ignatieff was against the Vietnam war in his University of Toronto days, as we have seen you don’t rise through the ranks by advocating peace. Peace doesn’t put money into the pockets of rich people.

Before the US invasion of Iraq, Ignatieff was a fierce war cheerleader. In 2003 he said, “The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions -and Iraq may be one of them- when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror. This does not mean the choice is morally unproblematic. The choice is one between two evils, between containing and leaving a tyrant in place and the targeted use of force, which will kill people but free a nation from the tyrant's grip.... The case for empire is that it has become, in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike.” This pretends that the US was coming to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq. Just like the freedom the US brought to Iran and most of South America in the 1950s and 1960s. To rise up the ranks of high society you have to believe that the US is the beacon to the world.

In a March 14, 2004 New York Times editorial Ignatieff was still supporting the US. He said, “I still do not believe that American or British leaders misrepresented Hussein's intentions or lied about the weapons they believed he possessed.” Of course, they never have. This was like how Britain in 1839 declared war against China for the destruction of British property. Under the guise of respect for property, the Opium Wars were just about ensuring Britain could still sell opium illegally in China. Actually almost every war is started by misleading a nation’s citizens. You have to create a reason that people will die for.

Ignatieff is even a supporter of torture. In the National Post he was quoted as saying that some form of torture is OK. He said, “Permissible duress might include forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods) that would produce stress. What crosses the line into the impermissible would be any physical coercion or abuse, any involuntary use of drugs or serums, any withholding of necessary medicines or basic food, water and essential rest.” I am sure Ignatieff would change his mind if he was tortured with sleep deprivation and disorientation methods.

Clearly on the issue of Afghanistan, Ignatieff is no different than Harper.

Canadians should pressure Ignatieff to pull Canada out of Afghanistan entirely and redeploy those resources here at home.