Haiti (Catch all)

[marct]

While not technically being a war per se, the way I see this shaping up at the moment is that the current humanitarian disaster in Hati is going to provide a springboard for Canada to further justify pulling out of Afghanistan in 2011 and return to "peacekeeping" rather than warfighting.

Although I find the possibility of withdrawing Canadian troops from Afghanistan in the foreseeable future to be somewhat foolhardy, I concur that the impending Canadian mission in Haiti has rekindled the spirit of Canadian Humanitarian Mission abroad that was long presumed to have faded into oblivion (at least under the auspicies of Harper's government). Whilst the support for the Afghan mission was not socially rooted (perhaps due to the controversy surrounding it), the Haitian mission bears an intense social support (propped by the enormity of the crisis along with the stupendous media campaign launched by different outlets in Canada).

I'm not sure that we needed a justification to pull out of Afghanistan, per se. And, while we may be pulling out our active combat component, the door is still open for FID, SFA, police training, etc. which we have been doing a fair amount of.

Having said that, I have no doubt that the Haiti "crisis" will be used as a justification to "demand" a return to our "traditional" role as peacekeepers (some people have no knowledge of Canadian history ). BTW, the reason why I put crisis in quotation marks is simple: when has Haiti not been in a crisis situation? In my cynical and jaded moments, I have to wonder if the current response isn't just another example of reinforcing the dependence of Haiti on the rest of the world while, at the same time, providing "us" with an opportunity to feel good about ourselves: a post-Westphalian form of "Save the Children", complete with the full range of Cosmo propaganda and emotional blackmail.