Afghanistan

The year: 1986. I went to the grandly titled "Afghan Information Centre", a drab little office in Peshawar, Pakistan filled with pamphlets and dusty books.

The director was a short, thin man in a torn sweater named Abdullah Azzam. We spoke at length of the anti-Soviet jihad (struggle) in Afghanistan being waged by Afghan and Arab mujahedin.

Canada has long been admired around the globe as a nation of high ethics, human rights and respect for law.

But Canada's sterling reputation is being seriously degraded by the spreading scandal over involvement in torture in the increasingly sordid Afghan conflict.

All Canadians should thank the courageous diplomat, Richard Colvin, who did the right and honourable thing by exposing the government's very dirty Afghan secret.

The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women.

The more I read the newspapers in the U.S. the more despairing I am about Americans ever being able to sort out the terrible dilemmas their corporate government has gotten them into. The extent of the misinformation, lies and sheer journalistic incompetence is overwhelming and when the media is consciously complicit in the government's lies and overtly supportive of its imperial ambitions, the chances of democracy working approaches zero.