I found moments of Question Period this week, on Canada’s role in Afghanistan, grim.

The Liberals asked about handing over prisoners, including juveniles, who may face torture. They weren’t very specific but it didn’t matter. The Prime Minister ignored the questions and attacked them for smearing our troops, who hadn’t been mentioned: “… unless the Leader of the Opposition has some concrete evidence … against Canadian soldiers, he … should apologize … he is accusing them … when Canadian heroes are being brought back to this country for burial … clearly, it is the Liberal Party’s job to cook up these allegations against Canadian soldiers. Our job here is to defend and protect our Canadian soldiers.”

Will this sort of calculated militaristic sloganeering, so effective in the U.S., work here? I guess we’ll find out. Defence Minister Peter MacKay chimed in: “These scurrilous allegations that somehow Canadian soldiers are complicit in war crimes is beyond contempt … It is un-Canadian.” That’s about as brainless as medicare backers saying that those who challenge them are un-Canadian. Questions about health care or torture are valid or they aren’t, not Canadian or un-.

But why grim? I think it’s because I’ve been reading the Second World War notebooks of Soviet journalist-novelist Vassily Grossman, who covered the Russian front from Stalingrad to Berlin. Journalists weren’t embedded in those days — embloodied is more like it.

You couldn’t find soldiers better motivated than the Russians. Their land had been invaded by Nazis with a racist contempt for them. Yet the Red Army still had to set up “blocking detachments,” hundreds strong, to “combat cowardice” and shoot those who tried to flee. It seemed odious but necessary.

The commander of one blocking force said, “That’s enough shooting at their backs. Come on and join the attack.” Such primal fear is the covert story of all wars. In five months at Stalingrad, 13,500 soldiers were executed for “discipline.” What’s amazing is that most young soldiers don’t panic in its face.

This week in Afghanistan, two more Canadian soldiers died, not in battle but as victims of an impersonal roadside bomb. Another killed himself back home in Quebec. He had stepped on a mine and had his leg amputated below the knee. “I’m 21 and I’ve lost my foot,” he kept saying. “What do you think I’m going to do?” This kind of thing will increase. U.S. casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are escalating sharply due to similar suicides. Desertions are up 80 per cent since the invasion of Iraq.

The main thing a government can offer soldiers for their utterly rational fear of death during war is a reason or meaning. Those at Stalingrad knew why they’d likely die, and for what end. U.S. soldiers in Iraq got a string of reasons, all lies; the result has been cynicism and more death. Canadians? They’ve been given no good reason for Afghanistan. To help the people? Why there, instead of somewhere without so much resistance to being “helped”? To forestall another 9/11? There were no Afghans in the 9/11 attacks.

The thought of the Taliban attacking North America is absurd. Jean Chrétien got us in to mollify the United States over Iraq; Paul Martin bumbled farther, to Kandahar, because no one else wanted it; and Stephen Harper embraced it with zeal. Failure is likely. The very respectable Senlis Council said so this week. So did Peter Bergen, CNN’s lone credible terror maven. None of this helps our soldiers in their real needs there.

As for juvenile prisoners, Canada has done nothing in the case of a Canadian, Omar Khadr, taken five years ago in Afghanistan, age 15, rendered to Guantanamo and about to be tried as an adult with zero legal protections. It took CBS’s 60 Minutes to report his story this week, and five U.S. news chains to demand access to his trial. Our government? Silence of the lambs.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.