So now we have an incident a week in Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, an axe attack. This week, shooting the innocent passenger in a minicab. Two locals dead. One, 16; the other, 60. Sandwiched between, the PM’s thumbs-up visit. We are rapidly constructing our own quagmire, built on the U.S model in Iraq, and miming their rhetoric: Canadians do not cut and run, said Stephen Harper, just as George Bush said he would not “send a signal to our enemies — that . . . America will cut and run.”

I had a letter from a Dutch development consultant who says he works in the Pashtun region where the axe attack occurred and was reminded of a visit by a similar group from the Provincial Reconstruction Team. “A Humvee was standing in the gate, a woman soldier on top manning the machine gun; five or six soldiers were distributed throughout the yard; another soldier was crawling over the roof, really. The civil affairs officer and two or three more soldiers were discussing politely with the governor.” He adds: “I found the situation . . . quite outrageous. When you are the guest of a Pashtun in his house, you don’t take your own soldiers along.”

This is what a quagmire means: Every step forward, including those taken with the best intentions, makes things worse; you sink further because you fail to recognize the unsteady ground on which you are walking.

As for the taxi shooting, such things are common in Iraq. “You just . . . killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!” a U.S. officer told his men in 2003, according to the Guardian. The trouble is, it’s an occupation, not a war. There are no battle lines, the enemy is rarely visible. That’s why it has quagmire potential. No one ever called the Second World War a quagmire.

The PM continues to insult Canadians opposed to a military presence by accusing them of wanting to quit in the face of attacks — though the main negative poll was done before the worst assaults. Now, after being spanked by the media, public opinion has shifted in favour of having troops there. But Canadians still want their MPs to debate the issue, which the PM refuses. Why? He’d win any vote easily, with Liberal support. Could it be because he doesn’t want to open the question of why we’re really there?

He says it’s to rebuild Afghanistan. But there are lots of places we could help rebuild. His trump reason is stopping terror before it gets here — “fight them and finish them in this part of the world,” he said, in another direct lift from the Bush oeuvre. But it’s likely that both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions have increased the danger of terrorism in the U.S. And the two recent incidents in Afghanistan could help raise hostility toward Canada, so that future kidnappers who learn a hostage is Canadian may not react as warmly as they did in Gaza this week. In short, the occupations probably do more for terror than against it.

Then why are we there? The short answer is to please the Americans. The Martin Liberals got in to placate them, after our failure to sign on for Iraq. Stephen Harper goes further, to full support for the U.S. right-wing agenda — something he’s never hidden. What is that agenda? Well, it’s worth recalling that the U.S. has goals other than a war on terror.

A Pentagon report last month said these include: “to dissuade any military competitor from developing . . . capabilities that could enable regional hegemony or hostile action against the United States.” Translation: Stop China from asserting its power in its own part of the world, which includes Afghanistan. The U.S. might even agree to accept a higher risk of terror if that helps it achieve “full spectrum dominance” — as another official report puts it (including the bold type). Is that what we’re abetting in Afghanistan? I’d sure like to hear someone ask, in Parliament. Of course, it’s unlikely you’d get an honest reply.

All the trouble in the world happens because I do not say what I think and I do not do what I say, said a Hasidic rabbi. It’s true. So we must try to decipher what our leaders think, despite what they say, and then press them to act as virtuously as they talk.

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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.