Angry in the Great White North

Garth Turner uses his way-back machine to remind us how the vote to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan played out in 2006:

You might recall that Parliament voted lasted year to extend the Afghan mission to February, 2009. I supported that move, as did most Liberals. It was clearly not time then to consider pulling out, and neither is it now.

So most Liberals supported keeping Canada in Afghanistan?

The Liberal Party has 100 seats. Back last May it might have been 102 (there has been some movement, including Garth Turner's own move from the Conservative bench to set as an independent and then finally to the Liberals).

Here is what actually happened when Parliament voted to extend Canada's commitment in Afghanistan:

The Conservatives announced the debate and vote for a two-year extension on Monday, and MPs spent about six hours debating whether Canada's troops should come home as scheduled in February 2007, or stay until 2009.

The Bloc Quebecois and New Democratic Party voted against the motion.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said the mission would see Canada straying from its traditional role as peace keeper.

Meanwhile, Graham allowed Liberal MPs a free vote and in the end Graham and 29 other Liberals supported the motion.

So only 30 of over a hundred Liberals supported the motion to extend the mission. Why would Garth Turner describe this as most Liberals?

Let's assume that Garth Turner retains a functional level of numeracy, which is a fancy way of saying he can count.

That vote was in May 2006. The problem for Garth Turner is that in May 2006, he was still a Conservative. He wasn't booted out of the caucus until October 2006. The Liberal Party decided to accept him as a backbencher with no responsibilities other than to vote the right way in February 2007.

That means that in May 2006, he voted counter to over 70 of his new Liberal Party caucus colleagues.

So now when he descibes the vote, he says most Liberals voted his way. That is not true. Not even close. But Garth Turner needs to look like a team player. It's just that the team he's playing on exists only in Garthiopia. In the real world, he's still on the wrong side of his party -- regardless of what party he belongs to.

The problem is that he has now said that the Liberals were wrong in voting against the mission:

It was clearly not time then to consider pulling out, and neither is it now.

But pulling out was what a majority of Liberal MPs wanted. I commend Garth Turner for standing up for what he believes to be right. But he ought not to be misconstruing what other people claimed to to feel was right.

Including Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion. He voted against extending the mission in May 2006. Stephane Dion feels that the best thing for stability in Afghanistan is for the soldiers to keep their bags packed, for them to stay huddled in the camp, and for the government to threaten to leave at a moment's notice:

[Stephane Dion] voted against the extension, arguing the Conservatives were just trying to play politics with the timing and purpose of the Commons debate. In the candidates debate in Vancouver earlier this month, he said that the NDP proposal to withdraw completely is as irresponsible as was the Harper decision to extend the troop mandate to 2009 in the first place.

If he was prime minister, he said, he would be assessing the situation in Afghanistan on a daily basis. The tipping point for him, he said, would be if our military presence in the country was not bringing about any effective security for the local population.

Presumably Garth Turner disagrees with that position. Now only if he would just say so instead of trying to rewrite history.

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