Afghanistan: Here Come Those Benchmarks!

We've all become very much acquainted with the so-called "Iraq benchmarks" - you know, those unrealistic goalposts enumerated by the Bush administration which keep on being moved time and again by said administration, all in order to claim that "there is progress" while justifying further occupation of the country in order to "fully achieve the benchmarks" initially set out?

Well guess what? Benchmarks are coming to Afghanistan - seven years after the start of the war over there - care of the Canadian Bush emulator Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Harpie government.

Communicating vases and quagmires, anyone?

From the CBC (emphasis added):

A special cabinet subcommittee has been set up to co-ordinate Canada's efforts (concerning the mission in Afghanistan).

Senior government officials insist the cabinet is very focused on Afghanistan, while sources say task forces within Foreign Affairs and CIDA are working to unveil a series of "signposts of progress" on the mission, perhaps as soon as mid-June, the CBC's Stewart said.

But Roland Paris, associate professor at the University of Ottawa's Centre for International Policy Studies, told CBC News that despite the urgent need for more information on the Afghan mission, there has been "no significant change" in the level of transparency or detailed reporting from the Canadian government.

"What we've been lacking is a very specific set of goals and clear benchmarks that we can use to evaluate whether or not we are making progress toward these goals," Paris told CBC News.

He added there is "much more detailed, much more unvarnished reporting" on the mission in Iraq than the mission in Afghanistan.

Earlier this year, International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said the government would increase the number of briefings it offers reporters on the Afghan mission in an attempt to be more open about what is happening there.

"Our goal is to better inform Canadians about Canada's activities on the ground," she told reporters at a press conference in February.

But Oda also suggested the media was at fault for government's difficulty in communicating the Canadian mission's good news stories.

Here is how I break all of this down:

- The Harper Government is working on establishing a list of signposts of progress (i.e. "benchmarks") to be waived in the face of Canadians and moved whenever politically convenient, in order to claim that "there is progress" while at the same time justifying the need for extending the stay of our troops in Afghanistan to "ensure completion of the signposts of progress", thus once again plagiarizing the Bush administration playbook of war propaganda and disinformation;

- In the meantime, the Harper government remains mum on what is actually going on in Afghanistan (see this previous post of mine and also this recent news item), preparing its full blown campaign of propaganda and disinformation which will ignore reality (like this, as example) while painting a rosy picture (like "the surge is working!" did for Iraq);

- In between, actual news reporting of what is actually going on in Afghanistan will be labelled as media bias, as usual - and never you mind that the Harper government is largely at fault for keeping at bay the news media, due to its incompetence-driven abhorrence of transparency and accountability, as well as its incompetence-driven need to control information in order to keep face and give the illusion that it is in full control of things.

All of this is quite consistent with Harper having made the war in Afghanistan Canada's War, along with his pathological emulation of the Bush administration.

And lest we forget: selling a war is much more important than whether it was right or wrong, or whether the war is being won or not.

God Bless Canada indeed.