How did we, Canada, got there? Why did Harper and his predessors the poll sniffing, equally corporate ass kissing liberals do it? A great history of the complexity of the answers can be found by reading Eric Margolis' first novel ‘War at the Top of the World’, a masterpiece, you get a view from ground level in Afghanistan, of it’s recent history, who the Taliban really are, and what the eventual outcome will be.
Margolis' second novel, 'American Raj', which i'm currently reading, goes deeper into Midleast history and it's corruption by our consumptive oil culture. It’s all about oil, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, all bumps on the road to the US imperial consumption of everything, everywhere, for now it’s oil, but in the long run it’s everything.
Canada has huge natural resources that are being plundered in the name of short term profits for the already obscenely wealthy and the US car culture. Canada doesn’t need to fight and die for US hegemony, Canada doesn't need to pollute the planet with tar sands pollutants, Canada needs social justice, healthcare, pollution controls, not the neo-con oil war agenda that our present little fascist PM Harper is attending to.
Unocal and the Afghanistan pipeline
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Argentine oil company Bridas, led by its ambitious chairman, Carlos Bulgheroni, became the first company to exploit the oil fields of Turkmenistan and propose a pipeline through neighbouring Afghanistan. A powerful U.S.-backed consortium intent on building its own pipeline through the same Afghan corridor would oppose Bridas' project.
