Retaliation, Maybe?

In May, the American military conducted an air strike on a village in Afghanistan that reportedly harboured Taliban fighters. A whole wackload of civilians were killed in this strike. Canadian ground troops are the only ones there right now, and they had no idea that the Americans were going to do it. When we heard about this, a friend of mine commented that the locals were going to blame Canadians for this strike, even though they didn’t have anything to do with it. Because of the Americans, any goodwill we have scrapped together in Afghanistan will dissipate.

Last week, 17 Islamic youths were arrested on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks within the Canadian borders. One of the alleged plots involved beheading the prime minister. It appears that my friend’s comments about Canadian-Afghanistan relations are fairly valid.