Letter to the Editor

Time to go

After six years of back-and-forth debate surrounding whether Canada should leave Afghanistan, it\’s nice to finally have some clarity on what the real issue is. According to Liam Brennan, in his article Staying the Course, what really matters is that Canadian troops don\’t want to leave. And that\’s why they should stay. What the Afghan people want is of no matter, to Brennan, only what the occupying forces desire.

One shutters to imagine this argument being applied to, say, a rape, a school shooting, or a home invasion. I doubt that Brennan would argue that what really matters is what the perpetrator desires in these cases. So why does he apply it to the situation in Afghanistan? This argument smacks of racism.

And at the same time, it sheds some light on the true nature of the occupation itself. Thousands and thousands of Afghan civilians have died, and many more face indescribable horrors as the world\’s imperialist powers carve up the region pursuing their own economic interests with disregard for the interests of the people who live there. The Afghan people have every right to be enraged.

And enraged they are. The war has continued on for six years only because the people of Afghanistan refuse to surrender to the hated occupying forces. Instead of defeating the Taliban, the occupation has sparked an increase in its membership as Afghans increasingly warm to it as the one group armed and organized enough to drive the occupiers out. The result is an unfavorable polarization (ironically created by the occupation itself), but it does speak to hatred the Afghan people have for the occupying forces.

What really matters in Afghanistan is the People of Afghanistan. And the people of Afghanistan have made it abundantly clear that they hate this racist occupation.

Matthew Nightingale

Captain of the devil’s advocacy industry?

Dear Sir

I was amused to read Michael Silicz’s recent item “What Am I Doing Back Here Again?” (The Manitoban Vol. 95, No. 4, 2007). What intrigued me most wasn’t his basic argument for not going back to university; depending on what one wants to get out of life, his point of view can no doubt be argued to good effect. What left me flabbergasted was the punch line at the end of his essay. After confidently trashing the whole notion of returning to university, if not the very idea of going to university at all, his article closes out with: “Michael Silicz ... is a student of law and political studies.” IS a student?! I would have expected the sign-off to read, “Michael Silicz WAS a student of law and political studies until he woke up one morning last summer and saw The Light.” As it is, his essay strikes me as a study in inconsistency and self-contradiction, and one wonders how he expects to convince others when he can’t seem to convince himself. Either he was hauled back to the U of M this term kicking and screaming, or else he was dragged into writing his article kicking and screaming. In any event, the con side of the argument would have been much better served had it been written by a captain of industry who dropped out of high school and went on, without a university degree, to leap tall buildings with a single bound. I think there are a few of those around.

I myself am a holder of two U of M degrees and am, by that token, a pretty smart cookie ... so Mr. Silicz can’t fool me! As a man of learning in law and political studies, he knows exactly why he’s going back to university this fall: he’s going back to work hard en route to a successful completion of his post-secondary education. For the truly inspired, that achievement opens the door to post-graduate training and, in the fullness of time, a productive career made possible thanks in very large measure to one’s university degrees.

In a community of scholars, the “do as I say, not as I do” approach is thin gruel indeed. It may well be that Mr Silicz is simply playing the devil’s advocate in his article, and God knows the world needs more devil’s advocates. Still, his expounding at length on the folly of going back to university, and then identifying himself (or allowing himself to be identified) as a university student in good standing, leads me to conclude that he’s not really serious about advocating devils at all.

Or am I, despite my two U of M degrees, missing something in his presentation?

Leo Pettipas
BA/65, MA/67