Alfred Hitchcock’s film Lifeboat is based on John Steinbeck’s tale of a group of Anglo-American survivors whose ship had been sunk by a German U-boat during the Second World War. Released in early 1944, when an Allied victory over Nazi Germany was probable but not yet assured, the film offers a surprisingly nuanced take on war and morality. The last survivor dragged aboard the little boat is the U-boat’s captain. This forces the others to wrestle with an ethical problem: do they stand by the principles their nations are fighting for and treat the man as a POW, or do they abandon these ideals and throw him to the sharks?
    The survivors choose the first option, only for the captain to betray their faith by murdering a member of their crew. Casting their principles overboard, they turn on the German and — as a mob –— kill him. As the film ends, the survivors rescue another shipwrecked German sailor and once again are forced to face a moral dilemma: should principles or experience dictate their action?
    Lifeboat is a great film, not least because it refuses to answer the questions it raises. More than 60 years later, these same questions haunt the present in Afghanistan. Last week saw a number of key developments in the war. First, Canada’s new Defence Minister, Peter MacKay announced that Canada would withdraw its troops from the NATO mission in February 2009. Second, a new video of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden surfaced, featuring a renewed attack on the United States and its occupation of Iraq. Finally, the government of Ontario renamed a 170-kilometre stretch of Highway 401 the “Highway of Heroes,” acknowledging the final trip made by soldiers killed in Afghanistan as their bodies are driven from CFB Trenton to a forensic centre in Toronto. "It is enormously fitting,” said Premier Dalton McGuinty, “that we dedicate a portion of this very road in honour of those who gave their lives for our nation…. This Highway of Heroes reminds us that our freedom, safety and prosperity is often purchased by the sacrifices of others.”
    Such platitudes dominate what passes for political debate over the war in Afghanistan. They are echoed among the general public, most obviously in yellow-ribbon “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers.
    But let’s back up a moment. This war has little or nothing to do with “our freedom, safety and prosperity,” and lives lost in Afghanistan were hardly sacrificed in the name of Canada’s national interest. I would suggest that, with all respect to those who have lost a son, friend or lover in this conflict, the public and media’s infatuation with the “heroism” of the common soldier — Christie Blatchford’s embedded reports for the Globe and Mail and the CBC series Afghanada — has been at the expense of any critical debate about how this war started and how it might end.
    History first. One month after the attacks of September 2001, President George W. Bush authorized an attack on Afghanistan with the stated goals of (a) capturing Osama bin Laden, (b) destroying al-Qaida, and (c) removing Afghanistan’s Taliban government for harbouring and aiding al-Qaida agents.
    With the support of Britain, military victory was swift, and the Taliban was ousted. Securing peace, building a new and stable regime and preventing Taliban resurgence proved to be far greater challenges requiring broader commitment. To that end, the United Nations sanctioned the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, whose current strength of 35,000 includes about 2,500 Canadian soldiers.
    Six years on from the initial victory, where do we stand? Osama bin Laden — a man with only marginal connections to Afghanistan — remains at large, able to release videos mocking those who sought his capture. Al-Qaida not only has not been destroyed, but according to one recent U.S. intelligence report, is now at its strongest since 9/11. The same goes for the Taliban, whose strength in southern Afghanistan, especially, continues to plague NATO troops.
    Canadian soldiers are in Afghanistan not for the noble ideals voiced by McGuinty and others, but due to a policy of U.S.-led retaliation for 9/11 that has failed to secure its stated objectives. Just what interest NATO really has in this embroilment is a matter for debate, but it’s a debate that rarely gets voiced.
    In part, at least, this is due to the emphasis on the “heroism” of the troops that prevails among nations participating in the war, and even among those individuals who oppose the war itself. Yet it’s a distinction that hardly holds up to scrutiny. After all, the soldiers are there only because of the policy that put them there. If you oppose that policy then you should — logically, if not emotionally — oppose its material manifestation (i.e. allied troops in Afghanistan).
    It’s also argued that to pull the troops out now would be to betray the 70 or so Canadian heroes who have been killed on the mission. Again, emotionally, this carries much weight. Logically, however, by this argument the numbers are really irrelevant — it would have been a betrayal to withdraw after even the first fatality. On the contrary, far better to extend the mission indefinitely and risk 70, 700 or even 7,000 more deaths than to “betray” those who, by definition, are beyond caring.
    David Bright has published widely on Canadian social, labour and
criminal justice history. He currently teaches History and Politics at
Niagara College, Ontario.