The film Zero Dark Thirty’s dramatization of May 2, 2011 when US NAVY-SEAL Team 6 raids Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. [Zero Dark Thirty, IMFDB]
UNMOGIP began on Jan. 24, 1949, with a mandate to supervise the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Canadian Brigadier-General Harry Angle was named as the mission’s first chief military observer. But shortly after taking his post, he died in a plane crash while travelling to Kashmir. That happened on July 17, 1950. Angle was 44. He had commanded the British Columbia Dragoons in the Italian and Netherlands campaigns during the Second World War.
Brigadier-General Harry Angle
In the time since Angle’s death, both Canada and the United States have failed to make a solid ally out of Pakistan. Worse than that, the billions in funding our two governments have given to Pakistan were quite likely used, at least in part, to fund and shelter the Taliban, plan operations against our interests, and even deliver nuclear capabilities to Iran and North Korea.
And of course there is the issue of Osama bin Laden, who was discovered living in what looked like a purpose-built bunker of house merely steps away from an elite Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad.
For those interested in finding out more about our fascinating alliance with Pakistan, there is an old but excellent article in the May 16, 2011, issue of the New Yorker, entitled The Double Game, by author Lawrence Wright.
“Not only has American military aid been wasted, misused, and turned against us; it may well have undermined the Pakistani military, which has feasted on huge donations but is far weaker than its nemesis, the Indian military,” Wright summarizes. “If the measure of our aid is the gratitude of the Pakistani people and the loyalty of their government, then it has clearly been a failure.”
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For a practical start, Canada could stop going off to these hopeless and worthless overseas wars, wars not fought for the defense of Canada, not fought for the rights and freedoms of Canadians. We went to war in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to appease the U.S. after the 911 attacks because the Americans were wounded and angry and because they are our biggest trading partner and to stay out of Iraq, an illegal war based on lies and propaganda. We have been at one war or another for fourteen years and have lost the war in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and have destroyed Iraq and Libya. Surely we have done enough damage. After all, the French are at war and the attacks on them, and us, are blow back from those wars.