The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - It Was Forty Years Ago Today ......

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Thoughts about John Lennon on the day he was shot --- plus a really important interview with Janice Stein about the peace talks about to begin in Afghanistan -- was it worth it that so many lives, including Canadian lives, were lost .

and hello there peter mann's bridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it is tuesday of week 39 and i'll give you a heads up right away today's podcast will not deal with covid19 with the coronavirus the pandemic it's not going to deal with COVID-19, with the coronavirus, the pandemic. It's not going to deal with that. And it's not going to deal with the situation next door, continuing craziness surrounding the Trump departure and the Biden arrival. No, it's not going to deal with either one of those. They're going to do something different.

They're going to depart from the regular scene for today for one day only, probably. Because tomorrow it's Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. And I'll tell you more about that later in this podcast. Okay, so let me get started. in this podcast. Okay. So let me get started. It was a Monday night,

late Monday night. I'd been watching Monday Night Football on ABC. I was in my home in Ottawa when at about 25 after 11 I was in my home in Ottawa. When at about 25 after 11 on this night, December 8th, 1980, Howard Cosell, who was the big voice of ABC Sports,

broke into his coverage of the football game and said something along the lines of, we've just got terrible news. And we're going to let you know what it is. And that terrible news was the assassination of John Lennon. It had just happened in New York City. I think it had happened around 10 to 11. It only happened a half an hour or so before. When John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono were returning from a recording session in New York. And he was shot outside his apartment, the Dakota Apartments in New York, right by Central Park.

Now, I'm not going to give you the name of the assassin. You probably know it. But I'm not going to waste my time giving the name of this coward who shot John Lennon four times in the back. He fired five bullets at him, missed with one shot. Four times in the back. Died almost instantly. There was a police car there very quickly,

took him to a hospital, but he was pronounced dead. John Lennon, the Beatles. Forty years ago tonight. And, you know, listen, I was, Tonight. And, you know, I would listen. I was, what was I that year? I was 32. But I'd grown up, like most of the people my age,

listening to and influenced by the Beatles. Now, I'll be honest. I remember when the Beatles first came out and first started hearing about them, 62, 63, 64. And initially, I thought, oh, these guys are good, but the really good guys are the Dave Clark Five. I think I've told you that before. I was a DC Five fan. I was wrong. So, anyway, like everybody else, I became a big Beatles fan.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo. And then settling on that night in December of 1980 Kind of, in some ways, our youth ended And in some ways, our youth took over I was in Ottawa And I had to drive down the next day to Toronto. And I remember driving along the 401 in my 1979 Supra. And no matter what radio station you listen to,

all you heard were Beatles songs and specifically John Lennon songs. and no matter what radio station you listened to, all you heard were Beatles songs, and specifically John Lennon songs, the whole drive. And it was tough. It was difficult. But that night on the National, which was the first National since the assassination, right?

Because it had happened in the middle of the night. The national had already been on the air. And so it was the Tuesday night, December 9th, that we would tell the London story. And it was a shocker in a way, because for the first time that I could recall, the whole newscast, everything, top to bottom, was about John Lennon.

There was no other story in the news, and it became quite controversial, both internally and externally. What was the CBC doing by blanketing coverage of just one story? Did it really have that much impact? Well, yeah, it did. I remember the producer that night, a fellow by the name of David Naiman, kind of a legend in the CBC, around the national desk. And, you know, there was some incoming on that decision. But David maintained, and he was right. This is the most significant thing that's happened in our generation,

our generation, that age group. And so the whole program was about John Lennon. And in those days, the National ran, I think, 25 minutes. That was before the journal. So top to bottom, all John Lennon. Reaction from around the world. The history of the Beatles, the history of Lennon. How everybody was talking about it.

World leaders were talking about it. Obviously people of Lennon's age, our generation, were talking about it and the influence he had had. So that was a signature moment for a lot of reasons. And in some ways, you know, it feels like it happened last night. You know, I can still remember sitting there watching Monday Night Football, listening to Howard Cosell break the news to the world that John Lennon had been assassinated.

Forty years ago tonight. I never met John Lennon. The only Beatle I've interviewed up close was Ringo Starr, and that was only a few years ago. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've talked about the Ringo Starr interview before. And he has always maintained the fact that he had a solid relationship and friendship with each of his fellow Beatle mates,

with John, Paul, and George, all close. There's only two left now, Ringo and Paul, and they're both in their 80s. I think they're both in their 80s. I know John would have been in his 80s if he had lived. But he didn't. Another added list to that phrase, only the good die young. Well, 40 is young. And John Lennon died at 40.

40 years ago tonight. All right, here's the second story I'm going to tell you. At 40. 40 years ago tonight. All right, here's the second story I'm going to tell you. And on this, I'm going to have an interview in a moment. I went to Afghanistan twice during the conflict, which still goes on today, but twice during the time that Canada was involved in the conflict. 2003, I think, was the first time, and 2006 was the second time. And in that gap, things changed. Because I can remember in 2003, and the main area the Canadians were involved in at that time was Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and they were based at Camp Julian. And it was a very secure location, but nevertheless, we would go out on patrol a couple of times while I was there, the week that I was there in 2003.

And I can remember us going through, you know, small towns, little villages outside of Kabul, not far from Kabul, but outside Kabul. And there was this sense on the part of the citizenry, great, coalition forces are here, we got rid of the Taliban, and it's thanks to these guys, and they're here to, the men and women of the coalition forces, they're here to help us Help us rebuild. Allow our girls to go back to schools. Rebuild our places of worship. Help establish rules of self-government. And you drive through these towns in whatever, tanks, armored personnel carriers, Jeeps. You go through these towns and people would be waving and smiling

and little kids would be out in the street, you know, big smiles on their faces with the expectation of how things were going to turn around from the horror days of the Taliban. Then I went back in 2006, Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. And I got to tell you, things were very different. There was a difficult fight going on with Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan. Canadians were dying by the dozens, mainly as a result of IEDs, roadside bombs. In fact, more than half of the Canadians who died in Afghanistan

during that conflict, and I think there were 159 in total, more than half died from roadside bombs. Not in the traditional conflict, but from roadside bombs. around in those APCs and other things during the day or the night, and really having no sense whatsoever of what might happen if you hit one of those things. But I was never there for more than a few days, so the odds were in my favor, and as it turned out, they were in my favor. But more importantly, during the daytime when we drove through small towns and villages, it was a very different scene than the one I'd witnessed just a few years before. There was no sense that the citizenry was welcoming you to Afghanistan,

was relieved to see you. No, by 2006, they were sick of war. They were sick of the conflict. So sick that I had one former Taliban leader who was now working for the coalition in an advisory capacity, tell me in an interview in a location outside of Kandahar, tell me that when I said to him, I kind of explained this difference, and he looked at me and he said, your people don't understand.

They expected rapid change. It hasn't happened. They want peace. They want an end to this. And for a lot of people, if it means the return of the Taliban, well will so be it. But they don't get the sense that your people are getting the job done. That was 2006. That was back in the heady days when Prime Minister Harper, who went there that year in fact was in Afghanistan about a week after I'd been in Afghanistan, which I think was his first trip, certainly as prime minister, when he gave the famous, we won't cut and run on you speech.

Of course, we cut and run a few years later when things got ugly and it just seemed like nothing was making a difference. And we weren't alone. Others cut and run too from other countries, started to maneuver their way out. After spending hundreds of millions, in some cases billions of dollars, in Afghanistan, and losing lives, precious lives. Now, why am I talking about all this now?

Well, as you may or may not know, because the focus has been off Afghanistan for some time, as if nothing was going on there. In fact, lots is going on there. And people are still dying, mainly citizens and civilians, as the pressure tactics between the different forces in Afghanistan, not the military forces of other countries, but the different forces within Afghanistan struggle for power.

And almost every day, it seems, there's another example of a bomb blowing up in a business center or on a street or in a building where dozens, if not hundreds, of people are killed. The Americans are still there, not many, but they're still there, a few thousand. Donald Trump wants to pull as many out as he can before he has to hand over power at the end of January,

and hand over power he will do, no matter what you're reading or hearing. Anyway, as all this is going on, you have the indication over the last couple of days that the Afghan government, the existing government, and the Taliban have finally agreed to rules for peace talks. This has been bouncing around for the last 6, 8, 10 months. and the Taliban have finally agreed to rules for peace talks. This has been bouncing around for the last six, eight, ten months.

But apparently, they finally agreed to peace talks. As the headline in The Guardian says, Breakthrough will allow start of negotiations to end nearly 20 years of civil war. Really? I don't know. I think back to what I saw in 03 and then again in 06 and what that fellow said to me. This just seems to me like a well-played move by the Taliban. After many years, many dead.

What's going to happen here? Taliban wind up back in power after kind of a 20-year interval? Well, I don't know. I'm not an expert on Afghanistan. I'm not an expert on the Middle East. But you know who is? My friend and somebody that I'm sure you too have listened to over the years. Janice Stein. She's, you know, among other things, Canadian political scientist and an international relations expert.

She's a specialist in Middle East area studies. She's a specialist in negotiation theory, foreign policy decision making, and international conflict management. So, sounds like she's got the cred for me. And I've always felt that way since the middle 80s when I first met her and first started talking to her. She's also the person who started. She's the former founder and former director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, recognized around the world for its ability to understand the machinations of various conflicts around the world. So, I thought, hey,

time to talk to Janice for a few minutes, because Janice will give me a sense of what to believe here. So, Janice Stein's in Toronto, and she joins us right now. Janice, I want to start by reading you a couple of sentences out of a Guardian magazine piece that just came out in the last couple of days. The Afghan government and the Taliban have agreed framework rules for peace talks after more than two months of discussions, allowing negotiations on ending a nearly 20-year civil war to finally begin. The peace process hosted by Qatar is playing out against a backdrop of heavy violence

on the ground in Afghanistan and an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops. Critics of the talks fear that the insurgents are more interested in playing for time than ending the war and aim to ultimately take the entire country by force once the Afghan army can no longer count on the support of the American military. Now, I've got to tell you, I'm one of those critics because I've believed for many years now that the end game here for the Taliban is just to get back to where they were basically in the 90s, that they just want to take over and this is all a game, these negotiations. Am I wrong? I agree with you. I am very skeptical of these negotiations, Peter. You have a government, the Afghan government led by President Ghani that is also playing for time. You know, he knows the United States, certainly under Trump, and I don't think any differently under Biden, is on its way out. The Afghan forces, which the world has invested

billions of dollars by now in building up, are frankly not really a capable fighting force. No improvement in the defection rates seen over the years. So I'm very pessimistic. I think that one of the real things that we need to watch, do we see a reduction in the violence that you were talking about at any point by the Taliban? We've been involved in negotiations for years now, one way or the other. No reduction in the violence. In fact, the reverse escalation.

I certainly know people, particularly in Kabul, who look at the future with absolute dread. So what was this 20 years all about then? Aside from spending a hell of a lot of money and costing a lot of lives. And costing a lot of lives. And costing a lot of lives. And in this country, you know, we have over 150 soldiers who've lost their lives. So what was this about? In the first instance, this was about shutting down the support that the Afghan government gave to the Taliban. That frankly was done. But three months after 9-11, that job was done. And that was the inflection point. That's where everything else follows from the decisions

that were made at the end of November of 2011. And you had, I think, a very naive group of people who thought they could remake the country. So we're going to export a model to a country that is rugged, divided with its own deeply entrenched traditions. And people are going to come in from the outside, remake this country. You know, even the British who were defeated in Afghanistan didn't have that kind of over-inflated expectation of what they would do. And so I think right from the beginning, honestly, we were in trouble because we had the wrong set of expectations of what needed to happen in Afghanistan. You know, it is ironic, really, because some of the great powers in the world have tried,

as you said, the British, the Russians tried, and now the Americans and, you know, everybody, including the Canadians, along with them, and the end result appears to be like it could very well be just the same, that it just reverts back to where it was. Well, let me just tell you what's the difference, and then we can argue about whether it's been the price or not. So we've had 20 years now, and this is probably the single achievement that jumps out at me. We've had 20 years now where a lot of young girls in Afghanistan have gotten some kind of education and that's real and that's an accomplishment. And we've seen women in universities now, largely in

Kabul that were never there before. So that's an achievement. I think secondly the Taliban will come back. I have no doubt whether it's a year, two, three. It just depends how long. You know, a gunny can drag this out. But I think they will be more careful. They paid a big price. So as long as the memory lives and human memory is, you know, what is it, 10 years, 20 years, when things remain fresh, and then we move on. I think they will be much more careful in the kind of safe haven

that they allow anybody from outside Afghanistan to develop as a shelter behind. Because that's what brought this destruction on, frankly. We're a group of Saudis, exiled Saudis who came and were able to hide out in Afghanistan and launch plans to attack the United States from afar. I think the Taliban is more sober and wiser, but where the naivete exists is anybody who believes that the fundamental beliefs that the Taliban have about the way society that was made, and I agree with you, for young girls in Afghanistan who've gone through a generation where they've been allowed to go to school, they've progressed, they've graduated, is that gone? Is that one of the things that could remain? Or is it unlikely given their fundamental beliefs? Well, I think here's where we're allowed a grain of optimism.

Because, you know, the Taliban are of the people as well. They're rooted in communities. You know, their armed fighters come from the village, fight, go home. So they're not wholly separated from the communities in which they come. And they're part of these communities that have seen these girls now go to school for 20 years. And that's how change happens. It happens on the ground. It doesn't happen, frankly, from outside powers coming in and trying to engineer this from the top. It actually comes from the bottom in these village communities. And the Taliban, I mean, the leadership

certainly has these strong beliefs, but doesn't want to antagonize the base. So when you're in Afghanistan, you see a big difference. Parts of southern Afghanistan have not really changed very much. And that was the home of the Taliban. You know, that's the community from which they came. I don't think the future for girls and women in southern Afghanistan is very bright. There's a different story in Kabul and in some of the other provinces where this is really now much more deeply rooted. So it's fair to say that some things will have changed on that issue.

Okay, let me ask you one last one. And just before you do, Peter, let me make one other comment that to use the language of democracy here or exporting democracy is just silly. I can't really, I'm struggling for the right words, but it's talking of foreign language to people in Afghanistan. It's talking about institutions that make no sense in the Afghan context. And sadly, in many other contexts, too, where Western ideas are trying to be inserted in a culture that's not only not ready for them, doesn't want them. But let me ask you the tough question, which is, it's probably unfair to ask you, but try to put yourself in the position of some of the leaders, whether it was Jean Chrétien or Paul Martin or Stephen Harper or to a degree, a lesser degree, but Justin Trudeau, that sent Canadian young men and women into combat roles in Afghanistan. Difficult situation.

We lost 159 people, many of them as a result of roadside bombs, not actual normal conflict, but nevertheless, they died, and many more were injured. What do you say to their parents, their families, their wives, their husbands? Was this worth it? That is a really hard question, and I've struggled with that myself as I've thought about this, Peter. Certainly, there was an interest that we Canadians have in protecting North America. And yes, there's a border, but that border doesn't really matter much when you think about threats that come from outside the country.

And so we had a shared interest with the United States. So from that very beginning, we clearly had an interest in working very closely with the United States to prevent al-Qaeda from reorganizing and from inserting members in our own society. And that's an ongoing interest. think our prime ministers, and it's very interesting when you look at them too, because let's talk about Jean-Claude Jancet, very skeptical frankly. Tried to put a frame to limit this. Very pushed back. Paul Martin, even more

skeptical, even more skeptical. And he was prime minister just before the big jump in our contribution. But he was a, you know, he asked question after question after question of the generals at that time because he was so skeptical. Stephen Harper comes to office persuaded but becomes skeptical as he's in office and he's the one who dials down our commitment. So I think the lesson for the political leadership is ask those tough questions and ask not only the military command that's for leading the mission have objectives.

They're closely linked in to the U.S. military. There are friendships that go back and forth across these borders because we've worked so closely. The takeaway for me, political objectives define the mission. The mission doesn't define the political objectives. And if I had to look back at these 20 years, I would say that was our mistake. We'll leave it at that. I'm sure this is going to be discussed and debated for many years to come.

But Janice, as always, getting your take on these things is really important, obviously to me, but also to our listeners. So I thank you as always. It's always a treat to be with you, Peter. Okay. Well, that was helpful, I think, in trying to understand what's really going on in Afghanistan. So let's point this podcast towards its conclusion for this Tuesday of week 39. With a couple of reminders, Bruce will be here tomorrow on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. We're still toying around with what to talk about.

I've got a couple of ideas, so has Bruce. We'll hash it out today and focus it down. Whichever route we go, I think you'll enjoy it. So look towards that I told you yesterday that we would have a new contest for this Friday for the weekend special and this is what I've decided it should be about we've spent the last two weeks talking about what good has happened to you

in these eight or nine months of the pandemic so here's today's focus. This could be fun, and it's okay to have fun with it. So the focus is, how is the holiday season going to be different for you, and what have you done to make it different, and what influences the pandemic had on how you're going to focus things. Like it could be something you've made or it could be something you've planned to do because obviously it's going to be a very different holiday season than we've experienced

before. Yesterday, we talked about Christmas trees. Today, or this week, I want you to think, what are you going to do that's different to prepare for the holiday season? And I don't mean, oh, you know, I'm not going to travel, or, you know, friends and family won't be coming over. Those are all obvious. So take me into the area of what's not obvious

and let me know what you're thinking. And the winner of the contest will receive a signed copy of Extraordinary Canadians, the book that Mark Bulgich and I have written this year that's doing still extremely well on the bestseller charts. And we're obviously very proud of that. Okay. That is it for today.

Make sure you join us tomorrow for Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. But for now, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the Bridge Daily. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll look forward to talking to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.