Last January, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was adamant about his decision to extricate Canadian troops from Afghanistan. Now, his Conservative government has bought into the old training wheeze: We may leave our soldiers there past 2011 but — since they’ll just be training local troops — they won’t get killed.

The reasoning behind this turnabout is deeply flawed. But given the pressures on the government, it should come as no surprise.

The real surprise is that Harper took so long to change his mind.

First, note that the government’s about-face comes just weeks after it failed to win a United Nations Security Council seat.

Harper has no love for the UN. But Canada’s first-ever failure here shook the government. In this context, Canada’s role in NATO, an international outfit that the Conservatives do like, took on more importance.

And here, Canada was in danger of becoming an outlier. Even Holland — another NATO country formally committed to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan — is reconsidering its decision.

The second and more important reason is that U.S. President Barack Obama wants to start withdrawing his troops next year from a deeply unpopular war.

But to make such a withdrawal politically palatable, he must be able to pretend that the U.S. is winning — or, at least, not losing.

That requires an Afghan government and army able to survive for at least a few months after the Americans pull out. A replay of the Vietnam War’s 1975 finale — with enemy troops entering the capital as helicopters airlift Americans from their embassy roof — would squelch any chance of an Obama second term.

In Vietnam, the process of building up an indigenous army was called Vietnamization. In this war, it is called training. But it’s the same thing. And Washington desperately wants allies like Canada on side.

The third reason for Ottawa’s change of mind has to do with domestic politics. Polls show that most Canadians want our troops out of Afghanistan. Yet, at the same time, such a withdrawal contradicts Harper’s insistence — important to many potential Conservative voters — that his party remains unshakably loyal to its friends.

Harper has used this idea of a morally-centred foreign policy to contrast himself with the Liberals. But after Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff embraced the idea of keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan past 2011, it was Harper who appeared morally unreliable.

So yes, there are reasons behind the government’s change of mind. But if avoiding more Canadian casualties is the aim, these reasons don’t make sense.

The more than 1,600 Canadian casualties in Afghanistan so far are not all the result of combat. Many soldiers were killed or wounded by roadside bombs simply as they drove along public roads.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay talks of Canadian soldiers training Afghans “behind the wire” a phrase suggesting our troops will stay huddled in their armed compounds. Yet that’s not how training is done in Afghanistan. Trainers tend to accompany their pupils into the field — as Canadian soldiers already do.

Perhaps the most illogical element of the training argument is the premise. Afghans hardly need to be trained for battle. Since 1979, this has been a country consumed by war, where every male over the age of puberty is a potential fighter and where Kalashnikovs are common household items.

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The problem with the Afghan army and police is not that they don’t know how to fight. It is that a good many don’t want to fight for a corrupt government propped up by foreigners. Condemning more of our own soldiers to death won’t solve that.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday and Saturday.

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