I think I must be the only person who really doesn’t care very strongly one way or the other about the Afghanistan vote the other night. Everyone I’ve talked to, in person and on-line, has been incredibly vocal:

“The Liberal Party is hopelessly divided!”
“Harper is a warmonger!”
“The Liberal Party is full of cowards!”
“Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison lost the leadership race!”
“Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison showed they should be co-Prime Ministers of Canada!” (Note: There’s a sitcom I’d definitely watch)
“Liberals don’t support our troops!”
“Harper is a Bush puppet! A shrub! A buppet!”
“I’ve lost complete respect for Harper/Ignatieff/Dion/Yasmin Ratansi!”
“Harper/Ignatieff/Dion/Yasmin Ratansi have no morals!”
“I can’t believe Elliott got kicked off American Idol!”

Personally, I find the controversy around this vote about as exciting as the controversy around The DaVinci Code (It’s fiction! FICTION!!!). Yes, I think we should be in Afghanistan and I think Jean Chretien made the right decision to send troops there. But, at the same time, I don’t see the need to show our support for some nebulous undefined future commitment (I like Afghanistan, but I’m not ready to pop the question). I agree our troops might be better served in Darfur, but there isn’t a mission to Darfur on the table right now.

The bottom line is this was a rushed vote where no one really knew what they were voting on. And it was a vote Harper said he would ignore.

It was brilliant politics on Harper’s part – he makes the Liberals appear divided and sets up every Liberal leadership contender for the eventual “John Kerry quote”. And it’s hard to look bad when you’re “supporting the troops”. But personally, I just can’t get worked up over what was, for all intents and purposes, a meaningless vote.

UPDATE: Jason Cherniak has a scoop on Stephane Dion’s op-ed which we’ll see in the Saturday papers. In it, he explains why he voted against the motion.