Afghanistan 2025

Wars have a funny way of dragging on long after the victory celebration dates penciled in the agendas of military planners. Even the largest superpowers tend to underestimate the tenacity and ferocity with which a people will defend their nation, their identity, and their home.

Sometimes a conflict will continue long after it should have ended simply because there is no clear objective. When you combine a lack of vision with a hopelessly ill-equipped military, you get what Canada has right now in Afghanistan.

Recently Maj.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, one of Canada's top ranking soldiers, told Canadians that "Afghanistan is a 20-year venture," effectively acknowledging that a generation of Canadian troops will press on in a war with no clear enemy, no fixed exit strategy, and no end in sight. "Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you," he said.

We here at The Maple Lounge wanted to see just what the situation would be like 20 years from now. So we fired up the old time machine, which we've had to stop renting out to hockey-starved Canucks as per the new NHL collective bargaining agreement.

In 2012 Canada will launch a full scale invasion of Afghanistan. Our entire fleet of Sea King helicopters, which are still every bit as operational as they are now, will be sent on a bombing raid deep into Kabul. None of the helicopters will return, despite each having only recently modified been modified for low earth orbit at a cost of $9,000 billion. The once proud Sea Kings are no more. Several Afghani warlords appear on television to claim that they didn't shoot the choppers down, in stark contrast to their usual boasting. Minutes later the former Iraqi information minister appears on CNN and claims that he personally shot down each Sea King with spit wads from a cave in Yemen.

The Canadian military does have some new tactics, fresh for the Fall 2025 season. Unfortunately, even those are relics borrowed from other nations. In 2018 Canada buys the rights to the phrase "shock and awe" from the USA. If a space-borne helicopter bombing run wasn't enough to "shock and awe" the terrorists, then the newest in Canadian artillery will certainly accomplish that. Although The Maple Lounge cannot reveal future top secret information, picture a bunch of very flexible soldiers armed with cans of beans and DND issue Zippo lighters. Shocking? Definitely. Awesome? You bet. Enough to win the war? Not quite.

Our trip in the time machine came to an end before we could discover if Canada finally conquers Afghanistan. (The Google Ads on this site do not generate enough revenue for us to operate the time machine for extended periods of time, what with the price of gas and all. Of course, if you think gas is expensive today, wait until 2025!)

The initial idea was to blog from the future, but I am saddened to report that blogging as we know it no longer exists in 2025. A holographic embodiment of all the world's information told me that in 2015 the blogosphere collapsed under its own weight of horrendous poetry and cat pictures. The ensuing digital avalanche caused a mass disruption of the planet's communication systems, and 2016 blogging was outlawed by the newly elected UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Boutros Gali. As an example to bloggers everywhere, in 2017 the few remaining Blogging Tories are rounded up and shot.