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The blue-ribbon panel headed by former Liberal minister John Manley has made an eloquent and impassioned case for extending Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan. Seeing "no operational logic" for pulling out of a combat role in Kandahar in February, 2009, as Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and others have called for, Mr. Manley and his co-panelists correctly assess in a report released yesterday that the job of Canada and other members of the International Security Assistance Force will be done only when Afghanistan's army is ready to provide security. "The hard truth is that an ISAF retreat from Afghanistan, before that country's own forces can defend its security, would most likely condemn the Afghan people to a new and bloody cycle of civil war and misrule - and raise new threats to global peace and security."

This undoubtedly is the conclusion Stephen Harper expected Mr. Manley to reach when he appointed him to chair the panel, and it is the right one. To forsake Kandahar is to forsake Afghanistan, and to forsake Afghanistan is to invite calamity. But far from merely helping make the Prime Minister's case for an extension of the mission, the report also places a burden on Mr. Harper to do a better job of selling the mission both at home and abroad.

Domestically, the panel cites a failure by the federal government - not just under the Conservatives, but under the Liberals before them - to "communicate with balance and candour about the reasons for Canadian involvement, or about the risks, difficulties and expected results of that involvement." To build domestic support, it contends, "this information deficit needs to be redressed immediately."

But if there is one recommendation around which the rest of the report revolves, it is the need for Canada to convince its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to do more. It argues that the mission should be extended only if about 1,000 additional battle troops are committed to Kandahar by our allies. That will require "coherent and sustained diplomacy by Canada, led by the Prime Minister and specifically including interventions on the subject in his bilateral conversations with foreign leaders."

What Mr. Manley proposes is essentially a game of diplomatic chicken, but it is one Mr. Harper cannot avoid. Considering that Canada currently has roughly 2,500 combat troops in Kandahar, it is a pitiful abdication of responsibility for larger countries such as France and Germany to refuse to assign another 1,000 when that relatively small contingent could vastly improve security and the likelihood of the mission's success. Even the United States, which recently announced a seven-month deployment of 3,200 additional troops to Afghanistan, must be pressed to make a longer and more specific commitment.

Having provided leadership in a region that few others have dared enter, Canada has earned a stronger diplomatic voice. Now, as the panel recommends, it is time for Mr. Harper to make that voice heard.