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What a ridiculous person I am.
I almost wept with relief reading the Manley report early yesterday, and actually did cry a little as, at a later news conference, panel member Pamela Wallin spoke of the willingness and enthusiasm of Canadian troops and how their efforts, and the mission in Afghanistan, are undermined and diminished "if we threaten to leave with every roadside bomb and mortar round."
At the risk of channelling Sally Field in her Oscar acceptance speech, Ms. Wallin, John Manley, Derek Burney, Paul Tellier and Jake Epp get it.
This is the report Canadian soldiers and their 77 fallen brothers (and one sister, Captain Nichola Goddard) and many more wounded deserve, an unvarnished evaluation of the mission in Kandahar.
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Internet Links
- Full text: The complete report by the panel
- Canada's mission: Globe stories, photos, interactives, tributes to The Fallen
It is now up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper not to sell the mission so much, although the panel is clear that the government must do a better job of communicating the truth of it to Canadians, but to embrace it fully in a way he has not done before.
The report urges the PM to take charge of the Kandahar file personally and lead from the political front - first, to explain it at home; second, to use the influence hard-won by the blood of young Canadians to badger NATO allies into providing more troops, with fewer restrictions placed upon them, in the volatile south of Afghanistan and to be ready to pull the troops out if that help isn't forthcoming; third, to co-ordinate the Canadian aid and diplomatic efforts that so lag behind the military one; and fourth, although this is implicit, to be prepared to stake his government's future on it.
As Mr. Manley says in a foreword: "We like to talk about Canada's role in the world.
"Well, we have a meaningful one in Afghanistan."
In other words, this is worth fighting for, and not just in that shattered country over there, but in this one. If it's sufficiently important that Canadian soldiers are paying with their lives and limbs, it's important enough for a mere government to rise to the challenge and, if necessary, pay the infinitely less significant political price.
It may be naive to expect politicians to find the big nuts that ordinary infantrymen have, but Mr. Manley was a politician, and he seems to have found his.
It must be said that the Liberal government of which Mr. Manley was a cabinet member, and which first sent the troops to Kandahar, was unwilling to do this very thing.
As the report notes: "To put things bluntly, governments from the start of Canada's Afghan involvement have failed to communicate with Canadians with balance and candour about the reasons for Canadian involvement, or about the risks, difficulties and expected results of that involvement."
Yet in succinct prose on 39 pages - the rest is maps, graphs, bios and other bumpf - the report explains why the mission is good and right for Canada.
As Mr. Manley said yesterday in reply to a reporter's question about whether the mission in Afghanistan falls within the Liberal tradition, "Absolutely ... this is a UN mission, and Lester Pearson's fingerprints are all over the UN Charter" under which auspices the UN Security Council has "repeatedly and explicitly authorized" the international military presence in Afghanistan, most recently last fall.
The report should be read by anyone who purports to hold an informed view of the mission, particularly those who haven't been to Afghanistan (this includes many of the most regular, not to mention most smarmy, commentators on the subject) and thus haven't been exposed, as the panel members have been, to the visceral punch to the gut packed both by Canadian troops and Afghans themselves.
Our soldiers have it because they are so fiercely committed even as it is they and their families who suffer most grievously. Afghans have it because they are so fierce, so bloody deprived, yet so full of promise and so worth the effort. Together, they knock your socks off, and most people who spend any time in the country end up as converts.
But most Canadians can't go to Afghanistan and see for themselves, and in the communications vacuum that has surrounded the mission, it remains poorly understood.
The logic for Canada being there is robust.
The day after 9/11, the UN Security Council and NATO collectively deemed the attacks on the United States as an attack against their respective members.
Within weeks, the Taliban, who had sheltered the al-Qaeda leaders who planned the attacks, collapsed and withdrew, "deposed but not defeated," to lick their wounds, replaced by an interim authority led by Hamid Karzai. In December of 2001, the UN authorized the International Security Assistance Force to secure Kabul and vicinity, and two years later, NATO assumed command of ISAF.
Correctly, the panel doesn't "accept any parallel between the Afghanistan mission and the U.S.-led war in Iraq. To confuse the two is to overlook the authority of the UN, the collective decisions of NATO and the legitimacy of the Afghan government that has sought Canada's engagement."
That's it in a nutshell.
The only disingenuous note in the report is its insistence on an equitable description of the impressive "Canadian soldiers and civilians" that panel members met in Afghanistan. I expect that is but a courtesy. The report itself says 2,500 soldiers are now in the country, and a grand total of 47 Canadian government civilians; it's pretty damn clear who is pulling their weight and who isn't.
Aside from the obvious central recommendation that Canada stay the course (assuming, and it is one hell of an assumption, that NATO can be persuaded to ante up more troops for Kandahar province), and the recognition that the beloved line Stéphane Dion draws between "combat" and "training" is entirely fraudulent, the panel makes one pitch I love.
This is for a "signature" project, such as a hospital, that would put a visible Canadian stamp on our efforts there (and, not said but implied, perhaps give the Canadian International Development Agency and others a much-needed focus).
A recommendation I'd add, and I borrow it from retired Canadian colonel Mike Capstick, is that Mr. Harper ask John Manley to serve as Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan.
In Pictures:
