afghanistan: ownership

i am glad the liberals sided with the conservatives against the idea of a free vote on whether to continue our mission in afghanistan. here's what they said:

"We are against a vote because it's a responsibility of the executive and because we should not second-guess when we have an important mission to succeed," Liberal foreign affairs critic Stéphane Dion said yesterday on CTV's Question Period.

should there be debate? of course. there should always be debate on issues like the future safety of our troops. my only issue is that we can talk all we want, but in the end, we have to stayin afghanistan. i'm not saying forever, but for the forseeable near future. afghanistan was our first combat mission that wasn't involved with peace keeping. we were there to back the united states against what was percieved to be a hostile and malicious leadership (the taliban) that helped back al qaeda. we now own afghanistan, in the sense that we went in with our troops, started a war, and we now have a responsibility to help rebuild, just like the united states has a responsibility to not only afghanistan, but to iraq. will there be casualties? of course. but in this day and age, you can't just go into a country, bomb it to bits, and then high tail it out of there once the casualties get too high for your liking. there is a responsibility to the people of that country to help them rebuild, and in effect, by helping them rebuild, we can help irradicate many of the reasons for why terrorism breeds.

in the end, however, if there are enough bodies, people will call for a pull out, and the politicians will follow because they want to be elected. but for our long term security, we owe it to the people of afghanistan, and to ourselves, to help see this through.

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