Liberals, Tories Team On Vote

There, for a brief moment, Michael Ignatieff has demonstrated that he is capable of making intelligent choices that reflect his obligation as a lawmaker and political leader in this country. Both he and his chief deputy, Bob Rae, despite the mixed opinion of Members of Parliament of their party have resolutely stood by the understanding of Canada's ongoing obligation as a member of NATO, to extend our official presence in Afghanistan - as unpleasant as that need may be.

The dreadful mess that Afghanistan represents, with its current government comprised in large part of corrupt war lords with brutal human-rights records sitting in parliament alongside a weakly ineffectual leader in Hamid Karzai, added to the insecurity of an insurrection determined to return to power as tyrannical fundamentalists preying on the population, and the people of Afghanistan themselves having no trust in their government ensures this is not the most hopeful of situations respecting eventual outcomes.

Conflicting reports and opinions that the Taliban have secured and continue to secure greater areas of the country's provinces, tangle with those that insist the war is winnable and that NATO troops are gaining the upper hand. The maladjusted society where tradition still insists that women remain subservient to men, where Sharia law imposes the death penalty on apostates, where more women are garbed in burqas than any other Muslim society, remains its reality.

Too many NATO lives have been sacrificed to the collective need to suppress and repress the malign forces that found refuge in Afghanistan, feeling sufficiently empowered to attack the Western targets that subsume their ideological fury. Too many Canadian soldiers gave their lives in the effort to eradicate the presence of the fundamentalist Taliban from a fearful society upon whom they had preyed for long enough.

Too many NATO countries preferred and continue to prefer to position themselves in the country in relatively safe areas where violent threats are unlikely to confront them. Too few of those nations took it upon themselves to demonstrate the moral fibre it takes to build a strategy to offset the deadly presence of the Taliban, and to execute it to the benefit of the people of the country who surely deserve far better.

So, that the Liberals sided with the Conservatives to defeat the motion that the Bloc Quebecois brought into Parliament to condemn the government for the manner in which it committed to Canada's mission extension - aided and abetted by the NDP, both of which parties insist that Canadian troops should be removed instanter - is a bonus for non-partisan recognition of what is right and just.

Canada should, and will remain an additional three years, for the purpose of monitoring, training and mentoring Afghan troops. To leave them finally, when their numbers are considered sufficient to accomplish the job at hand; defending their nation as professionally trained and capable troops.

As to whether the Afghan army and their national police will eventually successfully ply what they will have learned, we can only hope.