Canada's role in Afghanistan

It is good to see the federal parties are looking to find a non-partisan approach to the mission in Afghanistan. The mission is simply too important to play politics with. The hardline the government has taken with NATO to get more support with the combat role is positive. We simply cannot continue to have our troops in harms way without the proper equipment and numbers of troops to do the job. On the other hand, we cannot simply pull out and leave the country to the Taliban. We will likely be committed until 2011 but I cannot see us leaving then. After all, we have had troops in Cyprus for 40 years - what is the rush to get out of Afghanistan. With more U.S. and NATO support, we hopefully can help this poor land get on its feet and assist them with both security and building infrastructure. We can do no less.

Malcolm Watts