Afstan: Guts and good sense from Canadians

Even though it's tough there, Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star, thinks Canadians may be hardening to the mission.

...Peacekeeping belongs, sadly, to another age. In the Darfur region of Sudan, where at least 200,000 have been slaughtered, and an all-out genocide threatens, the government is refusing to allow in United Nations peacekeepers.

Aid is most worthy. But without security, it's an exercise in futility. The Taliban, who want people to be as miserable and as angry as possible, have deliberately targeted aid workers and projects...

...If we quit, we'll be turning our backs on our allies (35 nations are in Afghanistan) and on the Afghans themselves.

By going when it suits us, we'll be doing harm to the troops from countries like Britain, Holland, the U.S., that are already under strain there, and we'd do lethal harm to those Afghans left behind who've supported us.

There is, I believe, another factor. This summer, it seemed to me that Canadians were developing a tougher-minded and more resilient attitude toward the war on terrorism.

The discovery of the alleged plot by 18 Canadian Muslims to blow up buildings in Toronto and of the apparent plot to blow up a dozen passenger planes flying out of London's Heathrow have had an effect. In both instances, the targets were innocent civilians, not "occupying" troops...

But even if they fail, as, of course, they might, our soldiers aren't wrong. They are reminding us that some of the older virtues still have value — public duty and societal obligation, sense of solidarity and of comradeship, courage.

The young Canadian men and women in Afghanistan embody those virtues. We may wish they weren't there, but we cannot help but admire them.

("Hardening"--Churchill on Overlord, May 1944: "Gentlemen, I am hardening to this enterprise.")