Whither Afstan and whether the CF should be there

A major article in Maclean's by Paul Wells, well worth reading--some excerpts:

By this point, a lot of readers must be wondering whether there is any point in Canadian troops even sticking around for the end of this film. I want to guard against giving any impression that I would believe my answer to be definitive or blessed by the special insights of the elect. I was in Afghanistan only for several days, a guest of NATO, sleeping in ISAF barracks and hearing, for the most part, experts who had been selected for me. In a widely-noted Washington Post article in August, that paper's former Baghdad correspondent Jonathan Finer mocked the "Green Zone Blinders" of VIPs who swan into a war zone for a few days and come home regaling everyone with Olympian pronouncements about "What I Saw." It is too tempting to succumb to the fallacy of the smart alecks in the Holiday Inn Express commercials: I don't actually know how to defuse an insurgency, but I did sleep in an ISAF barracks last week.

But for whatever it is worth, nobody I talked to in Afghanistan wants coalition forces in general, or Canadian forces in particular, to leave any time soon. This was true of the soldiers themselves, of their colleagues from other countries, of ordinary Afghans like the villagers of Morad Khan Kalay, of the country's minister of the interior and of opposition politicians who think the Interior Ministry is the worst in the Afghan government...

And while the danger and, in some corners of the country, the chaos have been increasing, so have the more promising signs. Afghanistan's GDP has doubled since 2002, as have average incomes. A Johns Hopkins University study shows that infant mortality, while still higher than in Chad, is at least down 18 per cent in the last five years. This improvement in the quality of living, a UN official said, "is one of the key phenomena that has helped to underpin the continued consent for an international presence here."..

The real question is simpler and less lovely: are we in or are we out? If we're in, we are in until the mission is done, until the Afghan army is strong enough and the police force closer to being set right after a half-decade's neglect, and the length of that commitment may better be measured in decades than months. If we are wasting our time, if our presence does more harm than good, it is satirical for us to leave our soldiers in the field a day longer.

Afghanistan has come so far from chaos and lies, still today, so far from peace that it is time for clear thinking and hard decisions. Canadians do the Afghan people no good, and ourselves no honour, if we shrink from those decisions.

A couple of comments: "If we're in, we are in until the mission is done, until the Afghan army is strong enough and the police force closer to being set right after a half-decade's neglect..." That is not necessarily so. It may well be that in a few years Canadian troops may not be necessary, if the Afghan army has made substantial progress and if--by that time--others are willing to take our place. Mr Wells' view is too absolute.

"If we are wasting our time, if our presence does more harm than good..." There is simply no way we can make that judgment at this time--as Mr Wells' article itself demonstrates.