Christie Blatchford's reaction to the Manley panel report

BZ for some choice words (some aimed at members of the punditocracy):

...this is worth fighting for, and not just in that shattered country over there, but in this one. If it's sufficiently important that Canadian soldiers are paying with their lives and limbs, it's important enough for a mere government to rise to the challenge and, if necessary, pay the infinitely less significant political price.

It may be naive to expect politicians to find the big nuts that ordinary infantrymen have, but Mr. Manley was a politician, and he seems to have found his.

It must be said that the Liberal government of which Mr. Manley was a cabinet member, and which first sent the troops to Kandahar, was unwilling to do this very thing.

As the report notes: "To put things bluntly, governments from the start of Canada's Afghan involvement have failed to communicate with Canadians with balance and candour about the reasons for Canadian involvement, or about the risks, difficulties and expected results of that involvement."..

As Mr. Manley said yesterday in reply to a reporter's question about whether the mission in Afghanistan falls within the Liberal tradition, "Absolutely ... this is a UN mission, and Lester Pearson's fingerprints are all over the UN Charter" under which auspices the UN Security Council has "repeatedly and explicitly authorized" the international military presence in Afghanistan, most recently last fall.

The report should be read by anyone who purports to hold an informed view of the mission, particularly those who haven't been to Afghanistan (this includes many of the most regular, not to mention most smarmy, commentators on the subject) and thus haven't been exposed, as the panel members have been, to the visceral punch to the gut packed both by Canadian troops and Afghans themselves.

Our soldiers have it because they are so fiercely committed even as it is they and their families who suffer most grievously. Afghans have it because they are so fierce, so bloody deprived, yet so full of promise and so worth the effort. Together, they knock your socks off, and most people who spend any time in the country end up as converts...

A recommendation I'd add, and I borrow it from retired Canadian colonel Mike Capstick [see Update at link], is that Mr. Harper ask John Manley to serve as Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan.

I'll second that suggestion.