"Did we make it all up?"

Michael Den Tandt asks that very question in a timely and well-penned piece sent to me by fellow traveller Ian Elliot:

...so many Canadians, tired of a conflict in which we seem to be treading water, expressed how disappointed they are, how they were against the mission from the start, and how the only sensible and right thing now is to pull the troops out. Don't wait for 2011. Do it now.

My question: What about those women? Saudi Arabian women likely wouldn't dream of marching through the streets in defence of their rights. Nor would Kuwaiti women, I would bet. Nor would Sudanese women. These Afghan women showed incredible courage and hope. We promised that we would help them. They believed us. Now we should abandon them?

There is a clever and easy cynicism in some quarters. It thrives in universities and upscale cafes, in pleasant salons where people sip wine and snack on shrimp and cheese and bat ideas around for fun. That's fine. A measure of cynicism is normal and necessary and healthy for democracy.

But cynicism about the Afghan mission has led, it seems to me, to a stunning disconnect between assumptions and reality. On Murphy's show, for example, I heard callers say repeatedly that Canadian soldiers aren't helping anybody in Afghanistan.

How many Canadian correspondents have gone to Afghanistan and returned with stories of extraordinary personal sacrifice and heroism, not just of our soldiers but of ordinary Afghans? Did we make it all up?

Den Tandt worries about what will happen to the humanitarian and development progress if we leave Afghanistan in the lurch after all our promises. It's a good point, and I've made it frequently myself. But the argument goes further than that.

I've been told quite a few times that we should just leave Afghans to sort it all out themselves, that if they don't want to have the rule of law and human rights and an educated populace and all the other trappings of civilization that we're trying to help them achieve, we should just leave them to their squalor. My answer has been: we already tried that. Once the Soviets bailed out of the country, we left them to their own devices, and we got 9/11 out of the deal.

Remember, there's no simple answer to why we're over there. It's in our national interest, yes, but in a vast variety of ways. We need to be there because failed states disrupt the world order, and as a trading nation Canada relies upon a somewhat orderly world for our economic prosperity. We need to be over there because the U.N. and NATO have blessed the mission, and Canada relies upon collective security mechanisms quite a bit. We need to be over there because our single largest strategic ally - the U.S. whether we like it or not - sees Afghanistan as important. We need to be over there because we care about one of the most downtrodden people in the entire world.

So no, it's not all sunshine and rose petals over there, folks, make no mistake. Those of us who support the mission know that all too well. We just don't see the obstacles to progress overwhelming the need to keep plugging away, for all the reasons I've named and more.