Postive Message about Afghanistan

I am currently reading Blatchford's Fifteen Days. I took it on the plane with me on my recent trip home and I took it with me to the dentist appointment this afternoon. It has sparked some conversation with the strangers I meet.

The impression thus far I've had with the people to which I've spoken in the past few days is a lot of the negativity surround the mission.

It's unwinnable.

We will never be able to separate politics and religion in that end of the world.

We shouldn't be there.

I hope many people read this article in the Windsor Star that demonstrates, if we really saw what was going on, instead of what the MSM are telling us (which is mostly the negative stuff) we could see the progress we are making):

The success of the war that Canada is fighting in Afghanistan is going to depend on the intelligent use of weapons. But not the kind that kill people.

All Canada's automatic rifles and rockets and grenade launchers will have been wasted if Afghans don't soon gain access to the weapons they need the most: education, justice, and job opportunities.

When I entered Afghanistan with four other members of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence last week, I had real doubts about Canadians fighting a war on behalf of a population so clearly in disarray - riddled with corruption, saddled with a medieval mindset and skewed by a drug trade running wild.

When I left Afghanistan four days later, my primary image was no longer of brave Canadians trying to prop up an ineffectual government and a hopeless society, and I believe my colleagues also came away with a different impression than we went in with.