"I believe in a strong international role for Canada. I think this world is getting more complicated, more difficult, more dangerous. I don't think those issues should just be resolved by nuclear superpowers. I think that countries like Canada have an important, meaningful role to play. Projecting our values. Standing for the rights of individuals, of the human security of people whose own governments can't protect them. That's something that we as Canadians have talked a lot about and we believe in.
And what's our alternative? ... This is not, you know, you can't turn the rheostat on this. You either stay. And you say you mean it. And you get something that we can call success, which is giving the Afghan government the ability to maintain its own security like any sovereign country should be able to do it. Or you get out.
And if we get out, what's the next mission? ... We're a rich country. We've gotta do some of this stuff. Would it be in Darfur? Well, you know, regrettably, the government of Sudan doesn't want anyone in Darfur. And, let me tell you, it'd be just as dangerous. It would be a combat mission.
Would it be in Rwanda? We didn't have a combat mission in Rwanda, we had blue helmets. And the result was genocide.
You know, the world isn't a pretty place. But I happen to believe that the people that came before me in the Liberal party, that believed in a strong role for Canada on the international stage, would say, there are times when we have to count. There are times when it matters. We're not prepared to retreat under the U.S. missile shield and live in fortress North America. We're prepared to be out there and we're prepared to pay the price. Because that's what you expect of a country like Canada. That's what I say."
John Manley, commenting on the release of the report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan
Since Nato has now confirmed that it intends to support Canada in its mission in Kandahar province, it is probably a good thing that we have eloquent men like John Manley, a proud Liberal, to remind us what Canadians stand for. Sometimes, I fear we have forgotten who we are, and what we have always been, regardless of what the revisionists would have us believe.
If Canada really is a one-and-a-half party state and the Liberals are the party of "the majority" of Canadians, then Mr. Manley, who is very much a mainstream Liberal and is therefore without the ideological bagage of the Harperites, did something that no Conservative has been thus far able do: Speaking the language of modern liberalism and Pearsonian foreign policy, he gave a most compelling explanation of why centrist and left-of-centre Canadians should get behind the Afghanistan mission.
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Related: Ivison beats up May for her profound silliness on Afghanistan. I hear that tomorrow there will be an encore of some type involving fish in a barrel and a firearm.
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