Harper in Afghanistan

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a secret surprise visit to Canadian troops in Afghanistan this week. Much negative nonsense was said about Harper before he was elected but by this act solidifies himself as a leader this country has sorely missed over the last 15 years or so.

It was the right thing to do.

Neither previous PM's Jean Chretien or Paul Martin dared to go to this region to visit the military. Even when our troops were sadly killed and morale dropped they continued to mock the Canadian nation by ruling a bankrupted Liberal Party.

The debate is growing here as to whether Canada should stay in Afghanistan. The answer is clearly yes. However, for a country that has abdicated its responsibility and lac of maturity on the international stage, it is not surprising some citizens would demand we bring our soldiers home. We went into - regardless of justification - Afghanistan. The job is not finished. We must stay. This is the moral thing to do. We should stay provided that we respect local customs while maintaining a determined footing. We should proceed standing proudly next to the United States but with an independent posture. This is easier done than mistakenly thought.

It takes vision and it takes courage to do this. American special forces have been hard at work learning local languages, customs and diets among this notoriously hospitable people. It's this kind of work that wins hearts one person at a time. It's slow in its methods but deliberate in its goals.

The media is disinterested in stuff that takes too long. The big picture is not what concerns them. Hence we focus on conspiracy theories (the snake apple of our intellectual minds) that seem so plausible to believe. Not to mention our constant tabbing on the cost of the war and body bags in Iraq for example.

"In their heart of hearts Americans want to do right" was as one person put it on a national radio program. I agree. I'm not too much into the 'America is an evil empire' stuff. First, because I am a historian by education and historical evidence simply does not point in that direction. In order to believe that our leaders are rotten we need to concede our society is rotten. I'm not quite there.

Debate is necessary but how we direct it is where we fail at times. Is the demand for Harper to call back troops - which amounts to abandoning Afghans much like if the Americans were to run from the Iraqi people - a Canadian value at work we speak so highly of? I hope it is not or we have deeper troubles than we think.