The Manley Report


Yesterday the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan released its report to the public. Whether you support or oppose the current mission the report is required reading. That's what I'm going to do right now. A pdf of the report can be found here.

Of course I already have an opinion on what Canada should do. I joined with a number of others in supporting a submission to the panel by the newly formed Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee. We want Canada to stay, fighting the Taliban and helping to rebuild the country.

Fellow popinjay Terry Glavin was largely responsible for writing and editing our position paper, along with Lauryn Oates of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan.

As Terry said on his own blog the other day, this is the key statement of the Solidarity Committee:

We recognize the conflict in Afghanistan as a liberation struggle, waged by the Afghan people and their allies, against oppression, against obscurantism, illiteracy, and the most brutal forms of misogyny. It is a fight for democracy, and for peace, order, and good government. It is also a struggle waged by the sovereign Government of Afghanistan, a member state of the United Nations, against illegal armed groups that seek to overturn the democratic will of the Afghan people. In Afghanistan, the great global struggle for the recognition and protection of basic human rights – universal rights - is being waged with a particular and necessary ferocity. We cannot and must not retreat from that struggle.

Posted: Wed - January 23, 2008 at 12:19 PM          

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