One of the most important of the Manley recommendations is that the Prime Minister himself take on the Afghanistan file. It can most certainly be done.

Robert Borden was prime minister during the First World War and William Lyon Mackenzie King was PM during the Second World War. Both men were fully engaged, every day, in leading the nation through those greatest of conflicts. It may be said Afghanistan is a very little war compared to the two global struggles, and thus doesn't warrant the Mr. Harper's time to that extent. But in the minds of many Canadians, the vast majority of whom have no recollection whatever of any war, even Korea, Afghanistan is the only real war they have ever known. Thus it looms large - especially on those too frequent days when another Canadian soldier is killed there.

The PM may want to replicate in some way the cabinet war committee that Mackenzie King used religiously from the very start of the Second World War. Or he could appoint a special civilian adviser on the conduct of the war, perhaps Mr. Manley himself. But he must be seen by Canadians to engage himself fully, now, no matter what the current state of the Canadian economy is or how imminent the next federal election may be.