Well, I'm glad the conference went well, but I have to disagree.
Afghanistan's a very odd country. I can think of no other country that is surrounded by states that have an ethnic basis that bleeds directly over the border into Afghanistan. In my opinion, there is no chance that there will be a strong state in Afghanistan precisely because of that.
If you want to take one example--this is what I mean by the groupthink--it doesn't seem that we as Canadians, who used to be very good at putting ourselves into other people's shoes, can do that anymore. If you put yourself in the shoes of a Pakistani, you have to your south a budding superpower with whom you've gone to war several times in the fairly recent past. You have a very fixed border on that side. Ask one of our military men whether they, if they were in the position of a Pakistani general, would recommend that the border with Afghanistan be tightened up. They don't. It is in their interest to have an unstable Afghanistan, because they have a national policy of defence in depth because of the threats coming from India.
Let us be very clear about this. In the 1960s and early 1970s—