I basically agree with Ms. MacDonald. We haven't been doing terrorist searches. If we had been doing proper counter-insurgency, which means a real commitment to the civilian population in the area we're working in, we wouldn't be seeing the situation we're seeing now. This may be a semantic issue, but on the other hand, I do think there are too few troops here. Believe me, I watched a year of combat at the gates of Kandahar last year, and I know there were serious situations that Canadians simply could not attend to because there weren't enough troops. These were situations, as I said, of what amounts to an invasion and the capture of districts, centres, and things like that right outside town. When ISAF doesn't have the resources, then...if you're going to be here, you have to be here with proper resources.
Just two words on the two other issues you raised. It's not the governance model that's a problem; it's that we're not adhering to the model that we claim to be bringing to Afghanistan. We're talking about bringing democracy to Afghanistan, but what we have brought are stolen elections, corruption, torture. Some people might say that looks like American democracy today, but I would like to think we have something better to offer other countries.
Secondly, on Pakistani instability, I've heard that term used twice today. I think it's very interesting to take a look at what's happening in Pakistan. President General Musharraf has been facing the west with a dichotomy: “Either me or the mullahs; if you don't give me everything I want, if you don't provide me with $1 billion a year to fight the Taliban, then you're going to get the mullahs instead of me”, or “If you push for increased democratization of Pakistan, you're going to get the mullahs.”
Look what's happening. Who is demonstrating against General Musharraf? It's lawyers, and it's the civil society of Pakistan, which has been completely ignored in the current debate about Pakistan. I think it would behoove us to provide a lot more support to the huge proportion of the Pakistani population that feels itself to be represented neither by the military nor by the mullahs.