I may take less. Bryon may share with me.
Thank you, both of you. It's good to see both of you again.
What you have given us, by way of information and conclusions, is quite pessimistic, with the exception of encouragement to stay because our security is tied up with Afghanistan's security and of course with general peace and development in Afghanistan.
The impression I have gained from listening to you, and over the last year or so, is that we are actually very quickly losing the war of hearts and minds in Afghanistan. And you've given me some ideas as to why. There is this rampant corruption. There is a weakened Mr. Karzai. There is the unstable Pakistan right now next door, with or without controlling Taliban. Then you have the special forces, the air strikes, and the air power being used, causing civilian deaths. And then you have police firing on rioters, just as it happened over the last few hours in Afghanistan. We have NATO refusing to provide more troops, and countries like Germany refusing to fight where the fight is needed. We have our Minister of Foreign Affairs going on CBC, saying he's going to be asking Russia and China to actually provide assistance--possibly troops--to fight in Afghanistan, I assume.
When I look at all of that, despite the fact that our troops and other troops are doing a valiant job, losing lives because we've sent them into harm's way, I'm not filled with a sense of optimism. And I don't see the solutions that you see working. Maybe you see something different from what I see, sitting here, thousands of miles away. I've been to Afghanistan. We weren't able to get outside the wire very much.
I have this question for both of you. Despite what you tell us about what's happening on the ground, despite our good intentions, all of the basic evidence that's on the ground other than the military successes and the loss of our military lives, the rest of the information is so pessimistic. Why do you say that we would succeed?