Well, the point I'm trying to make is that I was asked to come to give my views on the mission. My view is that the mission is one we should strongly support and that it is a worthwhile mission for this country and a worthwhile mission internationally.
Obviously, I disagree very strongly with Mr. Layton in a number of ways, but most importantly because I don't think it's up to us. I don't think it's up to Canada and I don't think it's up to NATO to decide whether or not to open a dialogue with the insurgents. I think that's up to the Government of Afghanistan, and the Government of Afghanistan has chosen not to do so.
President Karzai was here only last week making a very strong case as to why this insurgency has to be fought. I was trying to make that same point this morning with the news story about the assassination of that provincial official. That's basically it, as far as I'm concerned.
I would say, and I've said it before, this committee needs to have more oversight of military and defence issues in this country. I strongly believe that and I've believed it for a long time, and I include the war in Afghanistan. It's a good thing you're conducting these hearings and investigations. But I also say that there is a chain of command. The Chief of the Defence Staff answers to the Minister of National Defence, who answers to the cabinet, and this committee's input has to be put into perspective within that chain of command.
What you can't do, as Doug was saying earlier, is try to say, okay, there's another battle, we lost another battle, we had a bad week with casualties, and let's conduct another investigation. Quite honestly, I think that has a danger of undermining the morale of the troops. I don't think anybody wants to undermine the morale of the troops; I think it's just something that happens.
On this constant questioning of the mission, at some point, you've got to say we've decided to do this mission and the vote was taken in Parliament. We'll look at it six months from now, we'll look at it a year from now, and we'll look at it when the decision's made to redeploy. We then have the debate and the discussion all over again. That's what I think needs to be done.