We're soldiers. We don't practice democracy; we protect it.
I think the overarching message that I want to pass to you is that we have absolutely no problems with people who oppose the missions that we're sent to go on. In fact, several of my very best friends, to this day, oppose the mission. They have read both my books and they agree that when we debate, I win the debate, but they still oppose the mission. I think they're great people, and I went to Afghanistan to defend them and to defend their right to disagree with me.
The thing that I can't stand is the person who came up to me in 2008, when I came back from my first mission, and said, “Hey, I heard you were in Iraq.” That's hard to take. There's the person who came up to me in 2009, when I am about to deploy for a second time—this is a physician in Toronto, someone with access to as much information as anyone on the planet—who said to me, “So, Afghanistan. Are we peacekeepers over there?” That hurts.
I speak a lot about Afghanistan. Even now I still get an invitation or two a month to speak to somebody, and I'll go and speak to anybody. It could be six people in a grade school; I'll go. The most common comment I get from adults at my public presentations is, “I had no idea.” After 158 dead and 10 years of war, I have a hard time with that. That hurts veterans.
If I can ask you to do one thing, it's to just tell people what we did. It doesn't have to be partisan; it doesn't have to be to make a point; it doesn't even have to be pro-mission. People who oppose the mission have enjoyed reading my books because I call it like it is. Make sure people know why we were there, what we did, and what we suffered and what we lost.
To go there and to realize that so many Canadians just didn't know, that hurts us, and that will decrease our operational effectiveness, if you want to couch it in those terms. People have to know. People have to remember them.