Mr. Speaker, I hardly know where to begin with this particular colleague and her speech.
First, let me state that she said at the outset of her remarks that there was no party in this place that wanted to abandon Afghanistan. Yet, I clearly remember the NDP bringing forward a motion not that long ago to do exactly that, to pull our soldiers out of Afghanistan immediately, with no contingency plan of who would replace them, and who would protect the Afghans from the resurging Taliban. To stand here tonight and suggest that the NDP did not do that and somehow rewrite history is a bit of a stretch of the imagination.
Near the end of her remarks, she said that the NDP refused to abandon Afghanistan, except that is exactly what it advocates doing: to abandon the Afghan people and leave them to their own devices. This naiveté persists with the NDP, that if we all hold our hands and sing Kumbaya, somehow everybody is going to be peaceful and join together in song and the world will be a better place. It is ridiculous.
In order to have a peace process that she spent most of her time talking about, both sides must want peace. That is what we have to start with. If we look at the history of the Taliban, that is not what it wants. It wants to reinstall its evil regime in Afghanistan and use it as a base for worldwide terrorism. That is what it wants and what it was doing before the allies, the UN-sanctioned mission, moved in and pushed them out.
She talks about a path to peace. Both sides must want peace for there to be peace.
She talks about the simplicity of the present mission. I do not think it is simple at all or that anybody believes it is simple. It is a complicated situation.
If NDP members learned nothing else from the six female Afghan members of parliament who were here just last week, if they were listening to their message at all, they would understand that those people have a price on their heads and that if we abandon them, they will be the first--