Mr. Speaker, my colleague is a fountain of wisdom. I would point out that I think Canada's participation in this mission got sidetracked largely because this peacekeeping mission transformed into something else. We originally went to Afghanistan as part of a peacekeeping mission.
In my humble opinion, what got us sidetracked was that some military and non-military people took advantage of this opportunity in Kandahar to transform our army from an army of wimps—as I heard them called once— into an army of real soldiers.
Since there was a shortage of equipment, it also became an opportunity to purchase military equipment. Before thinking things through, as we should have done the second we headed off to Kandahar, some people had very different interests, which will leave a long-term mark on the Canada's armed forces and on Canada's international involvement.