Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and privilege for me to speak to this motion today. I appreciate that my colleague, the member for Crowfoot, is splitting his time with me and is allowing me this opportunity.
I want to begin by talking about the greatest privilege and honour that I have had certainly in my nearly 14 years as a parliamentarian, but also probably the greatest privilege I have had in my lifetime. That was to spend Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day on the ground in Afghanistan with our troops celebrating Christmas there in Afghanistan.
Why was that such a great privilege? Because I passionately believe that the greatest gift any citizen can give to his or her country is to serve it in a time of war. The greatest sacrifice any citizen, and by extension one's family, can make for one's country, is to put one's life on the line defending the things and the values in which we believe so strongly, the values of freedom and democracy, the things that have been granted to us by the sacrifices of thousands in the past. That is why it was such a huge privilege for me to be in Afghanistan at Christmastime.
I remember speaking in the forward operating bases with the young men and women, and there are many women who are there fighting the Taliban as well as young men, and having some come up to me afterward and saying that I must have drawn the short straw to have to spend my Christmas away from my family and there with them. I said it was quite the contrary. My two colleagues and I who were privileged to join the chief of the defence staff, General Hillier, and others in Afghanistan had to lobby to get there. We wanted to be there to show our young men and women in uniform who are over there doing this tremendous job for us that they and their mission have our unqualified support.
Regarding this whole nonsense that somehow we can support the troops and yet be opposed to the mission, I can say, having visited with a great many of these young men and women there, that they do not draw that distinction. Why? Because they believe heart and soul in what they are doing and so do their families. Their families support them. Obviously they are worried about them, worried sick about them, but they know why they are there.
I believe that we should be taking the lead from the troops. If they and their families are willing to make that sacrifice, if they believe in the mission, then who are we to doubt it, for it is they who are making the sacrifice.
I made a promise when I was there at Christmastime. I made a promise to those young men and women that I would carry their message back here at every opportunity. I have done that in my riding; I have done that at every opportunity I have had, like today, to speak about the successes they are gaining, inch by inch, yard by yard, at the cost of their blood. I made a promise that I would carry that message back to Canada, as did my colleagues who were there on that trip with me.
I want to bring forward in this debate a rather famous quote from Edmund Burke, someone who is highly regarded as perhaps the father of modern conservatism. He said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. I think that statement could be amended in this modern age to refer to good men and good women, but the sentiment is right.
We should never lose sight during this debate of why we originally went to Afghanistan. We went there to track down and bring to justice Osama bin Laden and his henchmen as the evil mastermind and financier of 9/11. We went there to ensure that Afghanistan would never, ever again be a bastion of terrorism, a home for the training ground for terrorists to launch their attacks around the world.
How is it that we have forgotten that, that we have lost sight of that? We need to remember the lessons of history, and I will get into that in a second.
I want to read the part that I find most offensive about the Liberal motion. It is this, and I quote from the Liberal motion that we are debating today:
--this House call upon the government to confirm that Canada's existing military deployment in Afghanistan will continue until February 2009, at which time Canadian combat operations in Southern Afghanistan will conclude;
Think of that, imagine, reflect back. I fashion myself to be a fairly elementary student of military history and the lessons of the past. Think about if this place had passed a motion in 1939 saying that we will engage in combat--
