"Anyone who's been to Afghanistan, spent time in the company of ordinary Afghans, knows this to be emphatically untrue. It's heartening that a detached poll has borne that out.
Afghans get it. Weary of war and the hard-fisted neo-Taliban, they yearn for something a little better for their children, just as Canadians do. They may not distinguish much between Canadians and Americans. But they know enemy and they know friend."
"Overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.
The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.
Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made."
"There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone," he said. "I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone."
"Had he and the countless other CBC staff members done that -- like some Sun Media journalists have -- he and the CBC would have been reporting five years ago that the Afghan people want foreign troops in their country, that they don't want them to leave any time soon, that they support and admire their own government led by President Hamid Karzai and that the vast majority of them absolutely detest the Taliban."
