Afghanistan - Michael Ignatieff YLC Event Part 6

On Jan. 14 at the New Irish Heather in Vancouver Michael Ignatieff spoke to young Canadians who want to make a difference. At the end, one of the last questions asked of Michael Ignatieff was if he became Prime Minister and our mission was incomplete, would he still stick to the 2011 withdrawal date for Afghanistan. Michael affirmed that he would, emphasizing the need for Afghanistan to assert itself.

Michael Ignatieff's response: "My sense of this is pretty simple. I was in Afghanistan January of last year. I'm incredibly proud of the men and women, your age, who are serving there. But they got to come home in 2011 and I'm not going to change that. And I'll tell you why, it's not our country, it's their country.

If we don't keep a tough tight deadline we cannot create the conditions in which the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police get ready for prime time. The purpose of the Canadian mission is to create and train our replacement, mainly the Afghan national security forces. And the only way we're going to get that to happen is if they know that there's a date certain when we're out of there. That deadline creates the incentives necessary to get them ready for prime time.

And they will be ready.

"The other point I'd like to make is that, of course Canada will want to sustain a presence in Afghanistan. We want to sustain a humanitarian presence, an assistance presence, a diplomatic presence, a political presence.

"One of the things Canadians, again, we don't recognize is we are world experts on Afghanistan. We know as much about Afghanistan as any bunch of people in the world. This experience is extremely important, useful, it gives us power and influence in the world and we should use it. And we can stay engaged in Afghanistan but our military presence, after a decade there, should conclude."

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