Naive or Delusional

In this article:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/afghan_cda_mackay
our foreign minister, Peter MacKay, claims that to take of withdrawing from Afghanistan "demoralises our troops" and makes insurgents bolder.

In other words, to have an open debate about our presence in Afghanistan is bad for the war effort.

I'm sorry, Mr. MacKay, but this is not acceptable. This assumes that we should all just accept that our troops should be there, even though it has never been clearly explained what expect to achieve there and how.

No doubt it would be naive to simply assume the insurency can be wished away. But it looks like assuming that it can simply be bombed and shot away is almost as delusional.

Perhaps it is naive to call for peace talks with the Taliban. After all, these are not nice people. On the other hand, sometimes one must talk to people who aren't nice. In fact, we are already. Many of the folks we're doing business with right now in Afghanistan are scarcely any better than the Taliban. Many Taliban-style laws have been re-imposed by our allies there, and education for girls is now on the decline following a brief post-Taliban renaissence.

There are no easy answers here. But "stay the course" is just a slogan, not a plan.