Tories won't extend Afghan mission, says MacKay

I dont know why some people see this as cutting and running?

It's playing politics of the worst sort.
The vote to extend the mission was the only vote in parliament that we've had in the whole time we've been there.
Canada did it's share.
Obama can go lobby the other NATO allies.

Some might suggest that when Canada landed at Normandy they had done their share. Would that have worked?

They say they won't, which means there's a 50/50 chance that they will.

Landing at Normandy didnt take 7 years. The Canadian military needs time to clean itself up, and recover from all the deployments we have had.

I think we should (and will stay) after this deployment ends, but it will be a much smaller number of troops, which will allow time for the CF for some much needed R&R, so to speak.

How small?

I think the deployment will drop from the 2,700 or so we have there now to between 500 - 1000, which should be far easier to sustain in the long term. Given Obama's determination to have a 'surge' in Afghanistan, I think politically, we won't be able to leave for several more years, say 2012 at the earliest.

I was always under the impression that Canada would have a support, planning and mentoring roll past 2011. So I think they planned to keep around 500 or so in Afghanistan for the next 8 to 10 years regardless. Most of these soldiers would not step outside the wire.

If I go look through past posts to see what side you supported during the Manley commission vote, what am I going to find?

A number of Liberals supported that vote and the extension of the mission and most of them are retiring or leaving politics now, leaving behind the younder MP's who almost all rejected the extension and the mission. Since that extension vote, there's been a number of polls that were touted, showing that the mission was very unpopular with Canadians. Now that the US-Dems are pushing Afghanistan, it's looking like all the left has now done a 180.
This is an example of the worst of politics.
Stop playing with the lives of the troops.