History debates the issues / L'Histoire dans le débat publics : 1

Abstract

For the past year, Canadians have been waking up about once a week on average to learn that a fellow Canadian, perhaps even three or four of us, have been killed or terribly mangled somewhere in Afghanistan. Early on September 18, as I set out to try to explain all this to the Canadian Women’s Club of Montreal why this was happening, we learned that four more had been killed by an elderly suicide bomber on a bicycle. So why are we in Afghanistan? Or, to get closer to the nub, why are Canadian soldiers killing and being killed in a dusty, impoverished corner of the world almost none of us have ever seen?