I’ll be speaking (with any luck) with at least one of Janice Stein or Eugene Lang next week about The Unexpected War, but thought that I’d do an Andrew Potter impression and comment on the best part of the book as I read it.
Anyway, much focus has been made on the book’s look at Canada’s march to war in Afghanistan, but that is only what the book is about on the surface:
“In Afghanistan, we have learned about ourselves, about how we work together in the world, about our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Canadians from many different departments in Ottawa agree: Much is not right and much can be done better. The history of Canada in Afghanistan sets the stage for important choices that Canadians will have to make in the future, long after Canada’s mission in Kandahar is a distant memory.” (Page 327-328. Emphasis mine.)
This book certainly looks at how we ended up in Afghanistan, engagingly so far, but the real lesson to draw from the book is how we make decisions in Canada.
Fellow Travellers 
October 18th, 2007 
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