The story of Taliban recovery and resurgence begins in the places where they took refuge after 2001. And as long as those leadership structures and training structures operate outside of Afghanistan with relative impunity, the conflict will continue.

It's never too late to try to end a conflict.

E-mail importance is defined by the receiver, not the sender.

The Andrew Principle is when the incompetence of an organization exceeds the incompetence of certain individuals within that organization, thereby allowing their promotion within said organization.

All politics are local, whether in Kabul or in Canada.

We Canadians need to go beyond what any previous government has done in terms of our diplomatic network, our support for companies to export, trade and invest beyond North America, and our contribution to the safety of the international system, through defence, development, international organizations, and so forth.

Karzai is Afghanistan's first democratically elected president. He brought the international community into partnership on an unprecedented level, and he championed a new constitution that is liberal, democratic and still very Afghan. All of that does reflect a vision. But he's presided over a country that is still in conflict, and he hasn't taken some of the difficult decisions his own government wanted him to take. On corruption, he hasn't been as decisive as he should've been. There are legitimate questions about him.