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As you know, I did not support the United States' engagement in Iraq and have long had concerns about Afghanistan... But I obviously have always been 100 percent supportive of our military.

There is a direct line relationship between what happened in Afghanistan in the work up to 11 September 2001 and what we're doing in Afghanistan today.

In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.

The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand.

The events of September 11 and what has happened since have made people understand that even a small, distant and far away country like Afghanistan cannot be left to break up into anarchy and chaos without consequences for the whole world.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation.

It's true that since 9/11, the application of conventional military rules of engagement has gotten a bit foggy. The Taliban were not an 'enemy state,' but the Canadian Forces conducted its operations in Afghanistan as though the rules of war applied anyway.

The existence of the Taliban, in my view, is a tragedy for Afghanistan. We as Americans need to understand our role in helping bring that tragedy about. So I think it's important to look at the stories about why these people are fighting.

However, it does seem now that the international community, more importantly the powers that have influence, and, even more importantly, Afghanistan's neighbors realize that it is high time that they work together, and not against one another.

I just immediately connect everything to the wars I have been covering overseas, and that's not the case back home. I wrongly assumed all Americans at home were as consumed with our troops in Afghanistan as I was abroad.