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Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians

Alex Ruff

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
  • Conservative
  • Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 68%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $91,173.06

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 265 - Dec/11/23
Mr. Alex Ruff
  • Dec/11/23 6:02:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first, as I said, we have to get those who helped us and those leaders, the former Afghan women MPs I talked about, to safety. They are the ones who will eventually go back to Afghanistan, not all of them but some of them, someday, or maybe even their kids, depending on how long this takes, to actually lead that change. That is number one: We have to get out the people who are those leaders of change within Afghanistan. Second, which was talked about in certain speeches, is supporting those opposition groups. This is where it gets tricky for the west. We like to believe that our standards and our rigid code around human rights and everything, the way we expect people in this country to behave, would apply uniformly across the globe. They do not. Some of the groups that we may want to help are not necessarily going to play by that rule book all the time. It sometimes becomes a tricky situation of trying to pick and support those groups that are less bad. That is where it gets tricky. That is what we need to do. I am a big believer that in certain things, with the Taliban in particular, where we in the west kind of messed up when I look at it over 20 years, maybe we should have drawn more lines in the sand with respect to the Taliban, or not the Taliban but the Afghan government at the time, telling them not to cross the line, that there are certain expectations and that if they cross a certain line, that is when NATO and the international community will step in and make a difference. I think that whatever opposition groups we could provide support to, to try to get that change, we need to do that in order to get the Taliban out.
314 words
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