Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Are there not lessons to be learned from the situation in Afghanistan about the non-applicability of concepts like governance that are defined in a totally western way? There is a curious resonance in these answers to the reaction to the invasion of Iraq, which was justified by the invading administration as the establishment of an island of democracy in a sea of non-democratic structures.

Is it not really the case that a strategy for withdrawal is being prepared now? I will not get involved in a semantic discussion of when an occupying force is not an occupying force. The truth of the matter is that the lessons for the European Union are that concepts like governance and accountable administration must be defined in terms of cultural, local and historically defined realities.

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