Senator Colin Kenny, former longtime chairman of the Senate committee on national security and defence, has a reputation for taking security matters seriously. So when he wades in this morning with an op-ed piece headlined “Yes, let’s ‘cut and run,’ ” many in Ottawa will take notice. Kenny bluntly calls the military mission in Kandahar a failure and urges, “We should get out of Afghanistan at the earliest opportunity…” He judges the Taliban far more potent than it was a couple of years ago. He assesses the new U.S. counter-insurgency strategy doomed, since it would “require many times the number of foreign and Afghan troops than anyone could hope to muster, and much more time than NATO countries are willing to devote to Afghanistan.” Even with more troops, counter-insurgency missions rely on “competent and committed local government”—an asset you won’t find in Kabul. It’s time, says the senator, to cut our losses.