Veteran journalist and Canadian political expert Larry Zolf is a regular contributor to CBC News Online. Larry has been a critic, reporter, producer and consultant for CBC news and current affairs since he joined the CBC in 1962. Born and raised in North End Winnipeg, the hotbed of general strikes and socialism, Larry has covered stories such as integration in Mississippi and the October Crisis in Quebec. He was one of the hosts of the CBCs flagship current affairs television show "This Hour Has 7 Days." He is now retired.

After all it was Martin who took over Jean Chrétien's NATO-led mission to Afghanistan and completely Americanized it. It was Martin who made the Canadian mission to Afghanistan a major satellite force in Washington's so-called war against terrorism.

Martin felt that bailing out the Americans would mollify U.S. anger after Chrétien refused to take part in the invasion of Iraq. But Martin in no way played the commander-in-chief – unlike his Tory successor. In fact, he lost votes through his government's timid and lacklustre performance in the war zone.

Martin made one particularly fatal blunder. He could have visited the troops in Afghanistan over Christmas 2005, in the middle of the campaigning for the Jan. 23 federal election.

If he had, he would have been the hero of the troops and stolen the campaign momentum away from Harper's one-a-day policy announcements.

Instead, Martin did nothing, letting the Tory leader steal the momentum with military announcements and promises to deploy more troops.

Harper, in sharp contrast, shone as a decisive leader when he used his first official foreign visit as prime minister to visit Canada's mission in and around Kandahar.

Martin's mediocre performance on Afghanistan left the Liberals nowhere to go but to follow Harper's lead.

The Liberals went into Afghanistan without a parliamentary vote. They cannot now credibly argue that there should be a parliamentary vote. Instead, they're forced to agree with the Conservatives that a House vote would show a lack of respect for the troops in Afghanistan.

It's not just Afghanistan: all of the problems that the Liberal Party of Canada faces today stem from the inept decisions made by Martin and his private retinue of pollsters and advisers.

Look at Quebec, where Chrétien's francophone machine long ran the Bloc Québécois a close second at the polls. Martin destroyed that Liberal machine. The federal Liberal party now ranks third in the province.

Martin's main weakness as a Liberal leader was his profound ignorance of Quebec. Had he left his predecessor alone, Chrétien could have handled the sponsorship scandal easily. Chrétien would have simply called in the Mounties, who would have roped in the few Liberals who were ripping off the Liberal party.

But Martin instead went for the Gomery inquiry, which made it look as though the Liberals had tried to buy Quebec off with its own money. The Gomery inquiry infuriated people in the province and left the Liberals without a francophone base there.

Martin's choice of Jean Lapierre as Quebec lieutenant was particularly disastrous. Chrétien at least knew Quebec. Martin, on the other hand, is an Anglophone shipping tycoon and Lapierre is a radio jock with no real understanding of Quebec and its needs.

Given the Gomery revelations, there was no way Martin and Lapierre could build a brand new Quebec Liberal party. It was Martin's folly to believe he could do just that.

Martin also blew the national unity file when he argued that it was strictly a two-way fight between he and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe.

This so angered Liberal Premier Jean Charest that he loaned his powerful Quebec machine to Harper, who went on to win 10 Quebec seats and a minority government.

Harper now has a base in Quebec to make the province as solidly Tory as it once was Liberal.

Meanwhile, that lack of a Quebec base leaves the Liberals unable to recover and win a parliamentary majority in Parliament. It also makes the party's Ontario base vulnerable.

But there's more. Martin also blew the Liberal party's close ties with Bay Street, where he had once been hailed as a hero for his balanced budgets as Chrétien's finance minister.

Now Bay Street has Harper and his complete free-enterprise agenda. Bay Street played a real role in fusing the Alliance and the Tories into one party. With the help of Peter Munk and his Bay Street associates, Harper will have an easy time raising money for the Conservatives.

Martin is the first Liberal prime minister who has not picked a successor and his ineptitude has made a joke out of the Liberal leadership race. Even the most loyal Martin supporters have been thoroughly disillusioned by the experience of seeing their former leader's disgrace.

He has left the party so weak and leaderless that it will now rally around what's left of the Chrétien wing. Power Corporation's Johnny Rae will deliver the Chrétienites to his brother Bob Rae, a former NDP premier of Ontario, or the untried Michael Ignatieff.

Bobby Rae has enemies left over from his disastrous days as premier. Still, he is bilingual, articulate and an experienced politician.

But the new leader of the Liberal party will owe nothing to Paul Martin, modern Liberalism's worst disaster.

From him, the only lessons to be learned are indecisiveness, lack of vision and lack of spontaneity.

At last, Mr. Dithers is finally gone and will never be seen again.