Finally, a Mulroney We Can Believe In.

David Mulroney served as a deputy minister in charge of Canada's Afghanistan task force.  It seems he learned a thing or two from the experience, enough to know that we're at risk of repeating the same mistakes in our rush to war in Iraq.

"When I recently saw Foreign Minister [Rob] Nicholson musing that we'd apply some of the lessons of Afghanistan to our engagement, I kind of sat bolt upright because I think one of the problems is we haven't spent much time learning the lessons of Afghanistan," Mulroney said in an interview to air Saturday at 9 a.m. on CBC Radio's The House.

He said the lack of discussion about Afghanistan toward the end of the 10-year mission has kept Canadians from learning key lessons, which include being realistic about how much Canada doesn't know about a region and setting "often very modest" goals.

Mulroney also said Canada needs an exit strategy.

"When does it happen for us and who's around to pick up the pieces of what we've put in place. Until we've really talked honestly about that, I'd be very worried about our ability to pull something off in a place that's as challenging as that nexus of Iraq and Syria."

Readers of this blog may be familiar with how often we have decried the failure of our political and military leadership to have a full, candid and, above all, open post mortem on why so few things went right and so many wrong from our adventures in Afghanistan.  The lives lost and broken bodies of our soldiers will have been squandered if we don't come clean and learn the real lessons of their sacrifice.

Why Let the Air Force Decide What We Want?

It's up to Parliament to tell the Air Force what Canada needs from the RCAF, not the other way around.   What the Air Force wants and what the country needs are not one and the same.   That's especially true for today's "Americanized" military that may be losing sight of the limits of its role in democratic government.

The military's guidance is invaluable but rarely infallible.   Don't forget how the Big Cod hooked prime minister Martin into approving the combat gig in Kandahar.   In recent decades Canada's military has shown itself to be less than - oh, what's the word - honest in its dealings with the political types.  

They're particularly adept at shaving the truth when they're after new kit.   Our current and previous Auditors General have erased any doubt on that score.  At times they can resemble nothing so much as a cadre of manipulative little children trying to get one over on Parliament and the Canadian people and that's squarely on them.

Whether it's helicopters or stealth fighters, giving their political masters false data and fudged numbers is fraud and it's fraud on the country they are sworn to serve.   That should be a court martial offence, a quick and absolute career-ender.

The same goes for political meddling.   A classic case was when DefMin MacKay got into hot water over using a military helicopter as a taxi to ferry him from a fishing lodge.   That sent Air Force officers into a frenzy trying to dig up dirt on MacKay's opposition critics.   Again that is breaking faith with Canada and violating their oath to serve the country.   Again that should be an immediate career-ender.

The military Canada needs for the 21st century is not the military we have today.   It's the military we have today with the snot kicked out of it.   Canada's military can't serve the country according to what it thinks it can get away with or on the basis of which particular political party is in power.   That sort of behaviour crosses too many lines that must never be crossed in a free and democratic society.

In the United States the military has captured a disturbing measure of political, even diplomatic power and has a real influence in what remains of America's industrial economy.   There is a discernible degree of idol worship that has permeated Canada's military.  Our military leaders seem too drawn to America, too eager to please.  If America wants us to buy this plane or that, our military tells us we need this plane - or that.   Long ago, eagerness to please the Americans was identified as a big factor in our Air Force planners' preference for the F-35.

Enough.   The Americans aren't "all that."   There were powerful reasons why All the King's Horses and All the King's Men made such a botch up of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, before that, Viet Nam.   We played their game in Afghanistan and accomplished precious little for it.  It's time to find a new game, one that is patterned to Canada's needs and interests, not America's.

We need both political and military reformation.   Our political leadership can no longer abrogate their responsibility to define what we want from our military, what they must do.   When we yield that control to the military we wind up in hapless combat missions like Afghanistan or buying equipment, not based on need or suitability but on the military's preferences, staring at doctored numbers.

We don't need the Air Force to tell us again that Canada needs the aircraft it doesn't need.

Time to Give the Armed Forces a Reality Check

It's time to hit the "reset" button on Canada's military, or at least its top ranks.   That much was plain from reading the jingoistic remarks of General Walt Natynczyk from a Canadian Press interview.  While I won't quote broadly from the interview it's apparent that Natynczyk feels he's presiding over a military that, having had a taste of warfighting, needs ever more.

"We have some men and women who have had two, three and four tours and what they're telling me is 'Sir, we've got that bumper sticker. Can we go somewhere else now?'" Natynczyk said in an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press in Calgary.

"You also have the young sailors, soldiers, airmen and women who have just finished basic training and they want to go somewhere and in their minds it was going to be Afghanistan. So if not Afghanistan, where's it going to be? They all want to serve."

"We've got that bumper sticker."  The war in Afghanistan?  A merit badge?  "Can we go somewhere else now?"  Another war?   Some other place to shoot up stuff and people?   Any other place to shoot up stuff and people?

Someone needs to get Walt and people who think like him in check.   Their ideas of war as sport or adventure are out of line.

Let's be honest, they've never really experienced war.   Not real war.   Not like the wars our fathers and grandfathers fought.   Not like Farley Mowat's "Hasty P's" that suffered so many casualties that their roster was replaced - twice - in less than a year.   Our entire fatality list from 11-years in Afghanistan would represent just one bad night for Bomber Command.

Those who have truly experienced war don't crave more of it.   Just the opposite.

And before we give the nod to Walt or the next Walt and his kids, we need Walt to sit down and give us an accounting.   We need a post mortem on Afghanistan, where it went so wrong and why we failed to achieve the goals we proclaimed so boastfully at the outset.

We need explanations.   What did Walt & Company actually achieve?   Canada obviously didn't get the most we could out of our military forces by setting them to warfighting in Kandahar.  What can they do?   What are their strengths and their weaknesses?  How can they best serve Canada?    What do we need to do to ensure we have a lot fewer cowboys and a few more capable generals at the helm in our armed forces?

And So Ends the Renaissance of the Canadian Armed Forces

"I do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors. So help me God."

Stephen Harper  vowed to restore Canada's military to its former glory and prestige.   Instead he corrupted our military institution and consigned it to disgrace.

Harper gamed the military and forced it to choose between serving Canada or serving him.   According to the Auditor-General the Department of National Defence knew full well the actual cost of the F-35 light bomber but misled Parliament with deliberately false estimates.  Harper and his inner circle knew this too but obviously colluded with the military to first deceive the opposition and later the voting public in the last general election.

The Canadian military has always cherished its honour above anything else.   Now, having been corrupted by Harper, its honour stands in tatters replaced by a mantle of disgrace.

There are some who say that heads must roll in the upper ranks of the Canadian military.   Not so fast.  Crimes may have been committed, offences under the  National Defence Act and the QR&Os or Queen's Regulations and Orders.   Those miscreants who sullied the honour of the Canadian Armed Forces might well deserve punishment including fines, imprisonment and dismissal in disgrace.

Section 92 of the Act provides: Every officer who behaves in a scandalous manner unbecoming an officer is guilty of an offence and on conviction shall suffer dismissal with disgrace from Her Majesty’s service or dismissal from Her Majesty’s service.

Section 129, the catch-all clause, provides:  Any act, conduct, disorder or neglect to the prejudice of good order and discipline is an offence and every person convicted thereof is liable to dismissal with disgrace from Her Majesty’s service or to less punishment.

Section 139 prescribes punishments applicable to offences under the National Defence Act: The following punishments may be imposed in respect of service offences and each of those punishments is a punishment less than every punishment preceding it:

• (a) imprisonment for life;
• (b) imprisonment for two years or more;
• (c) dismissal with disgrace from Her Majesty’s service;
• (d) imprisonment for less than two years;
• (e) dismissal from Her Majesty’s service;
• (f) detention;
• (g) reduction in rank;
• (h) forfeiture of seniority;
• (i) severe reprimand;
• (j) reprimand;
• (k) fine; and
• (l) minor punishments.

Courts martial are also empowered to try military personnel for violation of any civilian law or Act of Parliament and to impose whatever penalties are applicable.

Those officers who connived with Harper to mislead Parliament and dupe the Canadian people should not be permitted to simply resign.  They should be court martialed.   For the sake of the military they should be cashiered, forced out in disgrace, made to answer fully for their offences and wrongdoing.

It's quite possible that only by prosecuting the officers involved through courts martial will the full extent of the Harper government's perfidy be revealed.   That's too important - to Canada and to the Canadian Armed Forces - to allow these rogue officers to resign and quietly slip away.

The Perversion of Canada's Military

Since he clawed his way into power, Steve Harper has wasted little time turning Canada's public and armed services into political agencies of the prime minister's office.   He began by gagging the public service and the armed forces.  Under Harper's iron fist communications policy, the public were not allowed direct contact with public servants or members of the military.   Communications commissars in the PMO were appointed to ride herd, filtering requests for information, deciding what could be or wouldn't be answered, and then doctoring the response to ensure it conformed to Stevie's message.   Undemocratic?  You bet your ass.  Authoritarian?  Ditto.

Now further evidence of the political perversion of the armed forces has emerged.   When Harper defmin Peter MacKay ran into controversy for his personal use of an armed forces Cormorant helicopter, he instructed military officers to dig up dirt on a Liberal MP, Scott Simms.

The Toronto Star got its hands on some military e-mails from Major Byron Johnson in Gander, MacKay's appointed sleuth.    The first e-mail reported that, “Staff continuing search but nothing found thus far placing MP Simms aboard Cormorant. Will advise if something located.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Gumshoe Johnson exclaimed "Found it."  He noted that Simms had in fact spent a whole day aboard a Cormorant.  Johnson then sleuthed into who requested the flight and whether Simms had reimbursed DND for its costs.

It has now surfaced that Simms was aboard the helo at the suggestion of MacKay's office in order to learn about the search and rescue role of the Cormorant.  He wasn't using it as an aerial taxi to ferry him from a luxury fishing resort to a political appearance.

Was Major Johnson acting on behalf of the RCAF or the Conservative Party in trying to get the goods on Simms?  It's pretty obvious it wasn't the RCAF that had a dog in that fight.   And Johnson's "found it" exclamation seems to bear that out.

Byron Johnson crossed the line.  It is a cardinal rule that military personnel must never, ever dabble in political matters.   They serve the country not some political party.   Was Johnson (and his staff) serving the country?  No.   Was he serving the RCAF?  No.   Was he serving his minister and the Conservative Party?  Yes, on both counts.

We need a zero tolerance approach to this sort of thing.   What's going on today in the United States makes that plain.  We've seen American generals like Petraeus and McChrystal freely intrude into the political sphere, even to the point of challenging their Commander in Chief, president Obama.   The impertinence these two clowns displayed played no small measure in the failed fiasco that is Afghanistan today.

We've had our taste of that too.   Now safely retired general Dick Hillier, the architect of Canada's hapless Kandahar mission, used his celebrity to slag the Liberal Party.   Under Harper, Hillier talked about the restoration of the Canadian Armed Forces and made pointed reference to the "dark days" of cutbacks under the Liberals.

What the Rancid Cod deliberately overlooked is that Canada was in a fight back when the military budget was cut.   It was a fight, by Chretien and Martin, to wrestle the country's finances back under control, to restore balanced budgets, to pay down the national debt.  Everybody in Canada felt some effects of that, made some sacrifices, and there was absolutely no reason that the military should have objected to doing their share too.  But, with Harper constantly patting his back, Hillier felt quite comfortable getting into politics and taking his cheap shot.

Professor, author and retired US Army colonel Andrew Bacevich has chronicled the politicization of his own country's military in The New American Militarism.   He reveals how, in a very direct, political manner, America's military leadership has forged a compact with the radical right, the bloated military-industrial complex, and radical Christian fundamentalists.   Bacevich contends that, with this political, industrial and religious backing, top generals at times even challenge their Commander in Chief to implement political policy of their own making.

The Canadian military increasingly appears to be emulating their American counterparts.  That's hardly surprising given that we train with the Americans, we follow common procedures and tactics and we equip our forces with their weapons.  And, more importantly, when we do get to use all that training and all those weapons, it's always in conjunction with the much larger American military, sort of as America's Foreign Legion.  It's as though Canadians are embedded with their American Big Brothers.

We don't need a politicized military in Canada.  If we don't want that we need to ensure that the American military contagion doesn't sweep north.  One way to do that is to make damned sure that officers like Major Johnson understand the line they must never cross and that nothing good lies in store for them if they forget it.

Harper's Gagging Kandahar Now

It seems Harper has put the war on Kandahar on hold so it doesn't spoil his election campaign.

The CBC's Melissa Fung says, even as the insurgency picks up steam, Kandahar has sort of fallen quiet - and mute:

The last time I was here, in June and July 2007, field operations were going out every week. And there were offers from the military to get the reporters who are embedded here with them out on those missions.
This time, for the first few weeks anyway, there wasn't a single mission leaving the base.

Kandahar Airfield hasn't been completely quiet either, despite the Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr period, which traditionally sees a drop in insurgent activity. To the surprise of the military, there was actually an increase this year — including a spike in the number of rocket attacks at KAF — at the beginning of Ramadan. There were 80 incidents involving Canadian troops in the holy month's first 18 days.

The first indication that things were going to be different here during the campaign came with a new directive out of Ottawa.
The public affairs officers who work with the reporters here at Kandahar Airfield told us that they cannot grant interviews for the duration of the campaign. They said they were told that all interview requests with forces members must be cleared through the Privy Council Office in Ottawa. And it could take days before we get an answer to our requests.

It's all been rather frustrating for some of the troops who are here. Several soldiers I've talked with say the politicians — and the public — at home need to be addressing Canada's mission here as a real election issue.

If Canada is indeed pulling out in 2011, what's the point, they ask. If Afghanistan is not ready by then — as the new governor of Kandahar province has said may be the case — will every Canadian soldier lost between now and then have died in vain?"

This is the way Harper "supports the troops," by putting his PMO Commissars in charge to stifle their voices, to make them disappear from public view, to keep them out of the minds of voters. And all those rightwing nutjobs will pour into the Legion and salute Harper for the great job he's doing for the Canadian Forces!

Harper & Hillier's Disgrace

The honour of Canada's military mission to Afghanistan has been sullied, perhaps irreparably.

The story in today's Toronto Star says it all. Canadian soldiers being ordered to look the other way and shut up about sexual assaults on civilians by their Afghan army comrades.

"Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.

In her March report, which she says should have been advanced "up the chain of command," Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn't received a reply to the report.

While several Canadian Forces chaplains say other soldiers have made similar claims, Department of National Defence lawyers have argued Canada isn't obliged to investigate because none of the soldiers has made a formal complaint, says a senior Canadian officer familiar with the matter."

Great. We're over in Afghanistan training a corps of armed sodomite pedophiles. Best of all, we're making sure to keep a lid on it.

Fight with the Canadian Armed Forces! Indeed. Maybe we could start by shooting a few of the peds we're allied with. Maybe, as described in this 2002 account from the New York Times, we should just hand our Afghan army comrades over to the Taliban:

"Though the puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture, now that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is gone, some people here are indulging in it once again.

''During the Taliban, being with a friend was difficult, but now it is easy again,'' said Ahmed Fareed, a 19-year-old man with a white shawl covering his face except for a dark shock of hair and piercing kohl-lined eyes. Mr. Fareed should know. A shopkeeper took him as a lover when he was just 12, he said.

An interest in relationships with young boys among warlords and their militia commanders played a part in the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan. In 1994, the Taliban, then a small army of idealistic students of the Koran, were called to rescue a boy over whom two commanders had fought. They freed the boy and the people responded with gratitude and support.

''At that time boys couldn't come to the market because the commanders would come and take away any that they liked,'' said Amin Ullah, a money changer, gesturing to his two teenage sons hunched over wads of afghani bank notes at Kandahar's currency bazaar. "

Harper Screws the Messenger

It's up to the Canadian Forces to decide what they will and won't tell us about their actions in Afghanistan. That came from Blockhead himself, our Furious Leader, Stephen Harper, as he lovingly greased himself up to slip to safety from the detainee controversy. From the Globe & Mail:

"The military is free to release information about Afghan detainees if it chooses, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday, as he was criticized for excessive secrecy on how Canadian troops handle their prisoners.

"These are operational matters of the Canadian military. If the Canadian military chooses to reveal that information, that's their decision. But the government certainly isn't going to release it on their behalf," Mr. Harper said in the House of Commons."

There you have it, hands off from the Cons. Canadian Forces will say what they like, when they like and to whom they like, so don't blame the Harpies if they're not up front, blame the military. Wait a second, that doesn't sound quite right, does it?

It's not, that is unless Lardo has repealed the gag order he slapped on the Canadian Forces that came to light just two weeks before Christmas. That's when word got out that the Forces had been told that requests for information and interviews had to be pre-cleared with their political commisars, senior officials from the prime minister's office.

"The Privy Council directive applies to all matters of "national importance" but is primarily focused on shaping information relating to the war in Afghanistan."

Oh my goodness, Harper appears to be - lying. Worse, he seems to be hanging the Armed Forces out to dry to give himself political cover. Not Harper, he wouldn't do that, would he?

(the original story was posted on 10 December, 2007)

One Bad Apple

This is no slur on Canadian soldiers. They're a good bunch and a lot better than the calibre of some we took in the 60s. But, just the same.

The National Spot has a story that indicates the Department of National Defence needs to keep a sharper eye on just who is signing up.

Private Stephen Cox had been at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu for all of 10 days when the complaints began.

In handwritten statements to a Military Police corporal, a dozen platoon members said Pte. Cox had claimed to be the Son of Man and the Second Coming of Christ.

He said God had chosen him to cleanse the world of evil and that he was going to kill the Jews, Catholics, blacks, aboriginals, gays and lesbians, they wrote.

"I heard Private Cox talk of mass genocide of all humans who do not share his beliefs," one complaint read. Said another, "It was revealed to him that he was the second Christ and it was his duty to join the Canadian Army and get into JTF-2 [the special forces] so that he would be in place for the apocalypse in 2012."

It turns out that Private Cox was known to police as a pot trafficker and that he once boasted about killing a B.C. couple but he says he revealed all to recruiters in Vancouver. They don't quite see it that way.

The good part of this story is that Cox' fellow recruits did the right thing in promptly informing their superiors about him. It wasn't just one or two but a dozen of his platoon mates acted and that's very good to know. Still, Peter MacKay and Rick Hillier need to make sure people like Cox don't get through the front door.