... Considering that almost everybody in the RegF relates to civilians every day, and that most of us live in civilian communities and not in PMQs, and that many of us belong to civilian clubs, groups, teams, volunteer fire depts,etc, and that the great majority of us went to school, high school or beyond with civilians, I think it is a bit inaccurate, if not to say unfair, to depict RegF soldiers as some kind of aliens who cannot relate to civilians in other countries. It is IMHO equally inaccurate to depict Res soldiers as being somehow posessed of divinely-given qualities that only they posess in order to do CIMIC.
It is worth remembering that until we began to formalize CIMIC as a Res job in the early part of this century, the CIMIC task was performed on every Roto by RegF soldiers. CIMIC is not a new invention discovered by LFRR. Sometimes it was just done by the coys/sqns/btys themselves, then later we started to create CIMIC cells for the Rotos. In all cases we did good work, and lots of it.
Secondly, I wonder how relevant the Canadian civil expertise of some Res CIMIC soldiers really is to countries and cultures such as Afghanistan, Rwanda, Mozambique, East Timor, etc. Our culture, language, religious observances, methods of civil governance, civil-military relationship and even our municipal technology are generally quite different in Canada from those we may experience in such places. CIMIC soldiers have to be trained, which means that a Res on his own merits is not necessarily more suited than a RegF soldier; rather, it is a question of training and temperament.
Do Res soldiers do a good job on CIMIC? Yes, unquestionably. Is a CIMIC a meaningful and useful task for the Army Res? Again, a resounding yes. In the US Army, for example, Civil Affairs is almost completely a Reserve task. (While the British Army, on the other hand, does not recognize CIMIC as a stand-alone entity but instead uses the same approach that we used to: the units do it themselves...). Should the Res keep this task? Yes-I am all for that.
But, IMHO, let us not indulge in stereotypical thinking about either RegF or Res soldiers by assuming that the latter are automatically better suited to the CIMIC task by nature of their status, or that the former are precluded by theirs ...
rly:
