Discussion of Canada's Role in AFG (merged)

[sapper07]

 This thread is getting nasty!  To get to the original question, we are in fact in Afghanistan as part of a collective self-defence.  Following the terrorist attacks against the United States, on 2 October 2001 NATO declared that because it had determined that the attacks against the United States had been directed from abroad, they were regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.  Article 5 stipulates that an armed attack against one or several members shall be considered as an attack against all.  The Government of Canada used this determination, in addition to a request for assistance from the United States, as the basis for its involvement in the coalition operation against Afghanistan more directly the Taliban and it's supporters.  This action was in keeping with both the UN Charter (Article 51 of the United Nations Charter which states basically that nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations) and customary international law, as the UN Security Council had not yet taken action.  Currently we are there under a UN santioned mission, being lead by NATO on the UNs behalf.  

 So we are not there because of a want to "rub shoulders" with the Americans.  We are there because a country that was attacked and who is part of an organization known throughout the world X2 (United Nations + NATO) has a signed treaty and articles that all member countries agree to.  One of which is Article 5 of NATO and known as Article 51 within the UN.  It's a commitment and the military of each country, as an extension of the government, is trying to do the right thing by maintaining international peace and stability.  This is not American Policy this is International Policy.  

 Now here is a question to ponder, "what would have happend if we had'nt gone into Afghanistan?"  What's your opinion?

 PS I don't believe the US has any business in Iraq and they never did, under international law.  WMD, ya good one.    

 

[Journeyman]

We could debate why we are there and if its good or not till we are blue in the face.

...and, in fact, we ARE going to have to debate this until we're blue in the face.
See  " 'We don't want to be in a war' NDP leader demands House vote on Canada's role in Afghanistan."
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=7b82291c-b902-41bf-a1b8-e80e9cf7b736&k=8623

While Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay reponded that "the government can't afford to waver in its support of the mission in Afghanistan [and that] Canada's involvement is not up for debate" (same article), as long as opposition politicians, university academics desperate for "a cause," and uninformed people arguing from their barstools and Timmy's tables continue with the peacekeeper myth, someone is going to have to provide informed debate.

Good letter Bograt.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think we, in the military community, should face a couple of facts:

• Peacekeeping is, now, part of Canada’s national mythology.  It is a silly, sophomoric lie but it’s all there – part of the ”The world need more Canada” nonsense.  Canadians have convinced themselves – have been convinced by an ignorant, lazy, self obsessed media which has done little other than act as stenographers, taking dictation from Liberal Party of Canada press agents - that we are the moral superpower; and

• We did go to Afghanistan, the second time, to appease the USA: that was Jean Chrétien’s only motivation.  He selected that mission, against the professional advice of his defence staff, because he was terrified that the US would start retaliating (economically) against Canada for its lack of support in the Middle East/West Asia operations.  Chrétien was doing a fine balancing act: Canadians, broadly and deeply, opposed the Iraq War – not because they understood it but because they detest George Bush and all his doings and they suspect (maybe correctly) that George Bush doesn’t quite understand what he’s doing in Iraq; but Canadians, almost universally, want all the benefits of free/open trade with the USA.  Chrétien reckoned he had to ”do something, even if it’s wrong” to secure a reasonably open Canada/US border with all that entails.  Troops to Afghanistan was, in his mind, a small price to pay.  Remember when then Minister McCallum was dashing of to Europe to beg the ISAF founders to make (highly visible) room for us, as ‘leaders’?  The 2nd Afghanistan deployment was a PR exercise and the ‘target’ was Washington.  Chrétien calculated (probably correctly) that Afghanistan would be ‘enough’ for the Americans and not ‘too much’ for reluctant Canadians.

We now face an essentially ignorant, misinformed and even hostile (towards Gen. Hillier’s world-view) population, which, broadly, likes a quiet, passive (and cheap!) military, in blue berets.

Politicians are, must be, sensitive to what the people want – Chrétien was being remarkably, uncharacteristically open and honest when he told us, a few years back, that Canadians like the ‘boy scout thing’ from their armed forces.

If we, in the military community, think differently then we have to help the small minority in government, academe, the media and the population at large to change the minds of the majority.  That’s why, going back to a comment from my friend Kirkhill a few days ago, I suggest we need to get behind more than just Gen. Hillier.  We Canadians – especially those of us not serving in the regular force – need to add our voices to all those which speak for sound, sensible Canadian foreign and defence policies – for a return, in other words to a time before Trudeau.

The case for Afghanistan is strong and clear – even as the case for Iraq was/is, in my personal opinion weak and muddled.  But it is not simple; there are a lot of dots to join before Canadian’s interests and troops in Afghanistan are, clearly, connected in the minds of Canadians, including in, especially, the minds of the lazy, inept, ignorant mainstream media against which I railed just above.  We can, and should, help all comers – even the media with which we, often, disagree or of which we disapprove.

Clear, reasoned argument are necessary to counter (not overwhelm or stamp-out) views with which we disagree.  Many of us disagree with Cannonfodder but that does not mean that he is wrong – it just means that we ‘see’ things differently.  Many of the points he makes are perfectly valid, maybe not as well expressed as I might wish, but valid, all the same; others are less so; and I, personally, am not persuaded that, taken together, they all add up to case against our, Canadian, 10 or 20 year, mission in Afghanistan.

We need to persuade Canadians not silence them.

Edit: punctuation

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
First off, I personally believe that Canada should decide its own foreign policy,not be subject to the American foreign policy.

Afghanistan is NOT our priority, If anyone here can explain to me how fighting in Afghanistan enhances our national security I would love to hear it.

Its important to question our elected officials and the decisions they make. I WANT our army to be heavily funded. I WANT us as a country to take up foreign missions. But comon guys lets do what make sense. Lets go into Sudan, thats where our priorities should lie, not fighting in afghanistan trying to makeup to the AMericans for saying No on Iraq.
...

This is a letter to the editor in today’s Globe and Mail from Senator Peter Stollery (see, inter alia: http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/Com-e/FORE-E/REP-E/rep07apr00-e.htm ) (it is reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060307.LETTERS07-4/TPStory/Opinion/letters

The Congo crisis

SENATOR PETER STOLLERY

Ottawa -- The Senate foreign-affairs committee held hearings in eastern Congo last October. After one of our meetings, a middle-aged U.S. woman missionary spoke with me. She had made a perilous journey to meet with us. "You know, they are killing people just behind those hills," she said in her flat Midwest accent. She had spent many years in Congo and had seen terrible things. Even so, composed as she was, a tear rolled down her cheek.

It is well documented that at least 1,000 people die every day in an area half the size of southern Ontario, from hunger, disease and at the hands of 10,000 renegades in the back country of the Kivu. We saw their handiwork in Goma when we visited Dr. Kalumbe Mushabaa Ally and his colleagues at their clinic and patient dormitories.

The patients are all young girls and women and the doctors do only one operation: they repair vaginas. The girls are raped many times by groups of renegades to humiliate the villagers. Of course, only a minuscule number of girls make it to the clinic.

Therefore, I could hardly believe my eyes when I read J. L. Granatstein's article Wake Up! This Is Our War, Too (Feb. 28), in which he says that "peacekeeping has largely disappeared."

MONUC, the United Nations Congo force, has more than 16,000 uniformed personnel. Without thousands of Pakistani and Indian soldiers in the Kivu, the massacres would be even more terrible. Uruguay has a large force. China has soldiers. There is not one Canadian.

Yet we can send 2,300 men to Afghanistan. We should be ashamed.

This takes us back to Pike’s original question: why is combat in Afghanistan more valuable than humanitarian missions in Sudan or Congo or the gods only know where, next? (And which, as Sen. Stollery points out, only work when trained (Chinese, Indian & Pakistani) soldiers secure the area and allow e.g. CARE to operate).

Many, many Canadians are comfortable – maybe too comfortable – with the idea that these humanitarian missions are why they under-fund their military.  They feel good when they see Canadians helping people; they feel better when there are no tanks or fighter-bombers in the picture; they feel great when there is no need to bring defence spending up to 2% of GDP - $20+ billion per year, year-after-year, for decades to come.

Canadians will be asked to choose between:

1. Much, much more money for DND (which must, perforce, come at the expense of something else (and most spending is either social or regional) because new taxes should not be levied) to conduct both humanitarian and security operations; or

2. Some more money for DND and another choice: security operations like Afghanistan or humanitarian operations like Sudan or Congo; or

3. No significant new money for DND and a gradual wind-down to a point where we can only participate as very junior partners in some humanitarian missions.

I wonder how they will choose.  Is sometimes Army.ca contributor Steven Staples correct: was the Martin government and is the Harper government out of touch with Canadians?  Is the CF the people want and the one for which they are willing to pay a blue bereted band of busybodies, feeding the starving and wagging unarmed fingers at the ne’er do wells?

 

[Journeyman]

SENATOR PETER STOLLERY
Uruguay has a large force. China has soldiers. There is not one Canadian.

Perhaps nit-picking, but when the Senators did their "fact-finding tour" last October, there were eight Canadians; there are presently nine. I'm sure their families miss them more than Senator Stollery did.

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/operations/Crocodile/index_e.asp
http://www.monuc.org/ContribMilit.aspx?lang=en&menuOpened=About%20MONUC

Gee, and surfing the 'net to find this was probably a lot less expensive than sending the unelected parliamentary rabble around the planet to find negative things to say about Canada

 

[zipperhead_cop]

As always, Edward makes an excellent point.  I fully support the efforts in A'stan, and would love to see our role and support expand.  But when you see opinion polls go to a dump because of a car accident and a cowardly ambush, we really have to wonder WTH do people want from the military?  Around here it's preaching to the choir, of course. 
Ultimately, it is going to hinge on media.  No one sees those rape hospitals or toddlers with severed arms.  The most anyone ever sees of the suffering is the care group commercials, and lets face it;  it's pretty easy to flip a channel on Sally Struthers. 
I believe if Canadians could have their collective heads shaken out of their collective assess, they would want us doing more.  As it stands right now, though, IMO, Canadians don't really have a reason to care about A'stan or any other place on the planet.  I don't get the sense that they really "get" the war on terror, and since so many media outlets have been pushing anti-American tripe, I have to imagine that people may be thinking in terms of "The US created this problem, they can sort it out".  Nice to see China, India and Pakistan stepping up, but where is the rest of the planet?  Why isn't the UN doing anything about this, and assigning more countries to help in these areas?  Is political correctness so globally rampant that it would be "impolite" to go into the Congo, shut it down and sort it out?  Seem we were ready to jet over there back in the mid '90's when it was Zaire (I was signed up for that one) so what happened? 
Funding for the military has been brutal for years (no news there) but some keen thinker is going to have to do a good PR campaign to get it off the ground.  A sustained media blitz of horrors around the globe, coupled with a sound bite or two from the CDS saying "we'd love to do something, but we can't afford to right now" should have people BEGGING their MP's to flog higher military budgets so we can get out there and do some good. 
As an aside, are there any other UN taskings going on right now that could be reasonably pulled out of to re-allocate resources?  I'm out of the loop on this one.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Edward, with support from a couple of others, has made the key points.

Canada's interests are not at stake merely because a particular state happens to be failed or weak.  For example, given nearly any particular African country, any group which installs itself as rulers has enough problems to occupy their time and has the potential mostly to only make life miserable for the citizens.

Canada's interests are at stake when a state is failed or weak and ruled by, or has the potential to be ruled by, someone willing and able to use the state's meagre resources to promote trouble abroad.  Afghanistan was, and could easily again be, such a country.

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Please post all replies to the Joining the dots or Why are we in Afghanistan Editorial here.

 

[Quag]

Just a quick note to everyone around the Ottawa area.  In today's (08 Mar) Ottawa Citizen there is a page full of letters to the editor basically tearing apart Jack Layton for his questioning of the Forces in Afghanistan.  I think it is refreshing to see the support of our country in black ink, and it serves as a reminder that we DO have the backing of the majority of our great country.

Regards

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Afghanistan became a terrorist base because the national government was overthrown by Soviet aggression in 1973

Why does the article mention Soviet aggression in 1973?  I thought that was a bloodless internal coup, and the invasion by the Russians was in 1979?

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

I'm no historian, but wasn't Muhammad Daoud backed by the Soviets when he overthrew the king in 1973? Agreed, that's not aggression, more like subversion.

 

[Guy. E]

With the reading of the article, I think that it is almost pointless for people to argue why we should leave Afghanistan. Its all right there.

 

[OnTrack]

I think part of the perception problem here is that some of the public is having difficulty with the notion that "the Generals will dictate" (as headlined in my local medias rag) how long the A-stan mission lasts.  Fundamentally that is not how our democracy works.  Is it not the Generals, it is, ultimately, the people of Canada through their elected politicians who will decide.  No one that I know is in any way doubting the dedication, bravery or commitment of our forces to an exceptionally important mission.

 

[Cloud Cover]

I think part of the perception problem here is that some of the public is having difficulty with the notion that "the Generals will dictate" (as headlined in my local medias rag) how long the A-stan mission lasts.  Fundamentally that is not how our democracy works.  Is it not the Generals, it is, ultimately, the people of Canada through their elected politicians who will decide.  No one that I know is in any way doubting the dedication, bravery or commitment of our forces to an exceptionally important mission.

Can't disagree with that. The real issue is with who created the impression and who currently has the most to gain by thriving on those perceptions. We have a few guys in Iraq who frequent these boards, I think they could speak quite well to how perceptions can be misguided or misapprehended to suit a political or other purpose, much to the detriment and peril of soldiers in theatre.

 

[George Wallace]

I think part of the perception problem here is that some of the public is having difficulty with the notion that "the Generals will dictate" (as headlined in my local medias rag) how long the A-stan mission lasts.  Fundamentally that is not how our democracy works.  Is it not the Generals, it is, ultimately, the people of Canada through their elected politicians who will decide.  No one that I know is in any way doubting the dedication, bravery or commitment of our forces to an exceptionally important mission.

You may have noticed that it is Peter McKay who is doing most of the talking about our Troops in Afghanistan, not Gordon O'Connor.  There is a reason for that.  Once outside of Canada, CF Troops are getting their direction from Foreign Affairs, not the Minister of Defence.  The Minister of Defence (Note: Defence is not Offence/Offensive.) is responsible for the Defence of Canada.  As the Minister who is responsible for Defence, he adds to the confusion everytime he partakes in a photo op that may be construed as being with the Troops 'outside of Canada' as opposed as with the Troops period.  Kind of confusing, but simple if you look at the CF as having the CDS in charge of them, who is responsible to the Minister of Defence for Domestic Ops, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs for International Ops.  It is a little more complicated than that, buttttttt.......that is a whole different Topic.

 

[Old Sweat]

George,

I  may be nit-picking but the National Defence Act is clear that the only person who can give direction to the CF is the MND, and he must only deal with the CDS. Now, there are exceptions re administrative matters which usually come from the government through the DM, but he is acting for the MND.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

George,

I  may be nit-picking but the National Defence Act is clear that the only person who can give direction to the CF is the MND, and he must only deal with the CDS. Now, there are exceptions re administrative matters which usually come from the government through the DM, but he is acting for the MND.

NDA states that the Treasury Board is also permitted to give direction, albeit only concerning pay and allowances. Just to thoroughly and irrelevantly pick the nit!

 

[Guy. E]

So... If theres anything that the PM wants the military to do, he talks to the CDS and he tells the military what to do?

 

[Edward Campbell]

The NDA says:
----------
4. The Minister holds office during pleasure, has the management and direction of the Canadian Forces and of all matters relating to national defence and is responsible for

(a) the construction and ...

12. (1) The Governor in Council may make regulations for the organization, training, discipline, efficiency, administration and good government of the Canadian Forces and generally for carrying the purposes and provisions of this Act into effect.

(2) Subject to section 13 and any regulations made by the Governor in Council, the Minister may make regulations for the organization, training, discipline, efficiency, administration and good government of the Canadian Forces and generally for carrying the purposes and provisions of this Act into effect.

18 ...

(2) Unless the Governor in Council otherwise directs, all orders and instructions to the Canadian Forces that are required to give effect to the decisions and to carry out the directions of the Government of Canada or the Minister shall be issued by or through the Chief of the Defence Staff.

R.S., c. N-4, s. 18.
----------
"Governor in Council' = cabinet (the cabinet is, officially, the Committee of the Queen's Privy Council).

These are Her Majesty's forces - not the government's forces - that means they belong to the people of Canada.  The people (the Crown) delegates management and operational authority to the Governor in Council (the cabinet).

 

[warrickdll]

Quote from: RangerRay on 2006-03-03, 08:34:53
Pike has been known to troll conservative boards with this dreck in the past.

Such as? Do you have URL's handy? [not sarcasm, serious inquiry]

I wouldn't bother, this isn't what most people think it is, though you were close here: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/40500/post-344552/topicseen.html#msg344552

Oh, so Pike is guilty of self-serving marketting, readily confirmed by the posting history highlighted by George, above.

This is a form of advertising, plain and simple. Expect this advertising tactic to change slightly with an unknown new person starting a topic and then, a few posts in, you will see the same, pre-formatted, company approved pitch to go to the website (the unknown person is just part of this form of advertising).

Here is Pike at w-w.freedominion.ca

Posted: 02/ 22/ 06 6:43 pm    Post subject: Tougher sentances are ineffective 
Mandatory minimum sentences are seductive to citizens unfamiliar with the complexities of crime, and to politicians who want to be seen by those citizens as taking action to protect them. But crime rates are actually declining, and if putting more people in prison for longer and certain periods of time really could make us safer, then our neighbours south of the border would be living in the safest country in the world.
w-w.breakthesilence.ca/politics/Feb%2006/toughsentance.htm

Please read the full story before responding, as it is important to your knowledge of the issue,

Breakthesilence at fudforum.org

Should the US give control of the dot.coms to the UN? [message #28866] Mon, 14 November 2005 01:39 
Breakthesilence
Messages: 1
Registered: October 2005
Location: Canada Junior Member 

YES Give the UN control!
w-w.breakthesilence.ca/politics/November%2005/dotcoms.htm
What do you think? 

Pike at forum.ogrish.com

Pike12-08-2005, 05:26 PM
w-w.breakthesilence.ca/politics/oct05/AthiestsPol.htm
Lets get some SENSE back into politics and make decisions based on RATIONALITY
Has anything in the bible ever been rationally explained?

Breakthesilence at forums.beyond.ca

Should Hamas be given a chance?

Breakthesilence
The new government in Ottawa must not outright reject a working relationship with the new Hamas-led government in Ramallah. By respecting the democratic wishes of the Palestinian people, Ottawa can facilitate the evolution of Hamas from an armed group to a mainstream political party. Should Canada give Hamas a chance?
Hamas: Give them a chance? w-w.breakthesilence.ca/politics/January2005/hamas.htm

This is a very brief list from doing a search for Breakthesilence. This kind of forum spamming is a plague.