Hillier's compelling case for the Afghan mission
Yesterday at 2:30 a.m., General Rick Hillier was awoken by a telephone call. Corporal Paul Davis of Bridgewater, N.S., had been killed in a road accident near Kandahar. He was the 10th Canadian to die in Afghanistan since 2002. He will not be the last. The Canadian mission in lawless southern Afghanistan is the most dangerous the armed forces have undertaken since the Korean War. More casualties are inevitable.
Yet Gen. Hillier is passionately convinced that Canada is doing the right thing over there. Yesterday he visited The Globe and Mail's editorial board to talk about why we are in Afghanistan and why Canadians should support the military. His key message: Wake up, folks. It's a hairy world out there and, like it or not, Canada is involved.
Gen. Hillier is an impressive figure in every way: plainspoken, funny, passionate about his job and smart as a whip. He's a mechanic's son from Newfoundland who rose through the ranks to lead the Canadian Forces as Chief of the Defence Staff. His job is really three jobs.
First, he must guide the complex operations of the forces, which operate in 19 countries around the world and do everything from vaccinating children in Africa to hunting down Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan to fighting floods and snowstorms here at home. Second, he must lead the transformation of the military from an underfunded, underequipped Cold War relic designed for repelling a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe to a modern force that can rebuild failed states and fight insurgents in places such as Afghanistan. Third, he must persuade Canadians that the forces are a vital part of what makes Canada what it is, as necessary to our sense of self as multiculturalism or medicare.
The third job may be the hardest. Few Canadians list rebuilding the military as a national priority. A recent poll showed that many have doubts about Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. Gen. Hillier thinks that after "a decade of darkness" for the military, marked by cutbacks, low morale and scandals like the Somalia affair, it's high time for Canadians to take ownership of their military and become engaged with the men and women who defend their freedoms. "We have become dis-owned, abandoned, divorced by the population of Canada," he says bluntly. How true, and how wrong. If there were any time the military needed and deserved public support, it is now in its hour of danger. The opposite is equally true. In these dangerous times, Canadians need their military.
That's not always obvious to many of us. As Gen. Hillier puts it, we live in a "fat and easy country," prosperous, stable and free. It's easy to think we can seal ourselves off from the perils of the world. We can't, of course. The general calls it "myopic and navel-gazing" to think so. In an interconnected modern world, it is impossible just to put up a wall and say that's not our problem, that's not our fight. Al-Qaeda has Canada on its hit list, he notes, and it'sfolly to think terrorists will pass us by because we're nice.
That's one important reason why Canada is in Afghanistan. The devastated country was once the home base of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Both organizations are attempting a comeback -- starting in southern Afghanistan, where Canadian troops are deployed. In Gen. Hillier's words, "If the Taliban do overwhelm the fledgling [Afghan] government because the international community abandons them, as they were abandoned in 1992 by the international community, the Taliban will be back in, will control the southern part of Afghanistan, will give support to al-Qaeda and other ideologically similar groups . . . and allow them to recruit, prepare and plan around the world and hide, and project their violence around the world. That will directly affect Canada."
But self-preservation is not the only reason to be in Afghanistan. Canadians are also there to protect the weak and vulnerable. Afghans have been through invasion, civil war and dictatorship. They desperately need outside help to get back on their feet. After his time in the country, Gen. Hillier says he is convinced that most Afghans want Canadians and other internationals to provide the security they need in order to rebuild. With Canadian help, he says, "maybe you can get security to a level where you don't risk getting killed every time you go shopping for food or maybe you can get security to a level where medical clinics can be built . . . so children don't die before the age of 5 in a 25 per cent range."
The two missions, protecting Afghans and fighting terrorists, go hand in hand. It's silly to say that Canadians are in Afghanistan just to kill terrorists at Washington's behest. It's equally wrong to say that they should be there only as peacekeepers and nation-builders. They are there both to fight terrorists and to nation-build. Afghans won't have a prayer of rebuilding their country unless the terrorists can be kept at bay. And the terrorists won't be kept at bay unless Afghans can rebuild their country. Only when they have a functioning government, police force, army and economy will their society be strong enough to resist the predations of the Taliban and its cohorts. This is one of those cases in which doing the right thing for them is also doing the right thing for us.
"The minute they no longer need us, we've got to be out of there," says Gen. Hillier. Until then, Canadians should back the Chief of the Defence Staff and the men and women of the Canadian Forces as they fight the good fight in Afghanistan.
