Responses to "Ruxted's Response To Mr. Martin Of The Globe And Mail"

[ruxted]

Please post responses from Ruxted's Response To Mr. Martin Of The Globe And Mail

 

[pbi]

Well said. It would be interesting to see a response from Mr Martin.

Cheers

 

[MarkOttawa]

Regarding Darfur, see "Fear and mistrust as people of Darfur turn against peacekeepers":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,1791732,00.html

Excerpts:

'It is a month since a peace deal was signed between Sudan's government and the main rebel group. Yet the frustration among the people of Darfur, and among the 7,300 peacekeepers from 25 African countries they look to for protection, is growing each day.

Insecurity remains rife and the peacekeepers can do little to improve the situation.

"Monitoring this agreement with only the troops we have now will be a failure," said Lieutenant Colonel John Asabre, in charge of intelligence and security at the African Union Mission to Sudan (Amis) headquarters.

Most analysts say the Darfur force should be doubled in size, with the power to protect returning refugees and to disarm militia. Yet the western nations that sponsor Amis have made an increase all but impossible by holding back funding. Some soldiers have not been paid for three months.

Hands tied, the AU has agreed to hand over the mission to the United Nations at the end of September. But there are serious doubts that this will take place  by then, if at all[emphasis added - MC] .

While Sudan's government has finally agreed to let a UN assessment mission into Darfur later this week, the president, Omar el-Bashir, remains strongly opposed to a "blue helmet" takeover.

A UN security council delegation arrived in Khartoum on Monday to try to twist his arm. But even if it is successful, analysts say Mr Bashir is likely to insist that the mission's scale and mandate remain largely unchanged. And if not, Amis will continue to limp along...' 

Mark C.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Well said. It would be interesting to see a response from Mr Martin.

Cheers

If by "interesting" you mean "vomit-inducing further tirade of drivel x2", then perhaps you would not be entirely incorrect.

 

[pbi]

If by "interesting" you mean "vomit-inducing further tirade of drivel x2", then perhaps you would not be entirely incorrect.

ok...well...whatever.

Cheers

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is yet more misinformation from Lawrence Martin.  Like the Ruxted editorialists, I have no problem with his opinions – we all have some and a whole lot of people don’t think much of mine, either.

Where Martin is wrong – very wrong in the traditions of our parliamentary democracy – is in his suggestion that General Rick Hillier  should be heard from re: why our forces are not in Darfur.  If Martin wants to know that he needs to ask Prime Minister Harper or Defence Minister O’Connor, they, not Gen. Hillier are responsible for our national defence.  Gen. Hillier’s job to is lead our armed forces where his political masters - the people we (Lawrence Martin, too) elected - tell him to go.  Gen. Hilliers’ job is to lead our armed forces in whatever tasks our elected leaders tell him to do.  Finally Gen. Hillier’s job is to say whatever his political masters allow him to say – not what Lawrence Martin might like to hear.  An apolitical military is a key component of a modern liberal democracy – apolitical military leaders are, properly, silent on matters of policy and strategy.

Lawrence Martin is having a journalistic hissy fit for whatever reason – maybe Stephen Harper will not have lunch with him; who knows?  In the process, over two columns, he has managed to:

• Distort facts on the public record;

• Compare the CF’s mission in Afghanistan to that of the Russians some 20 years ago – implicitly suggesting that our foreign policy and that of the USSR under Kruschev and Andropov are somehow comparable; and

• Advocate that our CDS adopt a political role – a suggestion which is, at least, not in our democratic tradition. 
 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060608.wxcomartin08/BNStory/National/home

The Soviets at least had the numbers. So, what's our plan?

LAWRENCE MARTIN

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

There were about 115,000 Soviet troops in the rocks and dirt and dust and heat of Afghanistan in 1986 when I visited the country to interview the Soviet-propped stooge, president Mohammad Najibullah.

The mustachioed thug, a former secret-police chief, sat there in his empty palace trying to claim that Afghans were making progress under the Soviet boot.

Outside, long lines of illiterates waited their turn to get to the letter writers, who sat in the shade of umbrellas. Buses rumbled past with as many passengers dangling from the rooftops as inside them. On Chicken Street, as it was called, Russian soldiers with rifles strapped to their shirts had stopped me to demand my identity. I asked them how the war was going. "No problems," they said.

But not even with 115,000 Red Army goons at his disposal could president Najibullah bring the basket case to heel. He was eventually brought down by insurgents and murdered by the Taliban. They hanged him from a lamp post outside the presidential palace and let him rot like a sack of potatoes.

Today in Afghanistan, Canada has 1,500 actual combat troops, or a little more than 1 per cent of what the Soviets had. In Kandahar, our forces have about one fighting soldier for every 36 square miles. Overall, the NATO force in Afghanistan, currently getting some reinforcements, numbers about one-fifth of what the Soviets had.

Of course, conditions are much different from two decades ago. Then, the Soviets were loathed by most of the Afghans; then, the fighting was spread over the entire country. Today, there is a democratically elected government and a population that looks somewhat favourably on the Western presence. The hard fighting is limited mainly to one corner of the country.

Our faint numbers, however, hardly leave one with much optimism for victory. The primitive Taliban may well be able to outwait the foreign forces, just as the mujahedeen rebels did back in the 1980s. As regards their enemy, there's a saying among the Taliban: "They have the watches. We have the time."

Back then I wondered, given the moonscape I traversed, why the Soviets could possibly be spending so many lives and so much effort to control that wasteland. Afghanistan was said to be strategic because it gave the Soviets more influence in the Persian Gulf and brought them closer to a warm-water port. Ultimately, Mikhail Gorbachev had enough sense to throw up his hands and say "Good grief, what are we doing there?" He brought the Red Army home.

After the retreat, many of us thought we'd never hear about the place again. But now, it's strategic one more time, with our men and women in fighting roles.

Strategic? Well, if we let the barbaric Taliban take over again, it will be come a breeding ground for terrorists. Critics counter that they can breed terrorists, though not as effectively, in the hills where they now are, as in the cities where they aren't. There's that and there's the thought that terrorists are being bred in Iraq and all over -- even in Canada -- so why not concentrate our security at home, especially when we are so badly outnumbered in Afghanistan.

The humanitarian argument for being there has more resonance. We are, despite setbacks, making good progress on that front. But there is the counter case to that, which says there are a dozen other countries where our forces could be contributing greatly to humanitarian causes without having our soldiers in harm's way every day of the week.

Numbers aren't everything but the ones the Soviets had in Afghanistan keep coming back to mind. We've got deployable soldiers at home, some 2,000 or 3,000 who are currently not being used -- not in Afghanistan, not in Darfur. It would be good to hear from the head of our armed forces, Rick Hillier, on this. He has been silent lately.

It is quite certain now, given the wakeup call on terrorism that Canadians received last weekend, that we are in Afghanistan to stay. From a symbolic point of view, if nothing else, a withdrawal has become almost unthinkable. That being the case, the debate now turns to how we can win. What is the plan? There is no Mr. Gorbachev on the other side of the world who is suddenly going to start making it easy for everyone.

lawrencemartin9@yahoo.ca

 

[Armymatters]

The Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies released another commentary on Darfur:
http://www.ciss.ca/Comment_Darfur.htm
CISS made a warning about any possible deployment to Darfur:

Although the extension of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan to 2009 would seem to preclude any extensive Canadian military involvement in Darfur, public and political calls for Canadian intervention persist. Part of the Canadian public believes that traditional peacekeeping is the main function of the military. But an intervention in Sudan has the potential to be even bloodier than the mission to Afghanistan.

Canadian understanding of the issues in Darfur has suffered from a proliferation of instant experts and political activists who create misleading models for the conflict based on misplaced fears of American ‘aggression’ in the region or a simple loathing for Arab Muslim regimes.  A number of organizations have emerged whose sudden preoccupation with events in Darfur has more to do with advancing their own agendas than genuine concern for a region their members know almost nothing about.  A recent column by the ex-editor of a Toronto daily was based entirely on the author’s bizarre belief that Darfur was in southern Sudan, hopelessly confusing the conflict in Darfur with the two decade-old civil war in the south. Following the publication of this column, several Canadian radio stations interviewed the author for his ‘expertise’ in the region.

 

[MarkOttawa]

A letter sent to the Globe and Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060609.COSALUTIN09/TPStory/specialComment/columnists

'Rick Salutin writes about Canada and Afghanistan in his column, "Another missed opportunity" (June 9) [full text not online], that:

"...it may be more useful to go the painstaking routes of aid and diplomacy, while letting local forces sort themselves out, rather than trying to militarily impose a plan.It also may mean cutting loose from the U.S. agenda, which has its own aims. The United States invaded because it wanted to attack someone after 9/11, and in pursuit of geopolitical goals that do not coincide with ours..."

Some observations on this mythical view of current reality and history:

1) If the local forces are left to "sort themselves out" then it will be rather difficult to provide aid in the south and east of Afghanistan where the Taliban are most active. Moreover, the Taliban might eventually win again. Does Mr Salutin want that? And with whom are we to conduct diplomacy? The Taliban?

2) We would not be just "cutting loose from the U.S. agenda". We would be cutting loose from the NATO and U.N. Security Council agendas.  NATO  confirmed on June 8 that it will be taking command of our troops at Kandahar this summer.  The Security Council has unanimously endorsed both the NATO and U.S. missions in Afghanistan.  Why does Mr Salutin not mention those facts?

3) The U.S. did not "invade" Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance received air support and assistance from special forces (both U.S. and British); that however is not an invasion. Substantial foreign ground combat forces only entered the country after the Taliban regime had been deposed by indigenous Afghan forces in November 2001, and those foreign troops entered with the agreement of the Northern Alliance.

4) The action against the Taliban was not just because the U.S. "wanted to attack someone". It was because the Taliban had allowed al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to run extensive terrorist training camps and to plan terrorist acts, including 9/11, in Afghanistan. The U.S. demanded that the Taliban surrender bin Laden for trial; the Taliban refused. Military action followed. At that time U.S. "geopolitical goals" coincided completely with Canada's. Indeed in February 2002 the Liberal government sent Canadian troops to Kandahar for a combat mission fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.'

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

I just don't understand how people can write op-ed pieces on such things from their comfy office chairs in Toronto without having visited the place themselves.


Matthew.  ???

 

[Bograt]

I just don't understand how people can write op-ed pieces on such things from their comfy office chairs in Toronto without having visited the place themselves.

Somehow "Cottage Country Commute Getting Longer" is not as interesting as "The Soviets at least had the numbers. So, what's our plan?"

 

[a_majoor]

Somehow "Cottage Country Commute Getting Longer" is not as interesting as "The Soviets at least had the numbers. So, what's our plan?"

To put the Sudanese militias on the cottage country commute, so they can spend most of their time stuck in traffic 

 

[pbi]

Perhaps this indicates a bit more balanced approach. It will be interesting to see what David Common has to say. Available at:http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/common/20060609.html

DAVID COMMON:
Combat, death not the only stories

June 9, 2006 | More from David Common



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David Common is a National Reporter for CBC Television News. Born in Winnipeg, Common started with CBC in 1998. Currently based in Toronto, with previous postings in Regina, Winnipeg, Fredericton and London (UK), Common has travelled extensively in the U.S., Europe and Asia, reporting from Washington, London, Haiti, India, Afghanistan and Iraq. Common worked in Iraq for two months and also covered world events from such hot spots including; Haiti when President Aristide left, leading to major unrest; and London following the transit attacks in 2005. He has also repeatedly covered Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002. Common's work won a Gemini award in the Best Reportage category for a set of stories he produced with Neil Macdonald in Haiti. His reporting work has also been nominated for a Gemini Award in the Best Reportage category. Educated at York University in Toronto and Stockhom University in Sweden, Common lives in Toronto with his wife, daughter and their dog.


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So, is this a deathwatch? It sure seems so.

The journalist's role is to transmit a snapshot of events, along with the history and context, to viewers, listeners and readers back home. During a military conflict, that inevitably involves telling stories of injury and death.

This is my fourth trip to Afghanistan and on each one, I have spent some time with Canadian soldiers, either on their base or out in the field, and the rest among the local population. The two story lines need not be mutually exclusive and, in fact, most certainly are not. But, with the recent upsurge in violence, it has become increasingly dangerous and difficult to cover events in towns and villages without the protection afforded by travelling with the military.

It's also been more than 50 years since Canadians have had to deal with the death of a Canadian soldier in combat. Canadian media outlets are doing something we haven't done with deployed Canadian soldiers in a long, long time — staying with them on a long-term basis. You might think this would mean we would have more freedom to cover the soldier's movements off the base, but the opposite seems to be true.

Hamstrung by technology

The technology we need to broadcast back to Canada is on the base and is not particularly mobile. As a result, many journalists and their bosses fear that if you leave the base with Canadian soldiers on one of their many multi-day missions, and "big news" happens while you are away elsewhere, you are simply unable to cover it.

That big news, tragically, often means the death of a soldier. So, journalists in Afghanistan for Canada's bigger media outlets (print, television and radio) are reluctant to leave the base with the soldiers for anything more than a day trip. Not surprisingly, many soldiers feel we journalists are conducting a deathwatch.

There is no question we, as journalists, must do better.

Canadian soldiers, whether you approve of it or not, are conducting a major military operation in another country. Journalists and their cameras have a mandate to show Canadians just what it is their army is doing here. It is tough work that Canadians are being roundly praised for by commanders from other nations.

So, where's the balance? That's the question we're all trying to answer. The solution, at least for our crew, here in Afghanistan for a month, is to do those one-day excursions when the military can accommodate us. But it is also to send one member of our small crew on the longer missions, when they come up. The remaining journalists stay on the base.

The answer is also to cover the many other things that go on here that aren't direct combat. After all, it may seem the biggest thing that happens here, but it's not the only thing. Canada's soldiers are doing a lot more. We'll tell you about it.

Note in particular the comment that our efforts are receiving kudos from other commanders. Not surprised, but first time I've heard anything about this.

Cheers

 

[p_imbeault]

I am just curious as to where the Ruxted Editorial comes from? Is it something that is published for Army.Ca by a third party or something written by a few members of the forum, just wondering.

 

[George Wallace]

It is something published by a 'consortium' here on army.ca.

 

[muskrat89]

From this link  http://army.ca/legal/ruxted.php  which is posted at the bottom of every editorial....

The Ruxted Group consists of an informed group of stakeholders who are knowledgeable in the profession of arms, Canadian National Defence policy and related issues. While the opinions of The Ruxted Group vary widely, the articles and editorials of The Ruxted Group that appear on Army.ca or in publications nationwide reflect a consensus of the members and contributors to The Ruxted Group at the material time the materials were published. Unless expressly stated otherwise, the materials do not necessarily reflect the policy or opinions of Army.ca and its owner and do not reflect the opinion of the Government of Canada by necessary implication or by design, nor that of any individual or organized group of serving or retired military members of any government body worldwide, including Canada and her military allies. For greater clarity, all statements of fact or opinion in the material are designed to reflect a compilation of information and ideas that cannot be attributed, without limitation, to any one individual contributor to the material unless expressly stated otherwise in the material. The Ruxted Group materials are provided "as is" and Army.ca assumes no responsibility for any typographical or other inaccuracies in the document.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Army.ca has, correctly, I think, criticized Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin but here is a (week old*) column in which he stays (mostly) in his lane and makes some perceptive comments.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060713.COMARTIN13/TPStory/TPComment/?query=

Are we making too much of a few casualties?

LAWRENCE MARTIN

'What do you guys in the media expect? A war without deaths?"

"Uh, no. What's your point?"

The point, a senior Conservative was saying, is that if the media keep giving massive coverage to every single death of every single Canadian soldier, support for the Afghanistan mission will be undermined.

The public can only take so many stories about the life of some heroic lad or valorous young woman being taken. Why, he wondered, does every single one of them merit Titanic-scale coverage?

By comparison, in the two world wars and in Korea, our men died daily, sometimes by the dozens, sometimes more -- and they barely got agate type.

But today's Canadians are babes in the woods as far as war goes. We haven't had a good-sized war in half a century. So every fallen soldier is worth many thousands of words.

The problem, the Conservative was saying, is that you don't win wars that way. You lose them because you sap the hell out of public morale.

The tiny numbers of casualties, in fact, are a more persuasive argument that the war is going well as opposed to vice versa. But you'd never get that impression. Many Conservatives are wondering, and many in the military as well, if the gusher-coverage is ever going to stop. When will the media give as much prominence to the numbers of the enemy dead as our own?

News is defined by the degree of novelty. Some day, maybe soon, editors will decide that one soldier being struck down isn't such big news any more. It's war. It happens all the time. The young enlist with the risk.

At the same time, no one can be callous enough to deny the fallen their special standing. Most are kids. They have been indoctrinated -- as soldiers are everywhere -- into total faith in their mission and have not had the time in life to draw a sophisticated understanding of what it is really all about. They are, in a sense, sacrificial lambs.

The media judgment in regard to them is subjective. There are few standards or set rules or formulas. War being so unusual for modern Canada, the public appetite for the big spread on every killed corporal is there. One of the recent losses was a woman. A unique story. Another, this week, was a soldier who didn't appear to buy completely into the military party line.

But, at the same time, there is a big responsibility not to oversell small numbers of deaths. In terror, and in war, if you overreact to losses, the enemy wins.

The Harper government is right to be concerned about the coverage and right, if it is excessive, to want it limited. It is the one policy area in which the Conservatives are most vulnerable. Mr. Harper has one great fear. It is that Afghanistan, in all its hopelessness, becomes the defining issue of his stewardship.

The Conservatives made a snap decision, politically motivated, to extend the mission and force an early vote in Parliament. There was no necessity for that rush to judgment. They closed off alternative paths. They set a potential trap for themselves.

Mr. Harper is a realist, an independent thinker. He is one of the least likely of leaders to be bulldozed by propaganda and locked in a fantasy world. We observed this last week in the adroit way he handled George W. Bush on his visit to Washington. No public happy birthday wish, no Georgie to match the "Steve," and a sizable public rebuke of the President. He told the U.S. leader that by introducing passports at the border, his government risked building a closed society and playing right into the terrorists' hands. It's not often that a Canadian leader has stood in the White House and been that bold.

Mr. Harper knows the scale of the calamity in Iraq. He can see far enough beyond the predictably Pollyannaish assessments of Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier to know that the chances of winning in Afghanistan are increasingly bleak.

He can appreciate that if a handful of deaths can cause such a media outburst, imagine what might happen if the numbers become truly serious.

He's too smart, too aware, too strategically minded to let his government get dragged down by Afghanistan. But staring him in the face are his own celebrated words: "We're not going to cut and run." It doesn't leave him with much in the option box.

lawrencemartin9@yahoo.ca

Despite being unable to resist few gratuitous shots in our direction (young soldiers are “sacrificial lambs”, too unsophisticated not to “buy … into the military party line” and General Hillier’s assessments are ”predictably Pollyannaish”) his thesis is sound: Harper has made Afghanistan his own issue and it might come back to bite him in the electoral bum.

He also appears to understand Army.ca’s thesis, here - http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/44237.0.html - that the enemy uses Information Warfare to try to drain our collective will.

These particular comments are, I think, important for us to understand:

News is defined by the degree of novelty. Some day, maybe soon, editors will decide that one soldier being struck down isn't such big news any more. It's war. It happens all the time … The media judgment in regard to them is subjective. There are few standards or set rules or formulas. War being so unusual for modern Canada, the public appetite for the big spread on every killed corporal is there …

I think that we need to hope that Martin’s trademark insider knowledge and understanding of political realities is overrated because when he (Martin) says that Harper is  ” … too smart, too aware, too strategically minded to let his government get dragged down by Afghanistan” he is suggesting that Harper may let the polls drive him away from doing the right thing (see: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/47745/post-414953.html#msg414953 where the Globe and Mail’s Christie Blatchford comments on the polls) but then, maybe I, too, ”… have been indoctrinated -- as soldiers are everywhere -- into total faith in …” the mission.

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* I'm twelve time zones away from the Army.ca servers and I am catching up this week-end.

Edit: sentence structure