Incompetance dodge

The liberal hawks love to use this argument because it allows them to take the moral high ground (at least in their own imaginations), and they can place the blame for the failure of the war on Bush, the incompetent. The war violated international legal norms that had evolved for a reason, to help avoid fiascoes like Iraq and to dampen the hubris of the great powers.

It is, of course, moral to free subjugated peoples like those in Iraq. But Bush did not go into Iraq to free people. He lied in obvious ways, hugely exaggerated the threat Iraq posed, and slimed people who dared question his statements, yet the liberal hawks went along with him. Is that what the moral high ground looks like? The war libs have learned nothing if they think the war was lost only due to Bush's incompetence.

Further problems

Pretty hard to give the military any real independence when the practical ethos in the States has calcified into a three-cornered dance between government, the military and the 'defence' contracting industry.

These are, for the most part the same people, just caught at different stages of their serial passage through the room wearing different hats. What degree of independence there actually is, in the event, is really quite extraordinary.

The betrayal is, for many of these characters, simply a self-inflicted wound.

A concerted mental bludgeoning

After the monumental, concerted mental bludgeoning Canadians have just been subjected to, to even ask whether the thousands of young Canadians' lives were wasted, who died in the Vimy Ridge slaughter, will brand one treasonous in the eyes of many.

In justification, that sacrifice, it seems, suddenly made Canada a world class nation.

It was neccessary to cross an ocean and to participate in an horrendous butchery to gain recognition? The whole idea sickens.

skeptikool

It would have been interesting if someone, just once, had spent some time on the iconography of Walter Allward's Vimy Memorial.

Or if someone else had pointed out that Arthur Currie had stated to the Canadian Battlefield's Memorial Commission that - "I do not want to have the impression left...that Vimy was our greatest battlefield." He went on, and this material was referenced in the original souvenir booklet when the monument on Hill 145 was originally unveiled: Vimy was not 'the greatest achievement of the Canadian Corps either in strategic importance or results obtained,' but simply that 'there it was that the Canadian Corps first fought as a unit and, as its components were drawn from all parts of the country, Vimy may be considered as the first appearance of our young nation in arms.'

A little less concentration on the spin cycle would have been appreciated - no question.

That's a tough one...

This book looks like a really interesting read! It does create some problems when military policy is set by a political body. I think that wavering public opinion often does not allow top Generals to do what makes the most sense militarily, and most politicians seem to pay more attention to polls than military advisors.

At the same time, in a democratic country the military needs to be controlled by elected officials in order to ensure that it serves the people. The alternative to having elected politicians set military policy does not seem very attractive, as evidenced in many dictatorships.

Definitely a tough issue…

I am currently reading a good book about the Canadian Forces and it's post 9/11 reality. It is called Whose War is it? by J.L. Granatstein. Not finished it yet, but so far it has made some really enlightening points about our armed forces. Highly recommended!

Canada's Identity

It seems to me that Canada’s identity was created at home by men and women who fought for equal rights, fair wages, decent healthcare and education and so forth. Not by armies fighting wars in foreign lands for dubious reasons.

granthams

I think you're right and that's why I look upon the eruption of rampant nationalism and jingoistic self-righteousness at the weekend relative to Vimy as almost all 'spin'.

The idea that Canada somehow came of age and became an actor on the world stage in 1918 is nonsense. It also ignores the constitutional crisis that conscription and a 'conscription election' during the war engendered. The effects of which - in terms of the French/English, Quebec/Rest of Canada dichotomy are still echoing today.

Whereas Borden might have found a way to heal the wounds inflicted by MacDonald after 1885, he chose instead to exacerbate them in a vainglorious attempt to make a nation which had already suffered many losses suffer still more.

Agonizing over the fact that Quebecers felt differently (though not all that differently from their Canadian-born fellow citizens - the make up of the CEF having been, for much of the first 3 years of the war, of citizen soldiers who weren't born in Canada either) he stumbled his way into the dynamic of two solitudes with both feet and we have been tripping over his errors ever since.

At least the war and the conscription crisis it created brought with it universal suffrage. However, even that, if one reads the history, was a put-up job designed to put French Canadians in their place. Appalling stuff none of which was aired honestly in the nonsense televised all this past weekend.

Excellent point granthams, and you too skeptitool

Always someone else to fight ...

It was neccessary to cross an ocean and to participate in an horrendous butchery to gain recognition? The whole idea sickens.

Wrote skeptikool.

It is the very 'martial spirit', that once drove the members of nations to make war one upon another, which is becoming increasingly abhorent and irrelevant in the 'flat' earth.

The use of a nations' youthful lifeblood to destroy parts of another nations' has become as ancient as Feudalism, the only problem is that not enough of the 'modern' world recognizes this.

Really ask yourself, what is there to gain in todays world from military adventure?

The neuclear aircraft carrier is as much a museum piece as is a suit of lorica segmentata.

Another side of Ricks

I didn't read any reviews of Fiasco before writing my own, but by coincidence I've just discovered an interesting angle on Ricks by the economist-blogger Brad Delong, who in January pointed out that Ricks must have known from the start how badly things were going...but his Washington Post stories didn't say so.

The URL of Delong's comments is here:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/01/why_oh_why_cant_1.html

back to peacekeeping and homeland defense

i've said it before and i'll say it again:

- canadian troops should only be overseas if they are wearing the UN's blue helmets/berets.

- defense spending should be vastly increased. with the focus being on border security.

- canada's constitution should be amended to include a passage similar to japan's article 9, which renounces war and forbids their self-defense force from deploying overseas.

Frontline/The World

A bit late but last night PBS ran a 20 minute British documentary mostly about the Canadian presence in Kandahar. Anyone who saw it would get a better grip on the futility of fighting a counter insurgency war.

The Clock runs forwards only ...

The notion that Canada should only use military force for UN actions is a throwback to the 1960's, yes 1960's.

The 'peace-keepers' were in decline from 1971 onwards, once they were used in Vietnam the decline was accelerated, though the 'hype' about their actions was increased in Canada. Leading to the national misconception that we are a nation of peacekeepers. Canada barely rates as a peacekeeping nation, and has been on the bottom 1/3rd of the UN lists for more than 2 decades!

In NATO circles we are the 'Taxi Squad'; akin to an 1870's Mexican bandito group that needs someone else to carry them to and from the battle zone.

Like it or lump it there are Canadian troops in Afghanistan, they are going to be facing greater and greater odds in the coming months.

I still see no way to get them out alive, though a thought occurs:

Since I think we should not want these troops to come home anyway (their PTSD and other complications will be coming on just as the 'medical system' will be going into complete overload from the boomers flooding it), why not create the CAST brigade as something more akin to the Foreign Legion? This way we can leave these men out there as mercenaries for hire (something we are essentially doing anyway, only getting very, very little in return for our expenditures {I do not count the happy feelings from the Bush Cabal as of any value whatsoever}).

In any event the use of military force is going to continue to gain less and less advantage to those whom employ it ... for once the CVBG is seen approaching over the horizon anything of real value will either be hidden, leave or be transmitted away at the speed of light.

Peacekeeping is not all it's cracked up to be

Thanks Murdock for the reminder that Canada is not actually that big on UN Peacekeeping. In actuality, many of the peacekeeping missions we participated in during the 1950s and 60s were motivated as much by self-interest as a commitment to peace. For example, had a UN force not been sent into Suez in the 1950s, Canada would’ve found itself forced to pick between either the US or Britain and France (because the US condemned the proposed intervention by France and Britain). Sending an international UN force allowed us to please all our allies, instead of making enemies. Our intervention in Cyprus was also self-serving in that it largely served to hold NATO together at the height of the Cold War. Though humanitarian concerns have played a role in the past, our peacekeeping has not been as selfless and many believe.

Also, I have to disagree with you Jrb. I think that many parts of the UN are dysfunctional, including the Security Council. Since some of the nations that hold veto power do not see eye-to-eye with us on human rights (mainly Russia and China), I think it is a bad idea to limit our international actions to only those missions approved by the Security Council. I think we do have an obligation to use our military internationally to protect the defenceless whenever we can and the UN has failed too many times in that regard. There is a big difference between invading a country for expansion sake and intervening in a country to stop human rights abuses (like what is happening in the Sudan). We shouldn’t limit ourselves to only what the UN approves.

War ain't what it used to be

Damn, "Fiasco" is the title I was going to use for my own book which was going to be about all the usual right-wingnut brigade devouring their own in the wake of military defeat.

My opening chapter was going to be full of quotes about why attacking Iraq was a great thing. And the last chapter would be quoting the same people pointing fingers at each other and yelling "incompetent".

But I have to admit, as much as I enjoy the political theatre of it all I know that like the Bourbons, the Right-wingers remember nothing and forget nothing.

So I'm looking forward to the cheers of "On to Tehran" and more Fiasco books a few years later.