In a January 28th commentary on the Manley Report, noted military affairs analyst, Scott Taylor, made the following observations in the Chronicle-Herald:
“There are more than enough NATO soldiers and firepower in southern Afghanistan right now to keep the Taliban restricted to their hit-and-run roadside bombings. It would seem that this proviso was intended to once again point the finger of blame at our allies and to thump our chest in a reminder to all that Canada is doing the ‘heavy lifting.’“
In addition to those comments being counterproductive, if the aim is truly to solicit additional assistance from those countries we’re chastising, they are also mainly false. A lot of these NATO countries that are maligned as “shirkers” in Afghanistan (such as Germany and France) are contributing far more military resources in support of peace operations in other hotspots.”
Intrigued by Mr. Taylor’s assertions, we followed up with an email to which he graciously responded. We asked him to “provide some examples of trouble spots where Canada has ceded NATO responsibility to other countries.”
Scott Taylor replied:
“Two off the top are Bosnia and Kosovo. The French also stepped up in a big way when Lebanon erupted 18 months ago, and last year the French & Germans mounted a huge security deployment (8000 troops) to the Congo; just to mention a few. France routinely maintains 40,000 troops stationed abroad in former colonies.”
This is in line with an article he wrote for Esprit de Corps magazine last November. Mr. Taylor stated the following in an article entitled: “Allies are doing their part -just not in the spotlight.”
“Afghanistan appeared to be a quiet, safe sideshow by comparison. That is, until the coalition forces began moving out of Kabul to establish provincial reconstruction teams. Not unexpectedly, the Taliban heartland of Kandahar proved to be a particularly difficult sector to quell, and the Canadian battle group soon found itself suffering a significant rate of casualties. With this turn of events, the Canadian public began to wonder how and when the hasty victory over the Taliban had devolved into a protracted counterinsurgency war.”
“Since 2005, large numbers of Pakistani troops have been deployed in western Pakistan (along the Afghan border). More than 700 soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded. Furthermore, the army’s offensive operations in Pashtunistan have resulted in numerous retaliatory terrorist attacks in the rest of Pakistan.”
“As Canada “punches above its weight” in Kandahar, we are not achieving complete success because other NATO countries are failing to do their bit for the alliance. The latest rallying cry of the Canadian tub-thumpers is that Afghanistan is NATO’s Waterloo and that if our partners don’t step up to the plate to win, we should consider cutting short our own commitment.
Two of the most maligned NATO countries accused of shirking their martial responsibilities are France and Germany. What is ironic about Canadians criticizing these particular allies is that as well as contributing significant contingents to Afghanistan (50 per cent more than Canada, in Germany’s case), they are both still heavily engaged in providing security forces in Bosnia and Kosovo.
While Canada has rushed from flavour-of-the-month conflicts over the past decade, many of our NATO allies have been left manning the less newsworthy but still simmering hot spots.
Canada has chosen to place its military eggs into the one Afghan basket, but we should not be so quick to point fingers and denigrate those countries whose ongoing commitments elsewhere allow us the dubious luxury of being in the front-line spotlight.”
Taken from someone with close ties to the military, this is a compelling argument. There is no doubt that NATO needs to step in and help our Canadian forces who have been fighting so bravely, but saying that NATO has abandoned us is apparently not true.
Chief of Defense Staff, Gen. Rick Hillier, has referred to the Liberal tenure at the helm of military procurement as the ‘decade of darkness.’ That is because our forces were chronically under funded and ill equipped.
Columnist Rosie Dimanno today reinforced an argument we made on this blog two weeks ago. The substance of that argument is that the vast majority of Canadian casualties have been the result of vehicles with IED’s while plying Afghanistan’s roadways. By contrast, the troops of most other nations move soldiers and supplies by helicopter – thus avoiding the dangerous roadside bombs.
Why doesn’t Canada move its troops by helicopter? BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE ANY! The procurement of helicopters was killed by Liberal Jean Chrétien days after taking office in his first term! Throughout his successive terms and into the Martin regime, Liberal governments were content to watch Sea King helicopters fall out of the sky as the military’s equipment variously crashed, caught fire, sunk and failed to protect our soldiers.
It is time that we as a country stopped pointing the finger of blame at others in order to deflect attention from our own shortcomings. The military has been the victim in the political sniping and is finally getting some much needed attention; but while we are supporting our brave men and women putting their lives on the line, let’s not unfairly vilify others who are doing their own heavy lifting where our forces are virtually absent.