A rchive Date
[ 22-01-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/feuer.html
Our battle cry: Check the card!
By ED FEUER -- Winnipeg Sun
January 22, 2001
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is at a press conference in a Saturday Night Live skit where a very serious, sweet young thing asks a question.
"The American military has advanced night-vision equipment. But the Taliban don't. Is that fair?"
The Rumsfeld character, squinting around the room, replies: "You know, if that isn't about the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
The latest project of Canada's Department of National Defence would be in that category. The Canadian Press reports the 750 Canadian soldiers who will serve in Afghanistan will be given a pocket-sized, laminated card containing the rules of engagement. In other words, when they come under fire, they'll be able to take out these cards to check whether they're allowed to shoot back.
The critics point out the mission is a war-fighting scenario, not peacekeeping, with all the intricacies of standing between two opposing forces.
Our soldiers could very well be fighting Taliban and al-Qaida fanatics.
One might ask what the fuss is all about. Seems like a traditional, common-sense kind of thing: you kill the hostiles before they can kill you.
Apparently it's not that simple for the bureaucrats back at Defence HQ in Ottawa. They're still working on the wording.
"They're being fine-tuned down to the last semi-colon," a Defence official explained.
Brian McDonald, a Toronto-based defence analyst and a retired colonel, is not impressed.
"When you're dealing with a highly fluid battlefield situation, especially at night, who the hell is going to check the (rules) and engage in a long, scholarly debate as to whether the circumstances fit?" McDonald said.
There's the problem. The bad guys aren't going to agree to a time out so the Canucks can debate.
It's been so long since Canadian ground forces have been in anything where combat is a real possibility that it throws the HQ staff into a tizzy.
Teeth-to-tail ratio is supposed be a good indicator of the combat readiness of a country's armed forces. The predominance of the tail component -- the bureaucratization of our military -- has long bedeviled our military.
They say the problem with generals and strategy is that they tend to fight the last war. Our defence bureaucrats are still fighting the last public inquiry. That one involved the Canadian Airborne scandal in Somalia in the early '90. But unlike Afghanistan, that was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission.
"If only members of the Airborne had carried a pocket-sized laminated card" is what these twits must have been lamenting for years.
It's ironic word of the card came out the same day another Canadian Press story previewed the report on post-traumatic stress disorder in the military by Andre Marin, Canada's military ombudsman. He thinks our military brass needs an attitude overhaul of their "dinosaur-age thinking" to help a growing number of soldiers suffering from the problem.
Marin's report on post-traumatic stress disorder will be released Feb. 5, and he predicts some of it will shock Canadians.
"The Canadian Forces have retention problems, recruiting problems and they've been losing good soldiers because of this," the ombudsman says. "This should be a wake-up call."
Marin says he was struck by the skepticism any investigation could make a difference on the part of the 100 soldiers from all ranks who brought their complaints to him.
Why is that not surprising? Would it not occur to someone in the DND hierarchy that imposing their little laminated cards on troops engaged in combat is the type of nonsense that might contribute to the problems Marin describes?
Don't bet on it.
Ed Feuer is a Winnipeg Sun copy editor; reach him at efeuer@wpgsun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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