Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

The recent rumors circulating around the termination of Defense Chief Hillier came from ousted Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor’s camp. The rift between O’Connor and Hillier is legendary and the open enmity between these two a thing to behold.

The other day, some clown from O’Connor’s camp dropped a dime on gullible CTV reporter Robert Fife who promptly parroted the planted rumor/wish-fantasy on Lloyd Robertson’s national news. The story had nothing to it. Soon, the Tories circled their wagons in support of the General they politically own. Hillier is family.

The Afghan detainee scandal, the musings regarding the duration of the Afghanistan deployment; the issue of Hillier “pulling focus” and media attention, all were grist for the Hillier ego-mill/O’Connor rift. Hillier loved making his “civie” boss look bad too.

Hillier loves combat, even with civilians.

As I have said before, actual military combat operations empower senior soldiers who gain prestige, increased social status, increased political power, and increased budgets. Senior soldiers, more often than not, want war – and Hillier wants Afghanistan on his “to-do” list.

Stephen Harper, sensing victory before the election is called, has now “qualified” his position on the length of the Afghanistan deployment saying that “he meant to say that, given the minority situation, that the government needed to find enough opposition support to pass its future goals for the mission.” And with regard to opposition leader Dion, Harper said yesterday in a rare press conference, “you don’t turn around and say we want the government to make a decision on the next deployment two years in advance before we have any “facts.” Facts? We already know enough, don’t we? Asking for “facts” about Afghanistan and the nature of the mission is like Iranian President Mamoud Ahmadinejad asking for more research on the Holocaust.

The real fact is, Stephen Harper wants the Afghan mission to continue well beyond its 2009 mandate and he wants to further empower General Hillier as Defense Chief with the same culture of co-option that he played with the Liberal party that initiated the Afghan deployment in the first place. Indeed, Harper seeks, and has succeeded in co-opting, the whole military as part of the Conservative “brand”; Hillier, himself, is the face of the Conservative government’s image.

It is interesting to note that Hillier owes much of his military background and education to the U.S. military and his experiences there. Harper’s own intellectual libertarianism, owes its economic philosophical origins to the United States as well.

And while the Pentagon is still undergoing the “revolution in military affairs” begun by former Secretary of War, Donald Rumsfeld, Hillier concurrently conducted his own revamping of the military, the main result of which is a Machiavellian bureaucratic power grab; there is now more power consolidated in Hillier’s office.  

The history of successful democracies is often marked by cultural opposition to accrued military power. American historical examples include Kennedy saying no to crazy Strategic Air Command’s Curtis LeMay during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis (LeMay wanted a nuclear war with the Soviets and was subsequently parodied in American culture by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick in “Dr. Strangelove”), to President Truman’s sacking of General Douglas Macarthur when he wanted to drop a nuke down China’s pants during the Korean War.

Only rarely, does a soldier-statesman come along like Eisenhower. While the American President Ike liked power, he didn’t like war. General Patton, whom Ike had to reign-in frequently and basically sacked, loved blood and guts. So does Hillier. So does Harper.

Patton was lost without war. So will be Hillier. And Hillier is not half the man, or half as bad.