Here you go…..time to rant! What is it? The Cadman Affair? Bill Casey told me today he thinks that there was a bribe….although he says Harper didn’t try and bribe him.
It’s your turn Krystal Nation.
Check in later to see when they are posted.
It doesn’t matter who is governing, or even if his immediate Boss, Peter Mackay, as Defense Minister, supports him as no other, General Rick Hillier, our Defense Chief, appears to not miss an opportunity to undermine, or grandstand, or steal the limelight from his political masters whom he so obviously, and so unrepentantly, disdains.
No one has been a bigger supporter of the General than Mackay – and he looks foolish for doing so and now reveals what little control he exercises over his own Defense portfolio. Even if he wears the T-shirt, Mackay cannot get the General to shut up. Mackay has been relegated to a “yes man”, and shows no force of will at all.
It is Mackay as Hillier’s little salesman.
Rick Hillier’s recent comments at the Conference of Defense Associations where he stated that democratic debate back home represented a “window of extreme vulnerability” (in other words, debate leads to Taliban attacks), with his utterly incorrect suggestion that a recent suicide bombing was related to, or motivated by, domestic debate, was pure politics. Hillier’s behavior is what Don Cherry would call a “show boat”, or a “hot dog”.
The separation of church and state, and the division of powers between the civilian and the military, where civilians rule, are not principles embraced by the Taliban or, for that matter, Rick Hillier — at least when it comes to the latter.
For the Taliban, who are guided by a religious theocracy and tribal impulses, secular, civilian rule is the Devil. For Hillier, the Devil seems to be some form of Jack Layton and democratic public discourse. Moreover, Hillier has gone back in his rhetoric to the old canard of conflating the mission and policy with “support for the troops” — which is unpardonable; that kind of rhetoric leads to the political polarization of our military.
But Hillier does not care.
Despite the fact that a party with 30 percent of the vote can form a majority, and that most of the Tory votes are rural and most people live in cities, and that most military members do not come from cities or larger urban centers, there are natural fault lines with regard to culture, outlook, and politics. What Hillier is doing is selfish and ultimately counter-productive, and divisive.
When Hillier says that debate emboldens the enemy, and that Parliament must vote “overwhelmingly to support the troops”, he is playing politics with the military – the very thing he condemns in “civvies”.
No General should ever tell Parliament how to vote. It is a basic rule of our culture and it is one of the reasons why we fought and died in WW2. For Hillier, however, it is about military convenience and military expediency.
Democracy and public discourse is something to be barely tolerated for Rick Hillier who, time and again, has shown his disregard for Ottawa when it disagreed with him or has shown equivocation.
A democracy isn’t something that only counts when it agrees with you.
For some military types, a compliant dictatorship is preferable to a dissenting democracy. Another General, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned of such people.
And they have the nerve to call Layton “Taliban Jack.”
It takes a day or so for your your replies to appear. Please just keep looking for them.
This week we were pleased to have three academic giants joins us: Hew Strachan, Niaal Ferguson, and John Mearsheimer. You may want to comment on their appearance, or you may have something to say about the elmination of plastic bags in grocery store checkouts!
It was a great week. I also encourage you to comment on my Afghanistan post that I posted earlier in the week. Just scroll down.
Rant away.
-ak
Tom Cruise Biographer Andrew Morton spoke to me from chilly London this morning on his cell phone. His hands were cold and he could see his breath as he walked in Central London and looked over his shoulder at Buckingham Palace.
“No I don’t think he is gay,” said Morton. “I do believe, however, that Scientology dominates all aspects of his life. Scientology itself doesn’t allow much room for homosexuality. Tom’s latest goal is to recruit Will Smith. They (Scientologists) are certainly concerned about sex though – in fact they are sex-obsessed”.
There was a pause at the other end of the phone when I later inquired about the depth and intensity of the animosity between Cruise and his former wife, Nicole Kidman.
“Nicole was not as malleable as Katie Holmes is, in my opinion”, Morton declared. “In fact, Nicole’s resistance to Scientology was, in the end, considered a threat”.
What about their last movie together, Eyes Wide Shut (also Director Stanley Kubrick’s last film) a film which, in many ways, foreshadowed the demise of their marriage?
“Kubrick controlled Cruise. He would send faxes at all hours of the night – scrip revisions – and would wake him up. Eyes Wide Shut was one of the longest shoots in film history, hundreds of days. Tom only was away from the set for the few days and that was when Nicole was shooting love scenes with someone else. It was a very strange psycho-sexual triangle between Cruise, Kidman, and Director Kubrick as voyeur.
If that doesn’t wreck a marriage, I don’t know what would. It doesn’t take a Scientologist to figure that one out.
Program Notes:
The entire broadcast re: Tom Cruise biographer Andrew Morton will be re-aired this Sunday, February 24th beginning at 9:30 am. The first hour will include my interview with Military and Economic Historian Niall Ferguson who believes in the innate value of Empire – especially the American one. His latest book is The War of the World – Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West.
Friday I will talk about Niaal Ferguson on the blog. Stay tuned. He is extremely fascinating, original, and, I hope, wrong.
As I write, Stephen Harper is mulling over the “Liberal position” on Afghanistan.
As I am writing, another news story came in across the wire saying a suicide car bomber targeting a Canadian military convoy detonated his explosives at a busy market in southern Afghanistan today killing 37 civilians and wounding three Canadians.
The day before, on Sunday, more than 100 people were killed by a suicide bomber outside Khandahar city. It was the deadliest bombing since the invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001.
The Liberals have proposed suggestions to the Government in order to reach a compromise on our role in Afghanistan and its duration. Why? Why a compromise?
There are some, in the Liberal caucus, apparently, that agrees with Stephen Harper’s approach to Afghanistan: an open-ended combat role and a muscular approach to Canadian involvement that would see more “peace-making and less “peace-keeping”.
It looks as if neither the Conservatives, nor the Liberals, want to use the war in Afghanistan as a “wedge” issue. Why?
The Liberals are saying they would like to see more emphasis on reconstruction and less on combat. To that end, they would like to see the diminishment of “sweep missions” that search out the enemy to engage.
There are about four support people “behind the wire” for every one active combat personnel in the field.
Canada currently has a combat battalion of 1200 troops. Liberal defense critic Denis Coderre has said he would like to see that element out of Khandahar completely. Coderre was overruled by other Liberals and he has been back-peddling ever since. On my broadcast Tuesday, February 19, 2008 I will ask Coderre what he meant/means. Many, simply find the whole Liberal position muddled – a mess.
Simply put, if you are in Khandahar, you are in a combat zone. The only way to completely avoid security concerns is to reposition troops to the north. That would be a Liberal position that actually makes sense.
What Stephane Dion wants is to stop the bleeding and let someone else take a turn in the heavy lifting department. Approximately 70 percent of Canadians agree, according to current polls.
So, why not let the combat/no-combat aspect of the Afghanistan mission play out in a general election? It is not “playing politics” with out troops, it is about democracy in action.
In the 1930’s, the Dictators of Europe often spoke about the messy democracies that they replaced by saying that the “future of a country is not something with which people should play politics; that it should not be left to “intriguers’ and meddlers”. Only a “firm hand” can drive a cart – you cannot have a cart being pulled by 12 horses going in different directions.
You get the idea.
Democracy, and democratic processes, should never be convenient for the status-quo. Only NDP Leader Jack Lyaton, and the Bloc, are saying leave Afghanistan completely. In other words, the Conservative position, stay and fight, and the NDP position, leave now, are understandable. Leave it to the Liberals to confuse everyone.
The military are saying to me that the Liberal position is untenable because in order to have security, in order to have reconstruction in the south, in Khandahar, you have to engage the enemy, and you need the freedom to conduct engagement and not have your hands tied.
By staying in Khandhar, the Liberals are falling into a semantics trap when it comes to “security” and what it means. The military will simply conduct business as usual and the Liberals and Conservatives can call it a new name – or sell the idea that there is greater emphasis on “reconstruction” and Afghan army training.
The Quebec wing of the Liberal party, led by Dion and Coderre, clearly want an end to combat deaths and combat exposure. We have done our part, they say. To that end the Quebec Liberals are more in line with the majority of Canadians.
But the contentious nature of our involvement in Afghanistan has been high-jacked by the status-quo Tories and English Liberals who are preventing public discourse on this issue while billions are being spent and soldiers are being wounded and dying.
The only real difference between the Liberal position as it stands now and the Tory position is the Liberals want out completely by 2011. It is not much of a distinction.
Let a debate happen.
What are the Liberals and the Tories afraid of anyway, democracy?
What a concept.
It’s your turn to rant.
Go ahead and make a post. They will all appear shortly.
The sooner you post, the sooner they will appear.
-ak
The loss of the Halifax Daily News this week is simply incalculable. How can you lose Michael DeAdder’s artful cartoon satire and the insight/incite of columnist David Rodenheiser?
My friend and reporter, Beth Johnston, as well as editor Jack Romaneli, are people that approach their job as a calling. It is important and it matters, and so do they.
Photographer Andrew Forget is also a gem that I will miss.
We not only lost about 100 jobs in Halifax when Transcontinental publishing came in from their ‘Death Star’ in Montreal to suicide bomb the troops and run back. They also killed 100 careers.
I do not sympathize with Transcontinental anymore than I do with Global TV’s “digital decision” to use Toronto studios and let the reporters file from here and mail it in – which they will do in the spring. A “digital decision” can sometimes mean the middle finger for our profession – never for the senior brass.
If only we could so callously digitize the Asper family as well as the decision makers in Montreal I think that the public would be better served.
Life isn’t always about money. Media operators have a public responsibility. That doesn’t mean that they should lose money; it does mean that they should be mandated to care if they don’t know better already.
Time and again I have seen media friends laid off for the incompetence of senior media functionaries, who only get moved around – laterally usually. When vice-presidents and presidents fail, they fail sideways — or actually get promoted!
Not us.
The lack of imagination and outright bungling that erodes the position of viable media entities should not be blamed on those that perform for us, those whom we read and with whom we identify; those we see on TV, those that edit and polish and those that care.
During the famous Watergate investigations by young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein in the early 1970s, the term “follow the money” was used by the mole, codenamed “Deep Throat”, whom we later found out to be the F.B.I’s number two man Mark Felt.
“Follow the money” meant, at that time, that the Committee to Re-elect the President (Nixon) had sent cash to a group known as “the plumbers” (who fix leaks) for break-ins. The money trail was eventually traced back to Nixon himself. Facing impeachment, Nixon resigned.
Today, “follow the money” can also be applied to Afghanistan.
Billions are being spent. Whole bureaucracies are being engaged. Helicopters are being ordered, aerial drones bought, roadside bomb counter-technology scheduled and shipped, manpower adjusted, people trained, back-room promises given, political and otherwise.
The millions Canadians have spent, and will spend, on U.S. (surprise) equipment all goes to U.S. arms manufacturers in un-tendered contracts.
To put the politics of procurement into perspective, British Historian Max Hastings was talking to me a few months ago about the air war over Germany in WW2. The bulk of the destruction at the end of the war, both in Germany and Japan, was gratuitous; nonetheless, rubble was bounced and cities that were desperately trying to treat the wounded and escaping civilians, jammed with women and children and old people, were fire bombed. The kids and old people had no where to go.
I asked him why? Hastings explained that war has logic of its own when the factory for war gets geared up and rolling. Late in WW2 the bombers were still being produced, the bombs made and shipped, the crews scheduled, the radar technology improved, the fighter protection technology improved (the fighters, early in the war had limited range) with more and more fighters shipped to Europe.
Hastings said to me that, whether the bombing campaign was militarily successful or not, you simply wage war the way that you can, and with what you have and that you wage war according to production lines and the huge infrastructure that you set up, regardless of changing circumstances. Until the war was over the bombs would still find targets — even if there weren’t any.
Once the orders have been placed, and the factories readied, the war will go ahead, like it did in
Vietnam and like it does now in Iraq. It is hard to cancel contracts. In the case of Iraq, too much has been spent. But Canada’s spending for Afghanistan has only just begun
I will conclude the WW2 procurement analogy by saying, in the end, that most historians agree that the diversion of half a million men to defend German cities itself helped the allies win despite the fact German war production actually went up during some of the highest saturation bombing periods mainly as a result of underground factories, etc.
In other words, all the resources allocated, all of the factories engaged, and all of the bombs dropped, had only an indirect decisive account on Germany – that was not the goal of the air war at all. But, because of production assembly lines, money allocation, huge ego careers, and internal bureaucratic politics, no one could stop it.
So, here we are in Afghanistan and what do we see? We see the Tories opening Canada’s wallet to spend billions waging war in Afghanistan.
How much of this money will actually go to help the people of Afghanistan?
Everyone even now admits the money earmarked for hospitals is not getting through due to Western incompetence and systemic corruption (we need the warlords so they do whatever they want).
The Pashtun tribes people, referred to as “the Taliban”, somewhat erroneously, as even some undeclared Taliban are fighting the infidel occupiers and Afghan drug lords whom the Western powers are propping up (why do think poppy production is at record levels?), have an unlimited supply of men and are highly motivated on religious grounds and the fact that outsiders have invaded.
I will say it again that the Afghan war is not winnable without 100,000 troops positioned there for 25 years. Even then it will only be drug lords that we are propping up in the end.
Somalia and the Sudan (Osama’s home away from home before the West chased him into
Afghanistan), are warlord-rife, militant Islam-ridden countries, yet, we are not invading them. They, too, are terrors’ incubators.
It is unbelievably naïve of people to say that Canada should stay and fight because they won’t tell you the truth — so they tell you it in pieces.
No one in Ottawa really has any idea how long it will take to win, or what “winning” really constitutes. So, they bullshit us in increments talking about “extensions”, each time about two years in length. No one is going to come out and tell you that to “win” will cost “x” number of Canadian lives and so many more wounded, 40 billion dollars and 25 years. — and that is only providing that the U.S. commits Iraq-like troop levels which it currently doesn’t have, not to mention does not have in terms of stomach and political will.
People can argue with me about this all day long. But history and common sense itself seems to be on my side (and a number of international relations experts who know a hell of a lot more than anyone in Ottawa does). Right now, in Ottawa, all they have is wishful thinking and military contracts to support.
Stephen Harper is a bright man. But bright men must stick to their disciplines. Do not ask a trained economist to be either an historian, and international relations expert, or a pro hockey coach.
Canada’s military role in Afghanistan reminds me of Martin Sheen’s Viet Nam maddened character in “Apocalypse Now”.
“We were going to the worst place in the world and we didn’t even know it yet.”
Here’s the simple test: would you sacrifice your own son or daughter in
Afghanistan?
Don’t say, that you would send the army and, after all, they are all volunteers. Volunteers don’t want to die anymore than you do. Yes, there are some in the forces that like “the action” but most are just doing a job. They want to go home to their kids, wives/husbands, homes, and pensions. I would even venture to say that after the first taste of combat, or a close call, most soldiers are scared and/or deeply anxiety filled. The thrill of battle wears off quickly — even with the most gung-ho.
Ideas (including the idea of combat) often seem sexier in the abstract than when you really do it – something about that thing called reality: reality sweats, bleeds, cries and feels pain. Flesh and blood, and ideas, abstract notions/fantasies, often clash. Reality has other eyes — real eyes — looking at you in the face and judging you.
On the battlefield even the dead look back at you.
The entire debate regarding Canada’s role in Afghanistan, and whether to extend it or not past our NATO 2009 commitment is predicated on the idea of sacrificing others — dying in the abstract. Only when it is your loved one whose life is on the line does it become personal; only when it is personal does it count, does it cost you. Afghanistan doesn’t cost either Stephen Harper, or former Deputy PM John Manley, or even Defense Chief Hillier, a thing.
Former U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell was always war-averse (the same with former Vietnam vet and current Republican front-runner John McCain) because these people knew, and know, war. They do not want to be involved in counter-insurgency or what is called “asymmetrical” warfare because it is not what we do best. Moreover, the “Powell Doctrine” espoused the doctrine of overwhelming force in the application of “Air land battle” as a means of reducing casualties. War would be short, brief, brutal – not a Vietnam.
George W. Bush, who ran away during the Vietnam era and hid behind Daddy, thinks nothing of throwing the dice with other people’s sons. Stephen Harper, and former Liberal Deputy PM John Manley, and even, I would argue, Defense Chief Hillier, like the bloodless idea of keeping us fighting in Afghanistan past our 2009 expiry date.
What I find unusual and callous in the case of Hillier is that he is supposed to be a soldier, not what is referred to as a “candy-ass civvie”– he is supposed to be one of them, but he maintains civilian instincts. Hillier is, and has become, far less a General and more of a military/political operative who shines in the limelight, who seeks the stage in the manner of a narcissist, a Prima Donna, a “dandy” who loves the attention and power.
Let us remember that Afhganistan is not WW2. If Afghanistan is such a vital threat let us declare war then and have conscription. Otherwise, we have done enough dirty work and we have lived up to our NATO obligations.
For God’s sake, why continue in a combat role after 2009? Will our 2,000 troops really make the difference in the reformation of Afghanistan? What nonsense. Is keeping them there longer going to make it all better in Afghanistan? No. The Taliban are stronger now than they were 5 years ago. But no one will tell you that.
The truth hurts. Reality hurts. But not for Hillier, and Harper, and Manley.
And Hillier loves to talk tough — especially on base with a coffee or on patrol in Ottawa.
Just like those candy-ass Civvies.
They cost us money. That has been the perception. A new Dutch study says that people who are less healthy live shorter lives and cost the health care system less.
The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because smokers and obese people died sooner than the healthy group it cost less to treat them in the long run (that does not include all of the extra taxes smokers pay over a lifetime).
The Associated Press report story goes on to say “in a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.
Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the “healthy-living” group (thin and non-smoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on ‘cost of illness’ data and disease prevalence in the
Netherlands in 2003”.
What if this study is really true? What if the moral high-ground of “healthy people” is no more? At that point opposition to those that choose unhealthy lifestyles has to be seen as aesthetic or empathetic or just one-upmanship, or marginalization under the guise of concern for behavior modification. Many people try, for any reason at all, to simply point fingers.
Most non-smokers are not really bothered by actual second-hand smoke; they just don’t like the idea of someone else doing it. For many others, unless it is a loved one, how others behave and what others do as a lifestyle choice is irrelevant.
There are still those who would like to hide behind the notion of altruistic societal betterment in the notion of condemning lifestyle choices. “It’s better for all of us” is the mantra.
Well, now that that notion is blown out the window with regard to obesity and smoking, the principal and logic of the argument should still remain and apply; that is, if you are determining as the main criterion for your evaluation cost benefits, then let’s look at it the other way.
What that means, by your very own argumentation logic, and the prioritizations of your criteria, is that more people should be fat and smoke as it is more health cost effective.
I am still jogging, but I won’t pull that Twinkie away from you.
But yes, now that you’ve asked, I do have a light.