Recent content by enfield

First, US (or Western, or European) foreign policy and security policy cannot be held hostage to notions of Syrian or Iranian public opinion.  Second, Syrian media is no doubt working very hard to maintain the idea of Evil American Imperialist Crusader, no matter what the US actually does.  On...

1- Foreign fighters have been flowing through Syria into Iraq for five years, causing massive destruction and loss of life, with the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian regime.  Syrian leadership believes it has a vested interest in maintaing the Iraqi insurgency and ensuring chaos, just as...

Ok, it's a quiet night - I'll bite. 1- According to Western and international legal tradition, national sovereignty and territory integrity are not absolute. There are many cases when outside powers and organizations are expected to intervene, with military force, inside a sovereign nation. ...

I served with Josh in Bosnia - great section 2i/c, and an honour to serve with.  RIP MCpl. 

The numbers from the CBC story: 2003    86,937  Regular Force members 2004    90,772  2005    91,285  2006    96,318 2007    87,000  According to the DND website (http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/about/index_e.asp) the military currently has 62,000 Regular members and 25,000 Reservists...

I think, Infanteer, there are more options than that and levels 2-9 are good possibilities. What is key is not the level of violence, but what happens afterwards - what we're willing to expend to control and administer what we win, whether that be territory, a city, or a tribe who's leadership...

Probably an accurate assessment. I believe the Canadian psyche views overseas military missions in much the same way as development aid, emergency assistance, and whatnot - a nice luxury that we can provide, sometimes, out of the goodness of our hearts. To Canadian society, military missions...

So it's ok to hire Russian mercenary pilots and choppers, but not ok to use US/UK private security firms?

I knew Chris Stannix as well - great guy, fantastic soldier. I saw him just before he went over - he was full of plans for the future and excitement for the mission. A very sad day. RIP

I'm not sure why everyone is holding the Peace Corps up as something amazing- I've spent a fair bit of time with them in Africa, and they were pretty much useless. They were like any other group of young western people in a warm sunny place - full of good intentions, but also with money that...

In my post I was focusing on the concept that WW1/2 soldiers spent "years" fighting, and that this historical example of soldiers withstanding stress for very long periods of time could be used to justify keeping modern soldiers on back to back tours. I won't pretend to know how stresses add up...

There are two different issues here, and I’ll try to clarify them: 1) Reservists are not as well trained and experienced as the Regular Force, simply because of part vs full time. At the Pte/Cpl level this can be rectified relatively quickly and easily, and Reserve NCM's brought up to speed. At...

I'm posting this here as a reply to a tangent that developed in this thread: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/58084.60.html. The Mods may want to clean this up, but I wanted to seperate the replies. I don’t have anything handy for other armies or WW2, but I will note I said “Allied”...

This could mean a few things... One, don't always trust CFRC on questions regarding Reserve recruiting - go to the unit itself, thats why each Regiment pays its own recruiter. Second, until April 1, CF Recruiting Group has put a hold on the processing of Reserve applications: The Res F is close...

15 LCols - and their attached RSMs, Adjutants, and (small) staffs - make up a decent sum of money when compared to the annual budgets of most reserve units. My former unit, this training year, averaged 1 full platoon on the weekend Ex's (another platoon worth are in A'Stan). To support that 1...