Editorial - More Free Advice for Prime Minister Harper: It’s Time to Communicate

[ruxted]

Shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act - http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#rid-33409

Source: http://ruxted.ca/index.php?/archives/25-More-Free-Advice-for-Prime-Minister-Harper-Its-Time-to-Communicate.html

“What we have here,” said an infamous ‘heavy’ in a famous movie, “is a failure to communicate.”

The Ruxted Group is increasingly concerned by the Government's seeming inability to explain the Afghanistan mission to the Canadian public. The sacrifices of our service members and diplomats and the treasure committed by Canada are in danger of being wasted as the nation fails to understand the nature of the mission or the work that is being accomplished over there.

The sacrifices are not just about eradicating a ruthless regime, they are about providing stability and fostering a way of life that the average Afghan hasn’t seen in decades.

Canada has taken a lead role in Afghanistan by:

• Supporting the Afghan Government’s efforts to demobilize war lords’ militias, and to collect and store their heavy weapons;

• Assisting with demining and the destruction of ammunition stockpiles; and

• Promoting economic development by providing savings and micro-loan services to more than 150,000 Afghan small business owners, mostly women.

One of the first steps is to provide alternatives to people who have only known life by ‘the way of the gun’. It is one thing to completely disband a militia, but the demobilized members must be able to live a life that is safe and prosperous for themselves and their families. The adage ‘give a person a fish and he will eat for a day, show that person how to fish, and they will eat for a lifetime’ applies.

The disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) process is vital in creating stability sp that the legitimately elected government of Afghanistan can extend its mandate throughout the country. Canada has played a key role in the DDR process. Canada has disbursed close to $21 million in support of the process since its inception in October 2003. The main DDR program, the CIDA-funded Afghan New Beginnings Program, enabled former Afghan fighters to select reintegration packages to enable them to return to a new civilian life. Training programs included initiatives in agriculture, tailoring, teaching, and demining.

CIDA and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams will be unable to continue their work without the security provided by Canadian and other NATO forces. If Canada loses its will, then the work these fine people are doing to rebuild Afghanistan will end and the Taliban and their allies will raze the foundations of a civil society to the ground. They will undo the improvements in education, quality of life, economic growth and human rights that have been made since Canada's entry into Afghanistan in 2002. They will plunge Afghanistan and its people back into darkness.

Some have proposed that Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor be despatched to criss-cross the country to ‘sell’ the mission.

Perhaps he should – former MND Bill Graham and CDS Rick Hillier did that at the behest of former PM Paul Martin in 2005. But, it is not the MND’s job, because it is not his policy. It is the Government of Canada’s policy, the policy of successive governments of different political stripes. It is the job of the PM and all his ministers to explain the mission, clearly, concisely and continuously, until Canadians do understand it. If, after the mission has been fully and clearly explained, Canadians are opposed, then they can pronounce themselves at the ballot box.

In explaining the mission to Canadians Mr. Harper and the Conservative government are entitled to the support of those Liberals who served in the governments led by M. Chrétien or Mr. Martin. They understood the mission then; they must be able to help explain it now.

The Ruxted Group considers it a matter of utmost urgency for the Prime Minister, Cabinet , and would-be national leaders to bring this message to all Canadians, so they may make an informed judgement on what is being done, and will understand how and why our precious blood and treasure is being spent.

The Ruxted Group believes the rationale for Canada’s leading roles in Afghanistan – in development, in diplomacy and in combat – is easy enough for Canadians to understand and that most will support it. Canada is:

• Being generous with our help to those less fortunate (and few nations are less fortunate than Afghanistan); and

• Serving our own national interests by showing real, consistent leadership in the world.

It is time to communicate, Mr. Harper. Get out front; do your job; lead our country; explain this mission to our fellow citizens.

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Folks,

In the past Ruxted editorials were typically locked and comments posted in a separate thread. The Ruxted Group has recently decided to spin off from Army.ca to work under the newly created Ruxted.ca web site. As a result, Ruxted editorials will be reproduced in the Current Affairs section, and like all other threads, will not be locked. (I.E. Feel free to post your responses here.) You may also wish to visit Ruxted.ca and leave comments directly on that site.


Thanks
Mike

 

[Edward Campbell]

This is from Prof. (LCol/Armoured (Ret’d)) Doug Bland (Queens) from today’s National Post.  It is reproduced here under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=497dcf2f-d39b-4ffe-aca8-45f77b0eef84

Time for a non-partisan Afghanistan policy
The Conservatives and Liberals are committed to the mission and cannot back out of it

Douglas Bland, National Post

Published: Thursday, October 05, 2006

The debate surrounding Canada's foreign policy and military commitment to Afghanistan has descended into partisan rhetoric. Canada needs political leadership from all parties aimed at building a consensus on a national strategy that policy planners and military leaders can use to guide their decisions over the next several years that we will be in Afghanistan.

All leaders will have to agree to the basic facts about Canada's Afghan mission. We have made a commitment as a country, and the UN and NATO don't care about our internal political squabbles. They understand our commitment only as Canada's commitment.

Jack Layton, and now Paul Martin, seem to believe that the situation and belligerents in Afghanistan are pliable and that the Canadian government can control all events in the field. Paul Martin reportedly is astonished that the war is not unfolding exactly as he says he was promised it would. Credible leaders understand that national policies are always subject to the enemy's ever-changing tactics.

Canada is now fully engaged in combat with two obvious options: meaningfully reinforce the status quo, or cut and run. But neither choice is practical. The first would eventually devour the tiny Canadian Forces, and the second would irreparably damage Canada's reputation in the international community.

Instead, political leaders ought to find a national strategy that will maintain Canada's honour while allowing some respite from the difficulties of the military commitment to Afghanistan.

A Canadian political consensus could be built around three policies.

- First, Canada should demonstrate a unified resolve to build a strong UN coalition to fight Afghanistan's enemies on as many fronts as possible. Prime Minister Stephen Harper should engage the other party leaders in this diplomatic effort announced as a commitment to uphold the authority of the UN.

- Second, Canada should immediately rethink its humanitarian and developmental program. The "business-as-usual" approach centred on the Canadian International Development Agency must be replaced by a new ministry responsibility for a "whole-of-government" approach to meeting this essential program effectively.

Party leaders should agree to a significant increase in program funding and appoint an all-party committee to oversee the program and policies to improve Canada's co-operation with national non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan.

- Third, the oft-criticized "high operational tempo" of the Canadian Forces is a problem, not because Canada has committed the Canadian Forces to too many missions, but because the government has not built an armed force to meet its appetite for dangerous undertakings. The Canadian Forces are not over-committed; rather, the very few people who are the Canadian Forces are over-committed.

A national strategy should include a plan to rapidly build military units to relieve the stresses building in the Canadian Forces and to provide resources for other missions that are in our future. In the meantime, the government should increase its effort to convince our NATO allies to develop a strategy for Afghanistan that would allow for the systematic rotation of NATO troops from "non-permissive" areas to more "permissive" areas in the country -- a strategy of fair burden-sharing in the alliance.

The fact that there is no consensus on past decisions about Canada's strategy in Afghanistan is irrelevant now. The three themes described here might, however, provide an avenue toward a consensus for the future.

The Conservative government and the Liberal opposition could surely find common cause in both a diplomatic offensive and policies to build capable armed forces. Their respective policy platforms already support these ideas. A dramatic restructuring of Canada's humanitarian and development policies would as surely attract Jack Layton. The greater appeal of a national strategy for political leaders (though it may appear to be self-serving) might lie in the assumption that no party (except perhaps the Bloc Quebecois) wants to fight an election on the war.

The Conservatives and Liberals are committed to the mission and cannot back out of it, and the NDP might welcome a "policy out" because Mr. Layton has suffered a national black eye for calling for an arbitrary withdrawal from this UN-mandated mission. Better for all parties to settle the matter in the backroom, agree to ideas that each can support more or less and then clear the table to fight it out about the domestic issues that are already shaping the next federal election campaign.

Dithering over the war, finger-pointing at past decisions and entertaining secret hopes to use Canadian Forces casualties to win more seats in the next election will only make everyone look bad. Building a non-partisan policy in Afghanistan, on the other hand, might bring praise and votes to all.

Douglas Bland is professor and chair of the defence management studies program at the School of Policy Studies, Queen's University.

© National Post 2006​

Prof. Bland says that all party leaders need to agree on the basic parameters of the mission.  I don’t know if that is possible; Jack Layton, for example, must appease a large, powerful band of loony-left wing-nut, knee-jerk anti-capitalists and anti-American fruitcakes.  The next Liberal leader may have to appease a similar constituency.  M. Duceppe claims to represent a province with strong isolationist, maybe even pacifist leanings.  Mr. Harper’s core constituency, on the other hand, is, still, I think, on side – supportive of the mission and the troops and conscious of the need to remake Canada into a leading middle power in the world, as Liberal PM Louis St Laurent intended.

Prof. Bland believes that both the ”Conservatives and Liberals are committed to the mission and cannot back out of it,”; Ruxted said, more realistically, I think that the Liberals should commit to the mission they initiated.

I believe the Conservatives need to co-opt a few informed, independent Liberals, like Sen. Colin Kenny, to help build a broad, majority (but not, I fear, all party) consensus in support of Canada’s three goals:

• Help Afghanistan;

• Protect Canada’s vital interests; and

• Rebuild Canada’s reputation and position as a leader.

That same broad consensus ought, then, to support a ”plan to rapidly build military units to relieve the stresses building in the Canadian Forces and to provide resources for other missions that are in our future,” which Prof. Bland and I agree is necessary.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>A national strategy should include a plan to rapidly build military units to relieve the stresses building in the Canadian Forces

Thank goodness we never had to fight the Russians.  We've apparently forgotten how to mobilize (recruit, equip, and train) a force of any particular size on short notice.

 

[The Bread Guy]

The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence agrees!  Shared with the usual "fair use" disclaimer . . . .

Harper should go on TV to explain Afghan mission to Canadians: senators John Ward, Canadian Press, 5 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/061005/n100553A.html

OTTAWA (CP) - The government has to do a better job of explaining Canada's mission in Afghanistan, a Senate committee said Thursday.

The defence committee, in a wide-ranging report entitled "Managing Turmoil," touched on Afghanistan, endorsed joining the American missile defence system and called for doubling the foreign aid budget and increasing defence spending.

The all-party committee said both the former Liberal government and the present Conservative regime have fallen down in explaining Afghanistan to Canadians.

The report said a government sending soldiers in harm's way should go through a checklist beforehand, answering questions that include:

-What is the purpose of the mission?

-Is the mandate clear and realistic?

-Can the success of the mission be measured? How?

-Does the government have the political will to persist even if the deployment becomes unpopular?

Senator Colin Kenny, the committee chairman, said two successive governments left the explanations to Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff.

"This was not his job."

Kenny said Prime Minister Stephen Harper should speak to the country on TV, explaining the rationale of the mission.

"We think there needs to be a very clear statement about what the government expects to get for putting the lives at risk and spending all of that money," he said. "It's up to the government to make that case and we think if the case is made well, there will be a significant amount of public support for it.

"If the case isn't made that way we think the support will fall off by default."

The unanimous report also said that Canadian aid to Afghanistan has to be better focused, especially in the troubled south, where Canadian troops have been taking casualties against insurgents. They suggested some aid money should be channelled through the military itself, rather than aid agencies.

"It's also important for the safety of our troops that local Afghanis associate the patch that they see on the shoulders of our troops with good things happening in their communities."

Development money has to give people a reason to side with Canada and NATO against the Taliban, he said.

The senators' other comments touched on several controversial areas, including foreign aid spending, missile defence and base closings.

They said Canadians are cheapskates when it comes to both defence and foreign aid, with per capita spending running well below what is spent by even the Dutch or the Australians.

They said the lobbying against missile defence is based on emotion, not reason.

While the NDP has constantly preached that the missile system means a weaponization of space, the senators brushed that off.

"Weapons in space are inevitable. Better we prepare for it now."

The report said the bugs are being worked out of the missile technology and urged the government to resume talks with Washington about coming on board.

The senators also said the government should be abandoning military bases that have outlived their usefulness. They singled out Happy Valley-Goose Bay in Labrador, but Kenny said there are many other examples.

They said Goose Bay has stayed open only because there are votes - and a Commons seat crucial in a minority government - to be won there.

"Partisan political considerations should not be a factor in the allocation of funds from the budget of the Department of National Defence."

Similarly, they said Defence shouldn't be used to exercise sovereignty in the North. They said the government should scrap its plan to build big icebreakers for the navy; they also said that if a deepwater Arctic port is to be built, it should be built with other funds, not Defence money.

Give the icebreakers to an armed, beefed-up coast guard, they said.

The report also tackled JTF-2, the military's secretive, special-operations unit.

Kenny said there needs to be more parliamentary scrutiny of the outfit, which operates far behind the scenes, for the most part.

"Elite military units have the potential to take it upon themselves to play by their own rules," the report said. "Canadians should be confident that no unit - however elite - could shroud such behaviour in secrecy if it so decided."

© The Canadian Press, 2006

 

[Cloud Cover]

Fat chance PM Harper will do it, and even if he does plan on doing so, it will be in such a fake, flat, platitude enriched style that no one will listen or believe him.  And to top it off, he will be pre-empted by Taliban Jack and his Loony Loyal Jerkas.  Peter Mackay is going to have to do this, or it will not be effective. 

I'm not saying PM Harper is a fool, or corrupt or anything like that. I'm saying that in politics timing is everything, and he is about 1 month and 10 KIA too late.

If PM Harper goes on TV and pushes for this war, he will be further portrayed as a George Bush clone. Make no mistake about it, Canadians increasingly do not trust PM Harper because the Liberals, NDP and the media have repeatedly told Canadians not to trust George Bush or our hapless victim PM Harper. I thinnk the PM has now become a condensation symbol for the media and the left to fuel the growing, seething anti-Americanism in this country. 

What PM Harper needs is a non-military means to end the issue in Afghanistan, and he needs it very soon or the CF will once again be crushed by a near pacifist, left wing government.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I want to reiterate a fear I expressed earlier.

What if there is no principled Conservative position upon which a clear, coherent defence of the mission can be built?  What if it is all calculation:

• Political calculation – how can we use this mission to divide and conquer?  Can we split the other parties and embarrass the BQ, Liberals and NDP by tricking them into adopting hasty, contradictory positions?

• Policy calculation – what is the lowest acceptable price we can get away with paying to stay on side with the USA while we deal with the real tough trade and commerce issues?  What is the lowest acceptable price we can get away with paying to keep the grudging respect and some support, but never affection, of the media and opinion makers?

What if the Conservatives have measured Canadians and deeply, viscerally understand us?  What if they understand that two attributes define an overwhelming majority of us ordinary Canadians: greed and envy –

• Envy of everything America.  Not just the wages and standard of living and Disneyworlds and SUVs in driveways but also the substance, the lively democracy, the inventiveness and the productivity, the equality, the competitiveness, the lawfulness, the constant striving to reap the rewards of being American; and

• Greed – wanting someone else to pay for it.  Canadians appear to be natural social-democrats, thieves, in other words.  The essence of our nation-state of entitlement is that we are told that we need only wait for the would-be Americans amongst us to build a house or farm or factory or corporation; as soon as it is up and running we will be entitled to steal it and share it out amongst the stupid and lazy majority.

Suppose Stephen Harper, ever the cool, calculating professional politician, has decided that he can finesse the issue in a general election – that Canadians will, in fact, be easily and nearly totally distracted in a general election campaign when he points to their wallets?  Suppose he and his ministry don’t care about why we are in Afghanistan; haven’t paid much attention to why Afghanistan is a matter of vital interest to Canada; and readily accept that the price – in blood and treasure – is comfortably low for the international leadership points we are earning, right now, as a result of our lead role in Afghanistan?

My sense is that, despite the toing and froing in the polls, most Canadians neither know nor care about the mission in Afghanistan or, for that matter, about foreign and defence policy and not even about the CF and the men and women – their neighbours and nephews – who serve.  I believe Harper and the next Liberal leader and Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton, too, want to fight the next election on familiar, comfortable ground: bribing Canadians with their own money and appeasing Québec and Ontario – with their/our own money, too.  IF I’m right, and it is a big, Big IF, then there is no need to get out and explain Afghanistan – earning real opposition in the process.  It will subside in the public mind – it already has declined: the pictures of the latest casualties are on inside pages and so on.  Canadians will turn their limited, selfish attention to bread-and-butter issues – just like always.  If that’s the case then maybe the Conservative calculation is: why bother?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, from today’s (21 Jan 07) Ottawa Citizen are some interesting remarks by Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=3a784a6c-a6fc-490e-bccd-62cefb82cbad

Canadian troops in Afghanistan as 9/11 'retribution
' O'Connor: Attack on New York killed 25 Canadians

Andrea Sands, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Sunday, January 21, 2007

EDMONTON - Canada is fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in "retribution" for the 9/11 attacks that killed at least 3,000 people, including 25 Canadians, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said yesterday.

The hard-hitting comments, which prompted a round of applause from Mr. O'Connor's Edmonton audience, came in addition to the government's usual reasoning about Canada's duty to help the Afghanistan people.

Speaking at a symposium about Afghanistan, Mr. O'Connor said Canadian soldiers are in the country because Afghanistan's democratically elected government wants them there, because Canada has a responsibility to help as one of the world's richest countries and because the war is in Canada's own interest.

"When the Taliban or al-Qaeda came out of Afghanistan, they attacked the Twin Towers and in those twin towers, 25 Canadians were killed. The previous government and this government will not allow Canadians to be killed without retribution," Mr. O'Connor told his audience of roughly 200 people, many of them military personnel.

In an interview after his speech, Mr. O'Connor said the word retribution doesn't necessarily mean punishment.

"What it means is, if our country is attacked, we are not going to stand blandly by and not do anything about it," he said.

"I don't believe the (former) Liberal government would have committed us to Afghanistan had there not been Canadians killed."

Mr. O'Connor's comments come as a fresh contingent of soldiers -- 2,200 troops from bases in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and Alberta -- prepare to depart for the war-torn country.

There are about 2,500 Canadian troops stationed in Afghanistan, mostly in the south of the country, where the Taliban is the strongest.

Since Canada sent troops there in 2002, 44 soldiers and one diplomat have been killed.

Canada does not want a Taliban government to regain control of Afghanistan because it would provide fertile ground for terrorism, Mr. O'Connor warned.

"If they returned and took the government, they then would allow terrorist organizations to operate in the country, international terrorist organizations. We believe that."

But Saleem Qureshi, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Alberta, said the federal government should pull Canadian soldiers out of the country.

The soldiers are doing heroic work, but war carried out by the world's most powerful states will always prompt less powerful opponents to use terrorism, Mr. Qureshi argued.

"Political issues can only be resolved by political negotiations."

The Afghan mission continues to be a controversial topic politically, with the NDP calling for a withdrawal of troops and the Bloc Quebecois demanding the mission focus on reconstruction.

After an emotional debate in the House of Commons, Prime Minster Stephen Harper won a vote last year to extend the mission in Afghanistan until at least 2009.

In a recent online poll by Innovative Research Group -- conducted this month and provided exclusively to CanWest News Service -- support for the Afghanistan mission stood at 58 per cent among Canadians, versus 38 per cent opposed. The numbers were up from a previous poll by the same group that showed 54 per cent in favour of the mission and 42 per cent opposed. The poll surveyed 2,206 Canadians and is accurate within 2.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Spectator Capt. Craig Paterson of 15 Service Battalion in Edmonton said he agreed with the minister's reasoning.

By keeping al-Qaeda members "busy on their own land," it is harder for them to launch attacks here, Capt. Paterson said.

"If we leave them alone and allow them to build up their support and their equipment and their planning, it's just a matter of time, I think, before they will come over here," he said.

Like Ruxted (see: http://ruxted.ca/index.php?/archives/25-More-Free-Advice-for-Prime-Minister-Harper-Its-Time-to-Communicate.html and http://ruxted.ca/index.php?/archives/24-The-Afghanistan-Debate.html ), I have advocated, here in Army.ca, that our government, the whole government, not just Minister O’Connor and Gen. Hillier, tell Canada why we are fighting in Afghanistan and persuade Canadians that our cause is just and our strategy is sound.

You know, waaaay back when Gordon O’Connor and I were junior officers, before encryption devices on radios were common place, there were posters stuck up in most command posts; they said: Think Before You Speak.  The aim was to remind us that a judicious selection of words might aid our security,  I wish they had one on Minister O’Connor’s teleprompter to remind him that a judicious selection of words might aid him in his current task.

This bit is key, for me:

’In an interview after his speech, Mr. O'Connor said the word retribution doesn't necessarily mean punishment … "What it means is, if our country is attacked, we are not going to stand blandly by and not do anything about it," he said … "I don't believe the (former) Liberal government would have committed us to Afghanistan had there not been Canadians killed."’

With all respect:

• Ministers are not supposed to have to correct their (prepared) speeches minutes after the give them;

• Ministers are not supposed to give eager headline writers freebies – quotes which allow, quotes which encourage headline writers to craft controversy where none was intended; and

• Ministers are not supposed to spoon feed instant outrage to the likes of  Saleem Qureshi, of the University of Alberta, who said the federal government should pull Canadian soldiers out of the country.

O’Connor gave out the government’s line: ’Canadian soldiers are in the country because Afghanistan's democratically elected government wants them there, because Canada has a responsibility to help as one of the world's richest countries and because the war is in Canada's own interest.’  Evidently O’Connor and/ or his advisors and/or the PM’s communications advisors don’t think that’s enough; someone (O’Connor or others) think there needs to be a fourth aim: to defeat our self-declared enemies before they can bring the war to Canada.

That fourth aim may, indeed, need to be added to the current list.  But: Why did the Edmonton Journal reporter have to seek out a Canadian Forces officer to say what O’Connor should have said?

 

[The Bread Guy]

• Ministers are not supposed to have to correct their (prepared) speeches minutes after the give them;
• Ministers are not supposed to give eager headline writers freebies – quotes which allow, quotes which encourage headline writers to craft controversy where none was intended;

It's not outside the realm of possibility that any Minister is capable of :
1)  saying what s/he thought, rather than (or over and above) what s/he was told to say, and/or
2)  saying something that, while not part of the script, eventually is "made" part of the script.

As for the controversy, there is a school that "any mention is better than no mention", too.

+10000 to everyone saying the GOVERNMENT must sell the mission!

 

[MarkOttawa]

I would agree that MND O'Connor has rather put his foot in his mouth:

Canada fighting in Afghanistan in retribution for the 9/11 attacks: O’Connor
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=c9f4c867-df7c-4fe8-9a0e-85a69839c0c4&k=9174

Such "biblical" language will only encourage those who believe that we should not be in Afstan since our mission there is part of some sort of illegitimate Western "crusade" against Muslims. The minister should have said simply that a major reason we are there is to prevent the re-establishment of a terrorist sanctuary--a sanctuary behind the 9/11 attack in which, amongst almost three thousand other civilians, 25 Canadians were murdered.

Mark
Ottawa