Articles found November 13, 2007
Canada has bought itself a classic moral obligation
TheStar.com - comment - November 13, 2007 Eric Morse
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It became known last month that the Canadian military contingent in Kandahar Province has begun paying the salaries of some Afghan National Police (ANP) units in their area of operations.
In the circumstances, this makes perfect sense. The ANP are notoriously corrupt and very little of an ANP constable's salary finds its way into his pocket, let alone on time. The incentive to take bribes from the insurgents and drug lords and to extort from local villagers is almost irresistible, and direct payment from Canadian hands ensures reasonable discipline and attention to duty. An effective police presence in the countryside is vital and this goes some way toward providing it.
There is another side though. By the simple act of providing regular pay, we have created bonds that go well beyond economic relationships. We may not realize it, coming from a culture which has come to view the employer-employee relationship as a marriage of convenience for both sides. But things are far otherwise in a traditional society like Afghanistan. Relationships are much more solemn and personal. By doing what we have done, we have created a classic patron-client relationship, with the Afghan clients almost certainly making assumptions about the patron's obligations which the Canadian command and government may not have entirely thought through or bought into.
Nasty words like "mercenaries" or "camp followers" do not enter into it. Any time an army sets down anywhere, it has an effect on the local population, benign or otherwise and usually both. When the Canadian NATO brigade in West Germany moved from Soest in the north to Lahr in the south, many of the German people who had made a living serving their needs followed them. By then, many were already members of Canadian families. The Canadians picked up a similar following in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s as they moved about the country.
The process is even more visible in countries like Korea, where massive U.S. bases have existed for more than half a century. In South Vietnam during the Vietnam War it reached an apogee – and provided a horrific example of consequences at the bitter end.
The trouble begins when it is time to go home, especially if the departure is from a place where there is still a strong enemy in the field. The locals have placed their bets irrevocably; if the other side wins, they and their families have very poor prospects or life expectancy. Those suspected of having served the former regime in uniform or out are in the worst position of all. The haunting image is that of the last helicopter departing the U.S. embassy roof as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, dangling a trail of desperate and doomed Vietnamese abandoned to their fate by their erstwhile employers.
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Rate of wounded on rise
108 soldiers sent home for treatment in first eight months of 2007
GLORIA GALLOWAY From Tuesday's Globe and Mail November 13, 2007 at 4:41 AM EST
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OTTAWA — The number of Canadian soldiers who are so badly wounded in Afghanistan that they must be returned to Canada for treatment is on a trajectory to far exceed last year's toll.
During the first eight months of this year, 108 members of the Canadian Forces became eligible for the allowance that is given to wounded military personnel who lose their danger pay because their injuries require them to be removed from the war zone.
When the danger-pay substitute, called the Allowance for Loss of Operational Allowance, was introduced on Dec. 15, 2006, then-defence-minister Gordon O'Connor said he expected 115 soldiers would receive it as a result of injuries in 2006.
So the 2007 tally of 108 by Sept. 1 - obtained by The Globe and Mail using Access to Information legislation - was just seven shy of the number reached in mid-December of last year. And published reports suggest many have been injured since the end of August.
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The Rebirth of the Canadian military
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
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Canada's Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, who I mentioned here earlier, isn't too popular with the elites in his country, stemming from an age-old malady of actually being good at his job. Some in the country would rather their military forces return to being "shock troops" for UN peacekeeping missions, as is Canada's tradition, but others disagree including Christie Blatchford:
Consider what Colonel George Petrolekas, a veteran soldier now on unpaid leave who is also a friend of Gen. Hillier's (and fiercely loyal), has to say about one of the missions ... Bosnia.Col. Petrolekas was there in 1993 as part of the United Nations' protection force.
"The mission was for the delivery of humanitarian aid to villages," he says, "and thus the rules did not allow the international force to stop abuses of humanity that can only be termed aberrant.
"Early in my tour in 1993, a village of 280 [this was the village of Vares] was butchered and not a word was said, not a thing was done. There were so many such events that I saw soldiers cry at the frustration of not being able to do the right thing."
She ends with this description of Gen. Hillier:
The truth is, Gen. Hillier has presided over what amounts to the rebirth of the Canadian military. I don't speak purely in terms of budgets, armaments and missions, either; what he has really done is make it respectable again to be a soldier in this country. Under his leadership, there has been something of a cultural shift such that soldiers are no longer made to feel vaguely ashamed for being soldiers.
I posted this because I see many similarities in our own country over the proper role of the armed forces in the 21st Century. Some would have us return to a deterrent strategy, with the threat of force taking place of the actual use of military power to take out rogue regimes and terrorist groups, sort of "speak loudly and carry a small stick". I saw this in the Navy's recent Maritime Strategy and consider it a dangerous mindset not based on the reality of the times, and which won't keep us safe from a recurring 9/11 or worse. Some though, like Canada's Hillier, and those currently defeating the radicals in Iraq and Afghanistan, rightly see the need of going into the nests of the enemies of Civilization and actually killing them, before they spread their oppressive ideology to free nations.
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Talk about spinning for some of our allies in Afstan
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Scott Taylor is truly being economical with the truth:
...Step forward, NATO slackers.
That’s right: As Canada "punches above its weight" in Kandahar, we are not achieving complete success because other NATO countries are failing to do their bit for the alliance. The latest rallying cry of the Canadian tub-thumpers is that Afghanistan is NATO’s Waterloo and that if our partners don’t step up to the plate to win, we should consider cutting short our own commitment.
Two of the most maligned NATO countries accused of shirking their martial responsibilities are France and Germany. What is ironic about Canadians criticizing these particular allies is that as well as contributing significant contingents to Afghanistan (50 per cent more than Canada, in Germany’s case), they are both still heavily engaged in providing security forces in Bosnia and Kosovo [now that's a rich verbal twist: "security forces", implying something like the CF at Kanadahar when in fact the forces in the Balkans are doing traditional peacekeeping without combat--though the clouds are darkening - MC].
While Canada has rushed from flavour-of-the-month conflicts over the past decade, many of our NATO allies have been left manning the less newsworthy but still simmering hot spots.
Canada has chosen to place its military eggs into the one Afghan basket, but we should not be so quick to point fingers and denigrate those countries whose ongoing commitments elsewhere allow us the dubious luxury of being in the front-line spotlight [what tosh, Mr Taylor: those commitments elsewhere in no way preclude those countries from giving their troops a "front-line" role in Afstan].
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Canadian soldiers playing crucial role in rebuilding of Afghanistan, says officer
SHERRY MARTELL The Truro Daily News
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TATAMAGOUCHE – Each time a soldier dies fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan Canadians become painfully aware of the mission there.
One of Canada’s highest ranking military officers said loss of life is only one side of the story unfolding there, as our soldiers play a major role in rebuilding the nation scarred by years under control of a terrorist regime.
“There’s a lot of good news,” said Brig.-Gen. David Fraser speaking to about 80 people at an evening banquette at the Tatamagouche Royal Canadian Legion on Remembrance Day.
“Our Canadians are making a difference overseas but we have to temper our expectations.”
Fraser assumed command of the Multi-National Brigade as Canadian Commander in Afghanistan in February 2006 and held the position for nine months as part of the ongoing international commitment to the development and stability of the region.
Fraser said Canadians have engineered many positive changes since 2001 with advances in several areas including education, infrastructure development and health care.
“It’s not about fighting. It’s about jobs and education and by doing that we defeat the Taliban,” said the General.
“It’s about when a child asks you for a pencil, nothing else, just a pencil and why? Because they want to learn.”
Canadians have helped construct more than 190 kilometres of new road, canals have been restored, 120 water wells have been repaired and more than six million children are now attending school; about 50 per cent are girls.
Fraser said there has also been a change in how Canadians feel about their troops at home since the conflict began, with people walking up to soldiers on the street and shaking their hand while saying “Thank you.”
“Twenty years ago that didn’t happen,” said Fraser.
smartell.news@ns.sympatico.ca
13/11/07
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BAE's Bunker Finder
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Related stories: Contracts - Awards, New Systems Tech, Americas - USA, Air Reconnaissance, R&D - Contracted, BAE, Sensors & Guidance, Design Innovations
"Found a bunker!"
(click to view full)BAE Systems Electronics and Integrated Solutions, Inc. of Washington DC received an $8.2 million contract for the ATAEM program. Their goal is to design, build and demonstrate a proof-of-concept system that can find and possibly map underground facilities from an airborne platform, using active electromagnetic techniques. At this time $2.8 million has been obligated. Det 1 of the AFRL at Wright-Patterson Air Force
More on link
Canada has bought itself a classic moral obligation
TheStar.com - comment - November 13, 2007 Eric Morse
Article Link
It became known last month that the Canadian military contingent in Kandahar Province has begun paying the salaries of some Afghan National Police (ANP) units in their area of operations.
In the circumstances, this makes perfect sense. The ANP are notoriously corrupt and very little of an ANP constable's salary finds its way into his pocket, let alone on time. The incentive to take bribes from the insurgents and drug lords and to extort from local villagers is almost irresistible, and direct payment from Canadian hands ensures reasonable discipline and attention to duty. An effective police presence in the countryside is vital and this goes some way toward providing it.
There is another side though. By the simple act of providing regular pay, we have created bonds that go well beyond economic relationships. We may not realize it, coming from a culture which has come to view the employer-employee relationship as a marriage of convenience for both sides. But things are far otherwise in a traditional society like Afghanistan. Relationships are much more solemn and personal. By doing what we have done, we have created a classic patron-client relationship, with the Afghan clients almost certainly making assumptions about the patron's obligations which the Canadian command and government may not have entirely thought through or bought into.
Nasty words like "mercenaries" or "camp followers" do not enter into it. Any time an army sets down anywhere, it has an effect on the local population, benign or otherwise and usually both. When the Canadian NATO brigade in West Germany moved from Soest in the north to Lahr in the south, many of the German people who had made a living serving their needs followed them. By then, many were already members of Canadian families. The Canadians picked up a similar following in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s as they moved about the country.
The process is even more visible in countries like Korea, where massive U.S. bases have existed for more than half a century. In South Vietnam during the Vietnam War it reached an apogee – and provided a horrific example of consequences at the bitter end.
The trouble begins when it is time to go home, especially if the departure is from a place where there is still a strong enemy in the field. The locals have placed their bets irrevocably; if the other side wins, they and their families have very poor prospects or life expectancy. Those suspected of having served the former regime in uniform or out are in the worst position of all. The haunting image is that of the last helicopter departing the U.S. embassy roof as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, dangling a trail of desperate and doomed Vietnamese abandoned to their fate by their erstwhile employers.
More on link
Rate of wounded on rise
108 soldiers sent home for treatment in first eight months of 2007
GLORIA GALLOWAY From Tuesday's Globe and Mail November 13, 2007 at 4:41 AM EST
Article Link
OTTAWA — The number of Canadian soldiers who are so badly wounded in Afghanistan that they must be returned to Canada for treatment is on a trajectory to far exceed last year's toll.
During the first eight months of this year, 108 members of the Canadian Forces became eligible for the allowance that is given to wounded military personnel who lose their danger pay because their injuries require them to be removed from the war zone.
When the danger-pay substitute, called the Allowance for Loss of Operational Allowance, was introduced on Dec. 15, 2006, then-defence-minister Gordon O'Connor said he expected 115 soldiers would receive it as a result of injuries in 2006.
So the 2007 tally of 108 by Sept. 1 - obtained by The Globe and Mail using Access to Information legislation - was just seven shy of the number reached in mid-December of last year. And published reports suggest many have been injured since the end of August.
More on link
The Rebirth of the Canadian military
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Article Link
Canada's Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, who I mentioned here earlier, isn't too popular with the elites in his country, stemming from an age-old malady of actually being good at his job. Some in the country would rather their military forces return to being "shock troops" for UN peacekeeping missions, as is Canada's tradition, but others disagree including Christie Blatchford:
Consider what Colonel George Petrolekas, a veteran soldier now on unpaid leave who is also a friend of Gen. Hillier's (and fiercely loyal), has to say about one of the missions ... Bosnia.Col. Petrolekas was there in 1993 as part of the United Nations' protection force.
"The mission was for the delivery of humanitarian aid to villages," he says, "and thus the rules did not allow the international force to stop abuses of humanity that can only be termed aberrant.
"Early in my tour in 1993, a village of 280 [this was the village of Vares] was butchered and not a word was said, not a thing was done. There were so many such events that I saw soldiers cry at the frustration of not being able to do the right thing."
She ends with this description of Gen. Hillier:
The truth is, Gen. Hillier has presided over what amounts to the rebirth of the Canadian military. I don't speak purely in terms of budgets, armaments and missions, either; what he has really done is make it respectable again to be a soldier in this country. Under his leadership, there has been something of a cultural shift such that soldiers are no longer made to feel vaguely ashamed for being soldiers.
I posted this because I see many similarities in our own country over the proper role of the armed forces in the 21st Century. Some would have us return to a deterrent strategy, with the threat of force taking place of the actual use of military power to take out rogue regimes and terrorist groups, sort of "speak loudly and carry a small stick". I saw this in the Navy's recent Maritime Strategy and consider it a dangerous mindset not based on the reality of the times, and which won't keep us safe from a recurring 9/11 or worse. Some though, like Canada's Hillier, and those currently defeating the radicals in Iraq and Afghanistan, rightly see the need of going into the nests of the enemies of Civilization and actually killing them, before they spread their oppressive ideology to free nations.
More on link
Talk about spinning for some of our allies in Afstan
Article Link
Scott Taylor is truly being economical with the truth:
...Step forward, NATO slackers.
That’s right: As Canada "punches above its weight" in Kandahar, we are not achieving complete success because other NATO countries are failing to do their bit for the alliance. The latest rallying cry of the Canadian tub-thumpers is that Afghanistan is NATO’s Waterloo and that if our partners don’t step up to the plate to win, we should consider cutting short our own commitment.
Two of the most maligned NATO countries accused of shirking their martial responsibilities are France and Germany. What is ironic about Canadians criticizing these particular allies is that as well as contributing significant contingents to Afghanistan (50 per cent more than Canada, in Germany’s case), they are both still heavily engaged in providing security forces in Bosnia and Kosovo [now that's a rich verbal twist: "security forces", implying something like the CF at Kanadahar when in fact the forces in the Balkans are doing traditional peacekeeping without combat--though the clouds are darkening - MC].
While Canada has rushed from flavour-of-the-month conflicts over the past decade, many of our NATO allies have been left manning the less newsworthy but still simmering hot spots.
Canada has chosen to place its military eggs into the one Afghan basket, but we should not be so quick to point fingers and denigrate those countries whose ongoing commitments elsewhere allow us the dubious luxury of being in the front-line spotlight [what tosh, Mr Taylor: those commitments elsewhere in no way preclude those countries from giving their troops a "front-line" role in Afstan].
More on link
Canadian soldiers playing crucial role in rebuilding of Afghanistan, says officer
SHERRY MARTELL The Truro Daily News
Article Link
TATAMAGOUCHE – Each time a soldier dies fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan Canadians become painfully aware of the mission there.
One of Canada’s highest ranking military officers said loss of life is only one side of the story unfolding there, as our soldiers play a major role in rebuilding the nation scarred by years under control of a terrorist regime.
“There’s a lot of good news,” said Brig.-Gen. David Fraser speaking to about 80 people at an evening banquette at the Tatamagouche Royal Canadian Legion on Remembrance Day.
“Our Canadians are making a difference overseas but we have to temper our expectations.”
Fraser assumed command of the Multi-National Brigade as Canadian Commander in Afghanistan in February 2006 and held the position for nine months as part of the ongoing international commitment to the development and stability of the region.
Fraser said Canadians have engineered many positive changes since 2001 with advances in several areas including education, infrastructure development and health care.
“It’s not about fighting. It’s about jobs and education and by doing that we defeat the Taliban,” said the General.
“It’s about when a child asks you for a pencil, nothing else, just a pencil and why? Because they want to learn.”
Canadians have helped construct more than 190 kilometres of new road, canals have been restored, 120 water wells have been repaired and more than six million children are now attending school; about 50 per cent are girls.
Fraser said there has also been a change in how Canadians feel about their troops at home since the conflict began, with people walking up to soldiers on the street and shaking their hand while saying “Thank you.”
“Twenty years ago that didn’t happen,” said Fraser.
smartell.news@ns.sympatico.ca
13/11/07
More on link
BAE's Bunker Finder
Article Link
Related stories: Contracts - Awards, New Systems Tech, Americas - USA, Air Reconnaissance, R&D - Contracted, BAE, Sensors & Guidance, Design Innovations
"Found a bunker!"
(click to view full)BAE Systems Electronics and Integrated Solutions, Inc. of Washington DC received an $8.2 million contract for the ATAEM program. Their goal is to design, build and demonstrate a proof-of-concept system that can find and possibly map underground facilities from an airborne platform, using active electromagnetic techniques. At this time $2.8 million has been obligated. Det 1 of the AFRL at Wright-Patterson Air Force
More on link
