Brooks in Afstan

Damian Brooks' latest report from the wilds of Afghanistan. Fine reporting and photos.

Damian Brooks in Afghanistan

Blogger Damian Brooks of "The Torch" is with the troops in Afghanistan. His first couple of reports are here and here.

"No wonder Canadians are confused and ill-informed"

At the "The Torch" Mark Collins posts a couple of excellent letters on Afstan he wrote to the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

Mark is unimpressed with Don Martin’s journalistic abilities:

...his vision is rather limited. He's basically all attitude and little cattle...:

No wonder Canadians are confused and ill-informed about the situation in Afghanistan. ...in his column "Canadian troops far from alone" (Jan. 24)...[...] he gets quite a few basic facts wrong--all the more emarkable since he was in Afghanistan himself just half a year ago.

[The litany of Martin’s errors follows]

Couldn't agree more. In December Mr. Martin wrote up his assessments of the year’s best and worst politicians. My thought at the time was that in a similar list of journalists he would easily be among the worst.

A way with words

Christie Blatchford, in Kandahar, writes a very moving tribute to a fallen soldier and his "brothers in arms".

Too bad Christie didn’t stay with the ‘Post’.

[via The Torch]

Gordon O’Connor’s remarkable legacy

If all you had to go on was opposition criticism and day-to-day MSM coverage of defence issues, you would probably conclude that Gordon O’Connor was pretty much a flop as Minister of Defence. But if you were to take a closer look at his list of accomplishments during a very short tenure you could come to a much different conclusion.

In today’s National Post, Douglas Bland, in his article "Gordon O’Connor: A distinguished defence minister", reviews the upside:

By any criteria that matters to Canada's national defence, Gordon O'Connor's brief time in office was an outstanding success. In less than two years, he reversed more than 10 years of Liberal neglect of the defence policy and the Canadian Forces.

He wrote the ... defence platform ... guided it through a defence establishment that at times fought vigorously against it. He wrestled a commitment of $20-billion for new military equipment to rebuild the Canadian Forces from Cabinet and a reluctant Finance Department bureaucracy.

On Aug 10th the first of four new Canadian CC177 heavy-lift aircraft landed in Canada ... It would have been noteworthy if Mr. O'Connor had only forced the notoriously dysfunctional defence procurement system to consider buying such major new equipment. The fact that he has the aircraft ready to fly operational missions in a mere 18 months is remarkable.

New artillery weapons, drones and armoured vehicles are today in the field protecting Canadian soldiers.

Medium lift aircraft and helicopters are about to be ordered.

Most astonishing of all, a new fleet of the most modern tanks are on the way to Canada, a country usually allergic to the very idea of owning such a "war-like" capability.

Damian Brooks over at ‘The Torch’, offered a more mixed review, pointing to Mr. O’Connor’s poor performance in handling the external politics, the media and the message to the public.

Granted, the government’s communications strategy on Afghanistan often seemed somewhere between non-existent and seriously flawed. But in my opinion, that can’t be blamed entirely on O’Connor. Everyone, including the PM, the PMO, the ministries of external affairs and international development, among others, had a role to play in that failure.

Afstan - more negative spin from CTV

It seems that nearly everything we hear from opposition parties and the MSM about the war in Afghanistan is aimed at demoralizing the homefront (which in earlier times would have been considered treason.)

Last night’s coverage by CTV’s Robert Fife kept this up in spades. In his despicable piece Fife aired video clips of Amir Attaran (notorious for detainee abuse accusations), Taliban Jack Layton and dopey Dion to background his own negative spin that the Harper government was attempting to keep French-Canadian troops out of harm’s way.

Never mind that what Fife said is a new shift towards training Afghan troops has actually been an integral part of the mission all along. From a post by blogger Flit via The Torch:

I simply don't have the time to refute every untruth in the Canadian media about Afghanistan these days, but the CTV's irresponsible Bob Fife piece tonight was really a new low point.
[...]
I really do urge anyone and everyone .... to read the actual NATO-UN-Afghan Government mandate, as laid out in the Afghanistan Compact.
[...]
As for Fife and the rest of the CTV team behind that piece, who, if they were ever pointed to this document, apparently failed to keep their lips moving past the third page, I fear they're beyond redemption. It seems almost all public disapproval of this mission in the Canadian context is an argument from ignorance, fuelled by ignorant media.
[...]
The primary fight at home is not against timidity; it's against ignorance.

The Torch's Damian Brooks adds some of his own interpretation of what’s going on. Eg:

But I wonder if there isn't more to the public opinion polls than simple ignorance. I wonder if there's a subconscious tendency to avoid information that would require Canadians to step out of our comfortable lives...
[...]
In light of our unwillingness to delve beyond the predictable soundbites and headlines of our established media organizations - whose only purpose is to sell more advertising by telling us what they think we want to hear - I wonder if there's any set of circumstances that would have Canadians rearing up on our hind legs and charging into a fray.

Both the Flit and The Torch pieces deserve a full read.

Afghanistan - Canadian gutlessness at home

PM Stephen Harper recently stated that the Canadian combat mission in southern Afghanistan would end in February 2009 if there were no consensus in parliament to extend it. He said he did not want to put Canadian troops in harm’s way "if the opposition at home is going to undercut the dangerous work they’re doing in the field".

Today, at ‘The Torch’, Mark Collins gives an excellent assessment of what this apparent capitulation means, highlighting the roles played by politicians and the media:

...the government has done a very poor job of explaining the mission. ...the Liberal Party is simply and irresponsibly playing politics with the mission. ...the NDP are sincere in their pacifism but fools; ...who cares about the Bloc? ....our media has: 1) an Oprah-like fixation on the death of troops; 2) a pattern of highlighting things that help discredit the mission (detainee abuse, civilian deaths); and, 3) a strong tendency to ignore either success in battle or in reconstruction.

[...]

...the 52 fatalities we have suffered in sixteen months of the Kandahar deployment ..... are what it has taken for the Taliban to defeat Canada. Not militarily, but psychologically and politically. We are indeed a weak horse, to use bin Laden's image.

[...]

...That will simply encourage more deadly violence by Islamic extremists everywhere. And smug, peace-loving Canadians will bear a degree of responsibility for those deaths.

As depressing as it is, it’s well worth reading the whole thing.

Scandal-mongering in Kandahar

Based on this excellent post by Damian Brooks here’s a suggested motto for The Canadian Press and the CBC:

"All the distortion, bias and bullshit unfit to print."

It’s what the Canadian MSM seems to do best when reporting on our military. Must be the natural Left/Lib affection for the troops and what they do.

Afghanistan Study Group!?

Over at the "The Torch" there's an excellent entry concerning a column by Rudyard Griffiths in today’s Toronto Star. Griffiths proposes Canada’s very own version of the Baker/Hamilton “Iraq Study Group”. There's a link to an especially good rebuttal in an Army.ca forum.

Three points:
(1) wouldn’t we be in danger of ‘Americanizing’ our foreign policy decision process? :()
(2) there will be, no doubt, many supporters of the idea among the pacifists in the NDP, Liberals and Bloc, and;
(3) Taliban Jack Layton will be happy that someone validated his notorious call for negotiations with the enemy and its supporters and sympathizers.