Cruising Kandahar

The New York Times has published this photo of a Canadian patrol attacked in Kandahar city on Wednesday. I think the picture of the lead vehicle and soldiers milling about speaks for itself.

 

Too Smart For Our Own Damn Good

Canadians are academically top-heavy and, unless we change that, it’ll cost us.

A report in today’s Toronto Star notes that Canada ranks #1 as having the greatest percentage of its working force with a college or university education.

“The latest census data shows that Canada stands first in the developed world in the proportion of people who hold credentials from either college or university – 48 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in the U.S. or 32 per cent in Australia.

The data also shows Canadian women outnumber men at university, more than half of immigrants have a university degree compared with 20 per cent of Canadians born here, one in five post-secondary grads has taken a business or marketing-related course – but only 10 per cent of young adults hold a certificate in a skilled trade.

Too, the census reveals a young generation studying different fields than their parents – more chefs than mechanical repair, for instance, more computers than construction, more transportation than health services.”

This is all well and good until your toilet backs up or you need a machinist or some other skilled trade. There we’re in trouble. Canada is facing a critical shortage of skilled tradesmen (& women).

From welding to drywalling there are not enough young people entering our trades.

Nothing new to this story. It’s a problem that’s beset some sectors of industry since the 60’s.

My Dad was in the specialty steel business in Ontario. Most of his customers were tool and die companies working for the automotive and aeronautical industries. Those companies were dependent on highly skilled machinists and tool makers but there were never enough.

The Soviets actually helped ease Canada’s problem. Their invasion of Hungary in ’56 and Czechoslovakia in ’63 brought quite a few highly skilled tradesmen to Canada as refugees. By the time the 70’s rolled around, a lot of them owned their own, highly profitable tool and die companies. After they were absorbed, however, the trade shortage problem returned.

Why? A major reason was that the apprenticeship process wasn’t sufficiently attractive to draw newcomers. Kids could earn a lot more taking an unskilled factory job than they would ever receive during their years as an apprentice.

Another problem is our public attitude to labour of any sort. We’re snobs, plain and simple, and before long we may come to regret our snobbery.

When I entered law school I was surprised at how many of my classmates admitted they were there largely due to their parents. Some had absolutely been groomed for it from childhood. It was mandated.

The upshot? We’re awash in lawyers and bereft of machinists. Make sense? Of course not.

From one end of this country to the other we need to change all this and, while government and the private sector need to do a lot more, so do we as individuals and, especially, as parents. Remember, Jesus was a carpenter.

 

We’re Winning in Kandahar

How’s this for logic? If we abandon territory, they won’t fight us for that territory and therefore we can claim victory because there’s less fighting. I guess that means if we packed up all our soldiers and flew them back to Canada we could claim total victory. From the Globe & Mail:

“Secret military statistics show that Taliban attacks have decreased in Kandahar’s core districts in the past year, illustrating the success of Canada’s new strategy of pulling back its troops into the heart of the province, a top military commander says.

Insurgent ambushes have fallen in four of Kandahar’s 17 districts as the latest rotation of troops has focused on protecting the vital zone around the provincial capital, said Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, although he did not give specific numbers.

“In relation to where we’re focused, I think we are winning,” he said.

Geographic focus was a key part of the general’s assessment. While saying that security has improved in the districts of Panjwai, Zhari, Spin Boldak and Kandahar city, he repeatedly declined to comment about the provincial situation as a whole.

In places just beyond the Canadians’ zone of control, the Taliban have established a parallel court system, enforced curfews, and mounted road checkpoints.

But Gen. Gauthier described his troops in a dilemma similar to that faced by a hospital triage nurse, deciding which patients require the most urgent attention: “You have to prioritize,” he said.”

Trying to secure a territory the size of Kandahar province with a battle group of but 1,000 soldiers was never more than a preposterous fantasy anyway so it makes sense that the Canadian force would retreat and concentrate on holding the most critical assets, the cities. Is that what “winning” looks like? I guess so, if you can define “victory” as going on the defensive.

 

Dion, Make Up Your Mind – Stay or Leave?

I’m not sure where Stephane Dion stands on the question of Canadian participation in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. It strikes me that he’s more intent on finding a place to stand that’s not already occupied than in taking a clear, genuinely principled position.

He’s allowed himself to get snookered again. Harper’s occupying the “stay” corner, Layton has staked out the “leave” corner. It seems that Dion’s focus is to define a posture that is somehow betwixt and between – as though that were possible.

So we’ll stay in Kandahar but someone else will do the fighting. And NATO is going to adopt rotational deployment so that all those other nations that are lining up to jump in can get their fair share of the combat mission.

The trouble with Dion’s position is reality. If you’re in Kandahar you’re going to fight. Option B doesn’t exist. And NATO doesn’t have any suitably sized reinforcements available to rotate in. That’s the problem Stephane, that’s why we’re in this 2009 predicament.

Germany’s defence minister announced today that his country’s forces, like those of Italy, France and Turkey, will be staying in the relatively peaceful north. They’re not budging and so any prospect of rotation is unrealistic.

Unfortunately for the Liberal leader, Harper’s also got the “stay, but…” option, the Manley option, staked out.

Between them, Harper and Layton have pretty much got the reality options filled. So, Stephane, who are you going to side with?

 

Conference Board Backs Carbon Taxes

The Conference Board of Canada is recommending the prompt introduction of hefty carbon taxes on businesses and individuals alike in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. From the Toronto Star:

“The think-tank joined a growing list of research and business groups calling for taxes or other financial policies to reduce emissions from coal, oil, gas and other fossil fuels.

All companies and individuals should pay a tax that stings enough to make them change their behaviour and adopt less-polluting technologies, the report says.

The recommendation includes measures far tougher than what the report calls the federal government’s “modest” climate change plan. It also suggests a starting price of about $25 a tonne for emissions – far higher than Ottawa has proposed in its limited scheme – and says the price should keep rising.

For Canada’s largest greenhouse gas emitters – mainly in the oil and gas industry, electricity generation and major energy users such as steel, aluminum, chemicals, mining, cement and forest products– the board proposes the tax be accompanied by an emissions cap-and-trade system.

“Canadians pay nothing to spew greenhouse gases, even though the pollution will cause floods, droughts, storm damage, physical and mental health problems and many other “potentially irreversible disruptions,” the report says. “Since there is no price on these negative consequences, consumers and producers have no need to factor the cost of emissions into their decision-making.”

The challenge, the board says, “is to derive a price … which consumers and producers would then take into account.”

 

It Could’ve Been Worse – A Bit Worse Anyway

A few days back I wrote that if the Manley report didn’t address the lack of troops in Kandahar, it would be rubbish.

Surprise, surprise. The report does focus on the force level issue and says that, if NATO doesn’t put up an extra 1,000 soldiers to aid the Canadian contingent, we ought to say sayonara and leave.

What’s unclear is whether Manley is talking about an extra 1,000 combat troops. That would actually double the existing Canadian fighting force. It would also require an additional contingent of support personnel.

The report also is understood to focus on the need for medium-lift helicopters. Those are already on order but aren’t expected to begin arriving until 2011.

So, what would an extra 1,000 troops do in a province that’s 54,000 sq. kms. in area with a population just shy of 900,000? The sad truth is, not much. That would be one combat soldier or counterinsurgent for every 450-civilians, not the 1:25 ratio formulated by Petraeus in the new US counterinsurgency field manual. Together with new helicopters it would permit us to establish a respectable fast reaction force but it wouldn’t be enough to maintain permanent security in the villages throughout the countryside. Even with the additional forces we’ll still be a garrison force with a few firebases or outposts.

Then there are all the “what ifs” in these recommendations. What if Brussels, already on notice that the Dutch are leaving in 2010, can’t come up with the reinforcements the Manley report identifies as essential? What if we don’t come up with the medium-lift helicopters? What if NATO does deliver the reinforcements but they come with the “caveats” so many nations impose that render them essentially useless?

Overall, I give the report a D+/C-. It’s not as bad as I was expecting but its recommendations are still pretty lame and much too narrowly focused to be helpful. It treats Canada and Kandahar as somehow autonomous, a war within a war, not as an integral component of a larger ISAF and US operation. Perhaps this “heads down” approach was necessary to avoid having to weigh the Canadian mission in the failing context of the larger operation. Yet does anyone think we can really sort out our problems in Kandahar immune to the troubles that beset the rest of southern Afghanistan, that lurk across the border in Pakistan’s Tribal Lands and that are smouldering in the warlords’ dens in northern Afghanistan?

Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.

 

Canadian General Supports Afghan Detainee Transfers

Canada’s army says it would have to pack up and go home if it had to stop handing over its detainees to Afghan prison authorities. What a load of utter nonsense!

From the Globe & Mail:

Listing a long series of possible embarrassments and defeats, Brigadier-General André Deschamps outlined what he says would be the dire consequences, including losing the war, should a Federal Court judge rule in favour of a request by human-rights groups to issue an injunction banning the transfer of detainees to Afghan prisons because of the risk of torture or abuse.

Gen. Deschamps sketches a variety scenarios. Taliban fighters might surrender in droves, he warns, if they knew Canada would release them because it could not either hold them or transfer them. “The insurgents could attack us with impunity knowing that if they fail to win an engagement they would simply have to surrender and wait for release to resume operations,” he said in a sworn affidavit.

Gen. Deschamps, the chief of staff of Canada’s Expeditionary Force Command that runs combat operations in Afghanistan, goes so far as to suggest the Taliban might win the war, at least in Kandahar, if the court were to grant the injunction.

Come on, Deschamps, get real. There’s absolutely no reason NATO can’t organize a compound for all ISAF detainees. Secretary general de Hoop Scheffer has a lot of alliance member countries that don’t want to fight but could be cajoled into running a detention facility.

It’s what we did in Korea. Back then we knew better than to hand over North Korean or Chinese prisoners to the South Koreans. Unless he’s an idiot, this guy Deschamps knows there are several alternatives to handing detainees over to the Afghans. His over the top approach of “our way or Armageddon” reflects a deeply politicized armed forces.

 

An Offer Too Good to Refuse? Yeah, Sure

The Toronto Star has a John Wayne moment today, an article describing how Canadian army officers in Panjwai are getting all macho with the villagers. Here’s an account of an ultimatum given the local chiefs:

“Align with us against the Taliban, the Canadians told the chieftains, and the people of embattled Panjwaii will reap untold rewards, starting with a large stack of Ottawa-and-Washington-backed development dollars poised for the first whisper of actual security.

“Remain mere observers to lawless insurgency and – here comes the stick – Panjwaii will be forgotten. Unless the elders soon seize their tribal entitlement to power and influence and take a stand, the spoils of stability will go to a more hospitable patch of Kandahar province.

“Though the ultimatum came without a deadline, there was an unmistakable urgency in the Canadian message yesterday to a rare full quorum of the Panjwaii tribal council. Repeated separately by three different officers, the or-else scenario was clear. Just how deeply the warning registered with the Afghan elders, less so.”

The reality of the ultimatum is that it asks the chiefs to sign their own death warrants – for themselves and their families.

To accept this deal the villagers need to know that Canada will maintain sizeable forces in and around their villages, 24/7 for ever and ever amen. Because, if we don’t, (and we won’t) the Taliban will do what they always do. They’ll come into their villages and kill them and their families for collaborating. Barbaric as that is, it’s how insurgencies function. And, according to the report, the villagers know the deal:

“You tell me, how can we provide security?” asked Haji Ghulam Rasool, representative of the Noorzai clan in council, who said the foreign soldiers have an inflated sense of the tribal leaders’ leverage over the local population.

“We are empty, we don’t have weapons. I am a leader, but I am also really just a farmer. The authority of the tribe is weak. And until we have something in our hands to offer, plus stronger police and government to back us up, how are we supposed to act?”

The worst part of this ultimatum nonsense is that it has put the Canadian forces’ credibility on the block. We’ve given them an offer they can’t afford to accept and threatened them with consequences we can’t afford to impose. They don’t have much choice but to call our bluff. Are we going to let Panjwai fall under the control of the Taliban because the villagers don’t have the ability to hold them off? Whatever we do, the result will say a lot more about us than about the chiefs or the Taliban and it’ll be a message that’ll spread quickly throughout Kandahar.

What a boneheaded stunt.

 

Afghanistan Backs Iran – What Else Did You Expect?

The National Disgrace is in a tizzy about Afghanistan refusing to support a Canadian resolution before the UN General Assembly censuring Iran for its human rights record.

The Afghani ambassador voted for an Iranian bid to have the resolution thrown out and against the Canadian motion when it finally came up for a vote. Here’s the paper’s take on Afghanistan’s perfidy:

One interpretation of Afghanistan’s view is that the government of President Hamid Karzai cares more about its relations with Iran than with Canada, despite Canada’s massive commitment to Afghan reconstruction and the cost in Canadian lives.

I wonder if it could have anything to do with the fact that Iran borders Afghanistan? Maybe the Afghanis have figured out that Canada is there today but very well may not be in a year or two. Maybe the Afghans know when it’s not best to be pointing fingers at someone else.

 

The Trouble With Stephen Harper

Adbusters has published an interview with Dr. Michael Byers who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia:

His most recent book is Intent for a Nation: What is Canada for?, a title inspired by conservative philosopher George Grant’s influential 1965 work, Lament for a Nation, in which Grant grimly predicted the inevitable absorption of Canada by the United States.

On Stephen Harper:

“The first thing to understand is that Mr. Harper is an economist, so he thinks that economics are of paramount importance. And I’m pretty sure that he buys Grant’s thesis, and that there’s not really much we can do to avoid it because we are so dependent on the US economically. So the question for Mr. Harper would be how to manage dependency. I really don’t think that he’s capable of believing that Canada can chart an independent course. Add to that the fact that ideologically he is essentially an American Republican, he wouldn’t see a whole lot of downside to going along with the policy decisions of the Bush administration. For him, it’s a convenient default position.

“I’ll give you the three most obvious examples. One, Harper’s long-standing position on climate change, which he has recently altered – ostensibly – because he’s finally realized the political reality that lots of Canadians are beginning to care a great deal about climate change, and that it has become hard to deny at a scientific level, especially for an Arctic country like Canada. But Stephen Harper as a policy wonk has always doubted the reality of human-caused climate change, and has resisted any effort to deal with it, especially in a multilateral manner involving any international organizations. In that respect, he shares an awful lot with key members of the Bush administration.

“The second example concerns the use of the military abroad, and what Mr. Harper has sought to do with the Canadian forces – his absolutely gung-ho support for the counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan, his public criticism of Jean Chrétien’s government for not sending troops to Iraq in 2003. This is a man who believes that foreign policy at a primary level involves shooting people overseas. He’s not a peacekeeper. He’s not a diplomat. He shares the tough-guy position of the Bush admin, in the belief that the way you exert influence is by exerting military power.

“I guess the final issue that stands out is Mr. Harper’s aggressive policies on the Middle East, such as his comment that Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s abduction of an Israeli soldier last summer was “measured.” And his refusal to back down from that, even after eight Canadian citizens were killed in the bombings. That was staggering for me, because the Middle East was one of the important areas in which Canada had traditionally and successfully steered a different course, all the way back to 1956 and the Suez Crisis. That was Lester Pearson and Canadian diplomacy’s greatest moment, using middle-road, pro-active diplomacy and the imaginative construction of solutions – in that instance, the pioneering of un peacekeeping. That’s what we did. That’s why we have the reputation we have. There was no need for Mr. Harper to make that comment, and to side unequivocally with the Israeli Defense Forces last summer. Even within Israel there was a lot of public discomfort with what the IDF was doing, but you would never have suspected the slightest doubt in the Canadian government. We’ve seen similar things happen with the issue of funding the Palestinian Authority or the listing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. And as a result of this, the Harper government is essentially writing Canada out of the script in the search for Mid-East peace. We don’t matter anymore.

“The Bush administration’s greatest failing, I think, is missing the importance of soft power. Mr. Harper makes the exact same mistake, but it’s magnified ten-fold by the fact that Canada relies much more on soft power than the US. It’s the one thing that has really made us matter in the past. The combination of our size, our location, our resources, with a very sophisticated use of soft power – that’s what enabled us historically to “punch above our weight.” The Harper government doesn’t get that. It’s our most treasured asset, and it takes decades to build it up and only months to waste it away.”