A couple military meanderings this go ‘round.
The Canadian mission in Afghanistan not so long ago got as close to me as it’s probably ever going to get (knock on wood) – a co-worker is the wife of someone who was injured in a recent roadside explosion of an “improvised explosive device” that killed three other people riding in the same vehicle as he was. Thankfully, his injury is “non life-threatening” although that doesn’t take into account that his wife might club him to death with his own crutches should he decide to go back when he recovers.
But in subsequent days, I read more closely those articles that talk about the public’s “support” (and that of our various elected representatives) for Canada’s mission in that country. The always politically astute group of Bloc Québécois airhead MPs happily feeding at the federal trough while chanting the mantra of a sovereign Québec, for example, have warned they are prepared to bring down the present minority federal government if a firm mission end date is not announced when Parliament resumes sitting. (The recent deployment of the much battle-honoured Royal 22nd Regiment has put francophone soldiers on the front lines, you see, and that inevitably has already led to francophone soldiers’ deaths. Can’t have that. After all, there are few enough Bloc votes left as it is.)
But snarking aside, it occurs to me that there probably is precious little about this war that will precipitate its end except a drop in public support to a level so low that political expediency, and nothing else, will bring the troops home.
Because has anyone defined a goal whose achievement will allow us to say we won?
Let’s face it, the events that caused the troops to come home in previous wars were pretty specific – the enemy, beaten so badly that his cities were rubble and his armed forces crushed, signed armistices. That’s how WWI and WWII ended. The Korean War’s actual shooting ended with the declaration of a shared agreement that both sides would simply stop shooting at each other. (Interestingly enough, in legislative terms, the Korean War is still officially not “over” because no official peace treaty has been agreed by all sides, but rather it is in abeyance by virtue of the decades-long observed ceasefire.)
When asked, I love the troops; hate the mission. I explain that by tapping into the Alcoholics’ Anonymous approach – before you can cure someone, that someone has to want to be cured. And for all the admirable things that Canadian soldiers are doing for the shattered civilian population in Afghanistan, sadly there are still many other people in the country who want to blow up the rebuilt schools, murder the women who try to make something of their education-driven sense of what’s right and fair, or more egregiously enforce their own particular religion’s core message of world peace and harmony simply by killing everyone who does not share it.
And until those people (the ones with guns and bombs) are willing to stop using them, Afghanistan is and will remain a largely fruitless mission whose only benefit will be to provide a field for live-ammunition training for our soldiers. (With the tragic downside for the “good guys” of occasional death or dismemberment.)
I honestly have yet to see a good answer to the question, “What are we doing in Afghanistan?” The short answer, that we are spelling off the US forces who should be there so that they can fight the “War on Terror” in Iraq, leads immediately to, “Well yes but, just what part of the ‘War on Terror’ is in Iraq?” Unfortunately, that’s a question even less answerable (unless of course you’re still among the by now single-digit percentage of the world’s people who are completely deluded into accepting the spin that Iraq is where 9-1-1 came from.)
For the sake of my co-worker, I hope her husband proves willing to take his hard-earned and well-deserved professional laurels, add them to his incredibly good luck, and find a much less risky but equally satisfying way to employ his skills. For her sake and that of their young child.
For the sake of all the families of all the soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, I hope someone in authority wakes up one morning and, after opening his day’s newspaper to a headline screaming of yet another terrorist-driven killing of “collateral” civilians, says, “Screw this! Everybody come home right now and when they ask for help because they don’t want to kill each other any more, we’ll come back by the thousands. Until that day, have a nice life… or whatever you call the stupidly short span of time on this earth that your actions will inevitably earn you.”
But that’s probably just me.
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And on we ramble…
There is another ongoing debate in Canada with a military theme – this one over a 70-or-so-word sign that highlights an exhibit in our National War Museum. The debate, such as it is, is centred on the Museum’s contention that “controversy rages” over the purpose and results of the WWII Bomber Command offensive against Germany, especially late in the war, when attacks were launched against major cities such as Munich, Dresden, Berlin and Cologne.
I could go on at length summarizing the debate’s main points, but Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells frames both sides of it beautifully in the two quotes he placed on his blog, “Inkless Wells” on August 29:
On the one hand: “Art Smith, a former Bomber Command captain and former Conservative MP, explained: 'The words said that we were responsible for 600,000 dead. I took offence that we were just helter-skelter bombers. We always had justified targets.'"
-- The Globe and Mail, August 29
On the other hand: "The British and American navies were fully occupied with the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. The British and American armies were engaged in North Africa, and later in southern Italy, far beyond the range of aircraft based in Britain. As a result, the only major task that the British and American air forces could entertain was a sustained bombing offensive against Germany's heartland. They applied themselves to the task with mounting ferocity.... The first 'Thousand-Bomber Raid' took place on 30/31 May 1942. Cologne, Germany's most ancient city, was trashed in the space of two hours. In August 1942 the USAAF brought over its B-17 Flying Fortresses, and began a daily programme of escorted daylight raids to supplement the RAF's night-time activities. At the Casablanca Conference of January 1943 the Allied leaders ordered that priority be given to 'precision bombing' of submarine yards, aircraft factories, railway lines and oil refineries. But this was largely ignored. On 27/8 July 1943 Hamburg, Germany's premier port, was destroyed by a firestorm in which 43,000 people perished and a million were made homeless. Berlin was repeatedly attacked, so that it resembled a moonscape of rubble long before the Red Army arrived. On 3 February 1945 a USAF raid on Berlin killed 25,000 people at one go. Less than two weeks later, a combined British and American raid on Dresden caused a second firestorm, as at Hamburg, in which perhaps 60,000 people died for no known military purpose."
-- Norman Davies, Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory, published 2006
A number of the most recent news articles about the argument included a most succinct quote from Canadian historian and author, Margaret MacMilllan (whose book, “Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World”, is the single best volume I’ve yet read about the impact that the Treaty to end World War I had on the world that followed it). Here’s how her comment was cited in the August 29 Globe and Mail:
“No one questions the veterans' bravery,
Ms. MacMillan insists. ‘But a museum
Is not a war memorial. It should allow
the public to make up their own minds.’
She warned that the decision to alter an
exhibition to satisfy the veterans could mean
‘whoever screams loudest can have their view
made known.’”
Exactly. As ugly as the pall of civilian wartime bombing deaths is, they occurred and the weapons that caused them were dropped by fliers wearing Allied insignia on their uniforms.
As for any possible dispute that the infernos of Munich, Dresden and, on the other side of the world, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima are “controversial”, the period sits at the end of the sentence that reads, “60 years later, we’re still arguing about it.” That’s the nature of history. Trying to erase it is the nature of propaganda.
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And finally, on a less bellicose note, I spent a happy few hours a couple weekends ago at a Vintage Wings Ottawa Rallye (and yes, that’s how it’s spelled)
Here’s some photo evidence.
One of the National Capital Region’s resident millionaires, Michael Potter, probably could spend his money on worse things than maintaining and flying a fleet of pristine vintage aircraft. Needless to say, there are some among us who are mighty happy he doesn’t. Three of the best from his growing collection were there:
The plane that won the North:
the De Havilland Beaver
The plane that everyone except Hawker Hurricane enthusiasts will argue won the Battle of Britain:
the Supermarine Spitfire (albeit an earlier version than this high-powered lightning-fast Mark XVI, which only debuted in the war’s final months)
The plane that helped the Allies win the battle of the WWII bombing fleets, the P-51 Mustang. (Before its arrival, fighters that escorted bombers were lucky if they could manage 10 or 15 minutes over the target before they depleted their fuel to the point they had to return home, abandoning their charges to their fate at the hands of enemy fighter pilots.
This was one of the big reasons that the Luftwaffe failed to bring Britain to its knees with campaigns like the Blitz where their bombers attacked London but suffered huge losses to the RAF when their escorting Messerschmitts had to return to their bases on the continent. The Mustang carried enough gas that it was able to accompany its bombers the full round trip, with enough left over to allow them to mix it up in dogfights with enemy aircraft.)
The oddest aircraft on hand this day were a quartet of amphibious aircraft called SeaBees.
This one, absent any paint on its high-gloss aluminum skin was far and away the most beautiful of the four.
And before we exit, thank you, Leslie, for cropping these photos down to the way they appear here from what began as airplane-shaped dots in the sky, very high-resolution dots in the sky, as these cropped images will bear out, but dots in the sky nonetheless. I must find out how she does that. (I understand the initals "RTFM" may be involved.)
Until la prochaine.
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