-Caveat Lector- title The army that couldn't fight [LINK]
COVER STORY October 22, 2001 Issue Full Text Despite Liberal denials, Canada's once-feared military machine may be beyond repair by Terry O'Neill [INLINE] AT the end of his September 24 visit to Washington, D.C., Prime Minister Jean Chretien revealed that President George Bush had told him Canada's armed forces were not needed in the looming war against terrorism. "The President did not ask for any military help from Canada at this time," Mr. Chretien disclosed to the media. "I said to him that if there is a need, we'll be there to help." Just 11 days later, Mr. Bush called in his marker. On October 5, the U.S. asked Canada for assistance as it prepared to assault military targets in Afghanistan. When those attacks were unleashed two days later, Mr. Chretien confirmed that the Canadian Forces (CF) would be making "certain contributions," but gave no details. Conservative leader Joe Clark said later Canada's troops would provide only a communications and support role. In truth, scarcely more could be expected of the country's once-mighty military. The fact is, a disturbing picture of Canada's armed forces has emerged in the days since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. It suggests the navy, air force and, especially, army are inadequately funded, undermanned, ill-equipped and not even capable of defending Canada, let alone participating in a major offensive against an overseas enemy. Indeed, while high-ranking Liberals such as Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley have stated Canada will "stand shoulder to shoulder" with the U.S. to battle terrorism--even if Canadian soldiers' lives are put at risk--many independent analysts and former CF officers say the pledge is hollow and misleading. "Stand shoulder to shoulder?" observes Donald Ethell of Calgary, a retired colonel. "It really means Chretien's shoulder is up against Bush's ankle." In the weeks since the horror of September 11, Canada has been revealed to have been utterly unprepared to counter the sort of threat that now faces western democracies. The Liberal government eventually moved to toughen anti-terrorism policies, harden border security and more rigorously check incoming refugees. The prime minister, who soon stood accused of dithering in reaction to the mass murders, eventually appointed Mr. Manley to chair a powerful new cabinet committee to fight terrorism. But beefing up the military is not part of the minister's new mandate. This omission is consistent with the ongoing Liberal position that the Canadian military is, essentially, in good shape. In early October, for example, Defence Minister Art Eggleton sent an opinion piece to newspapers, stating, "I want to assure Canadians that the Canadian Forces are ready and able to make a meaningful contribution--if that is what we decide to do as a country." So far, however, only the U.S., France and Britain have been moving their forces into areas near Afghanistan, where hostilities are expected to centre. There is, in fact, no question Canadians want to join their cousins to the south in battling radical Islamic terrorists; the question is whether we are able to. A post-attack National Post/Compas poll published on September 20 found that 81% of Canadians want the country to be part of a military alliance to prepare for war. Noteworthy, however, is the finding that 70% of those polled believe the armed forces are underfunded. This belief is well founded. Canada's defence spending declined 23% over the past seven years of Liberal restraint, and the country's current $11.4-billion annual defence budget represents just 1.2% of economic output. Even though the Liberals' 2000 budget increased Department of National Defence spending by $2.3 billion over four years, most experts say the money is too little and too late. Critics also point to the fact that Canada's spending is well below the NATO average of 2.1% of gross domestic product. Only Luxembourg's spending, at 0.9%, is lower. Mr. Eggleton has answered by pointing out that while Greece, for example, spends 5% of its gross domestic product on defence, the actual dollar value of this country's defence expenditure is twice as great. Canadian Alliance defence critic Leon Benoit is not buying that line of reasoning. "He makes it sound like everything is just great with our military," says the MP, "but I haven't heard any expert say anything but the opposite." Indeed, critics such as retired generals Lewis Mackenzie, Romeo Dallaire and Mike Jeffery have warned repeatedly of a looming crisis within the military. On the budget issue, retired lieutenant-general Charles Belzile, chairman of the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA), an independent lobby group based in Ottawa, contends Canada's defence spending is far too low. "One may appreciate Canada's parsimonious approach to defence funding by noting that, on a per capita basis, it allocates only US$265 to defence, while the NATO average is US$589," he said recently. A UN weapons report made public in late September shows what this budgetary starvation means. The study, which surveyed 31 countries, found Canada could send only 140 tanks into battle, while Belgium, which has only one-third of this country's population, boasts 154. Similarly, Sweden, which is home to only nine million people, compared to Canada's 31 million, has twice as many combat planes. Moreover, what equipment Canada does have in its arsenal is often antiquated. "For all intents and purposes, Canada has opted out of the defence business as a country and is sort of on a par with Denmark," says Dan Goure, a defence analyst with the Washington-based Lexington Institute. "It saddens me a bit, I suppose, but it doesn't surprise me." During the Second World War, Canada mustered the world's third-most-powerful navy, fourth-strongest air force and fifth-greatest army. Since then, however, the country has increasingly relied on the U.S., NORAD and NATO for its defence, allowing the CF to focus on foreign peacekeeping missions. Yet official Canadian policy, as laid out in a 1994 White Paper, calls for the country to retain a multi-purpose, combat-capable armed forces whose primary tasks are to protect Canada, co-operate with the U.S. in mutual defence efforts and contribute to international security. In a nutshell, the CF is supposed to be able "to fight against the best and win." But the CF must do that with far fewer soldiers, sailors and aviators than in the past. In 1958, for example, Canada had 120,000 men and women in uniform. Thirty years later, the number was down to 85,000. Today, the figure is about 57,000--3,000 less than the bare minimum needed to meet commitments. The reduction is a direct result of Liberal cost-cutting measures. The Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies recently predicted the number will fall to 42,000 within 30 months if the current trend continues. "The main source of weakness of the CF originates from a significant shortage of trained manpower, and this shortfall is most evident in the army and in the logistics support services," concludes an exhaustive new study prepared by the CDA. What this means is: the navy cannot "deliver its mandated level of maritime defence capability"; the air force has "lost much of its flexibility, redundancy and ability to surge"; and the army "is not sustainable under the current circumstances." As suggested above, the situation is most dire on the ground. Training is lax, burnout is high and equipment inadequate. The CF's 1,800-soldier commitment to peacekeeping in Bosnia, for example, "is not sustainable if the army is to be able to respond effectively to other contingencies and to modernize," the CDA says. Evidence of the CF's current weakness was Ottawa's decision to withdraw its 1,000-soldier peacekeeping force from Kosovo last year on the grounds it could not sustain the involvement. With that in mind, it is hard to imagine how Canada could help the U.S. war effort by relieving U.S. peacekeepers so they could be redeployed on the front lines of the war against terrorism, as suggested in early October by Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada. The U.S. currently has 3,500 troops in Bosnia and 5,300 in Kosovo--numbers Canada could not hope to replace, despite a promising recruitment drive launched this past summer. In fact, there are now only 9,700 actual troops in Canada's armed forces. As Gen. Lewis Mackenzie has observed, you could fit all three arms of Canada's armed forces quite comfortably inside Toronto's Sky Dome. Not surprisingly, then, Canada's contribution to the war on terrorism can be no more than minimal. Before the October 7 assault, Mr. Eggleton said the country had chipped in with an unspecified number of fighter planes to augment North American air defences. Canada has 122 CF-18 fighters, but only 83 are operational, and only a dozen carry guided munitions. The defence minister also authorized the deployment of about 100 Canadians, currently assigned to NATO, for use in anti-terrorist operations. Mr. Eggleton said Canada has only "niche capabilities" to fight terrorism. The CF's mandate is to be able to field a combat-capable brigade (defined in the White Paper as over 5,000 soldiers, plus support workers) on three months' notice. However, under present circumstances, this would not be possible "without an extended period of training" lasting many months more, the CDA contends. Moreover, MP Benoit points out that brigade-level training exercises have not been held for nine years. This being so, the CDA says, "the most realistic Canadian contribution would be a battalion group [1,200 soldiers], but in light of current overseas commitments and lack of training in conventional operations, it too would be of limited effectiveness." The CDA concludes the armed forces need an additional $1 billion a year simply to maintain the status quo; even more money is needed to boost manpower to 75,000, a figure the CDA says is needed to properly fulfill White Paper commitments. And, as the federal auditor general recently reported, a further $5 billion to $6 billion is required over the coming 10 to 15 years to replace old equipment. The author of the CDA report, retired colonel Sean Henry, points out that, despite Mr. Eggleton's contention that his critics are out of touch with current military realities, he culled all information in his study from Department of National Defence documents. "I would say it would take a minimum of five years, probably five to 10 years, to get the forces back to where you want them to be," he says. If no action is forthcoming, however, "the risk is to pretty well permanently damage the armed forces in terms of being able to operate in the current security environment. And that is what worries me...What's happened to the armed forces in the last 30 years is an absolute tragedy." Without new operating funds, might the forces be reorganized in a more effective way? The Toronto-based Royal Canadian Military Institute (CMI) thinks so. In a report released earlier this year, the group proposed a radical revamping of the CF. Chief among its recommendations is a plan to organize the three services of the military into five regionally based joint commands. "Each command would be responsible for providing a battlegroup of about 1,000 strong, on a sustainable basis," the CMI recommends. "Each battlegroup would be comprised of an infantry battalion, a light armoured squadron, an artillery battery, a combat engineer squadron, and communication, medical and logistical support elements." Furthermore, the CMI calls for the establishment of two amphibious task forces, one based at Esquimalt, B.C., the other at Halifax, to take a battlegroup and its equipment overseas. Four new logistics ships are integral to this plan. Such a restructured military would need operating funds of only about $12 billion a year, the CMI says, but would require $8.6 billion in capital expenditures over five years. The institute's executive director, Robert Farrelly, rattles off a long list of current CF shortcomings, from lack of training to outdated equipment. "It's an utter mess," he says. "If this were a private corporation, you'd go in and fire the top five executives. It's a very sorry state." He also has harsh words for Defence Minister Eggleton, specifically for his refusal to acknowledge the deplorable state of Canadian military readiness. "It's almost the time to say that Art Eggleton is now shifting the balance of truth, almost to the point of lying. It's the impression he is giving," Mr. Farrelly says. "I don't think the public realizes how close we've come to the bottom of the barrel." It may be that a light is finally going on in Ottawa, however. In a frank interview with the National Post late last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Manley conceded Canada faces a "glaring inadequacy" in its capacity to: gather intelligence abroad; meet its overseas defence commitments; and influence other countries through use of foreign aid. "You can't just sit at the G8 table [the group of leading Western economies] and then, when the bill comes, go to the washroom," said Mr. Manley, whose forthright response to the events of September 11 must surely make him a leading contender to replace Mr. Chretien when he finally retires. "If you want to play a role in the world, even as a small member of the G8, there's a cost to do that." [INLINE] Mr. Chretien made no reference to increased military spending in his October 7 address, but it may make sense to direct more funds to military units such as the CF's elite commando-like Joint Task Forces II (JTF2). While its size and exact duties are secret, experts say the force probably numbers no more than 350. This compares rather poorly to the 46,000 special forces personnel the U.S. maintains in the Green Berets, Delta Force and Navy SEALs. Nevertheless, JTF2 is the sort of outfit that could contribute to counterterrorist efforts. "This is exactly the kind of unit that should be used and the kind of response that should be meted out in this case," observes Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine. Officials in Ottawa are not saying exactly where JTF2 is currently deployed. American analyst Goure believes it is in Canada's interests to ensure its military is strong enough to meet the terrorist threat. "Canada has an enormous stake in what happens," he points out. For example, as an ally of the U.S., Canada could easily become a target of terrorist violence itself. Canadians could also be caught up in violence against U.S. companies and diplomatic outposts in this country. "The idea of the U.S. standing alone against global terrorism, or with only Great Britain, is unconscionable," he says. "If I were a Canadian, I would be embarrassed. Those countries that can contribute neither forces, geography [for forward bases] or intelligence are going to have damned little to say about what happens." In Calgary, retired colonel Ethell, now a member of the Canadian Forces advisory council for veterans' issues, is blunt in his assessment of the military's status. "It's disgraceful," says the veteran of 14 peacekeeping tours. "We have absolutely no combat troops to support any initiatives other than our current tasking." Noting that he enlisted as a private and worked his way up the ranks, Mr. Ethell says he feels sympathy for Canada's soldiers in the field. "It's embarrassing for our troops to be overseas and to see what the other countries are doing to support the latest threat...where we've just had tokenism." The Canadian military's problems are as numerous as they are deep-rooted, he says. "And we have a government that has absolutely no idea of what they are missing with regards to the decimation of Canada's military." Even increasing the country's peacekeeping commitment is out of the question. "The idea of sending additional people over is absolutely ludicrous," he says. "We're not stretched. We're broken." It's time we learned, wars are won on the ground [INLINE] FLIGHT Lieutenant Stewart Staudinger, 27, knows terrorism first hand. Raised in the relative tranquility of a buffalo ranch near Alix, 30 miles northeast of Red Deer, he is now serving as a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot in Northern Ireland, "part of the effort to bring an end to terrorism and a return to normality for the people here." As a soldier and a Christian, as well as a military historian, he believes that the two greatest problems in the Western world are an unwillingness to accept casualties in war, and an overreliance on "diplomatic pressures" such as sanctions and dialogue. In an e-mail interview, he explains: "Most people accept that [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator who has no respect for life or liberty, especially amongst his own people. However, people in the 'civilized' world are far too willing to sacrifice 500,000 innocent Iraqis dying from the effects of sanctions in trying to dislodge him, instead of the couple of thousand troops that would have done the job quite well in 1991; hardly civilized, in my view. In the air force, the phenomenon is called 'the morality of altitude.' From 30,000 feet, one can't see the people being bombed and therefore they don't seem real. We would prefer to kill a thousand unseen people than sacrifice one 'real' one. This is how sanctions, dialogue and appeasement are turned into the greatest tools of evil used by the western world. In our efforts to minimize the effects of conflict, we simply maximize the long-term toll on human life, much like avoiding the pain of surgery simply to die a long and painful death from a cancer that should be cut out and destroyed. We end up turning the people we are trying to help into a population so desperate that they become the recruiting ground for Osama bin Laden and others. "The greatest danger to the human race has always been extremist belief: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi genocide in Europe, Soviet Communist genocide in eastern Europe and Russia, and the constant terrorist threat in Northern Ireland. Yet the civilized world is hampered by having the tools to deal only with the criminal element of a moderate population, which is completely inadequate for dealing with extremist groups. The threat of trial and jail doesn't begin to faze extremist Islamic groups, just as it didn't stop Hitler killing six million Jews and four million unfortunate others, or Stalin 80 million. And it won't stop bin Laden. Like Hitler and Stalin, he enjoys the power to deal out death. "The civilized world is only now learning, in the face of great tragedy and after half a century of bashing British colonialism, that despite its problems, it had some important lessons to teach. To paraphrase an old British saying: 'For the civilized man or woman we have democracy and the rule of law; for the savage we can offer only the .577-450 Martini-Henry rifle.' When groups like bin Laden's or the dissident Irish terrorists are willing to kill innocent people for no greater reason than their hatred of those people's democratic process and liberty, what else is available? They are an uncompromising threat to decent--as in Britain's case, Christian, Jewish, Hindi and Muslim--values. When Islamic extremists' only stated aim is to kill, and they are willing to die in the process, dialogue and compromise only get our own innocents killed. They don't have demands other than that we either die or convert to their ideas. Like a doctor cuts out a cancer and kills it, so the civilized world will have to do the same to those groups who represent humanity's cancers. "How do we win? Well, we need to be sneaky, devious, smart, vicious and pray a lot, all at the appropriate times. We also need to invest in ammunition production. Of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, an estimated 10% are militant. One hundred million militants with AK-47s won't be stopped by a couple of guided bombs and a stealth bomber. They will only be stopped by well-trained and motivated infantry. I include in the 'infantry' people such as intelligence, police, aid workers (who are helping to win the 'hearts and minds' of the populace) and all the other 'foot soldiers' that have to get up-close-and-personal with the problem. But no standing off and using button-pushing warfare. An American general was once quoted as saying, 'The most dangerous weapon in the world is a small brown man, dressed in sandals, pajamas and a straw hat and carrying an AK-47 and a bag of rice. He's cheap to produce, hard to find, well-motivated and there are an unlimited supply of him.' This American was a Vietnam vet and knew a thing or two about the reality of pitting technology against motivated and elusive infantry. The only true weapon against them are better-trained troops. "Unfortunately, the numbers of militant Muslims are a reality and political correctness (a term invented in Canada) will be our downfall if we hang onto it. If the number were significantly less than 10% to 15%, there wouldn't be the fear in many governments of the Middle East that prevents them taking a stronger stand against militant activity. I personally believe that the level of militancy found in these areas of the world would be much less if the people weren't in such desperate poverty and weren't kept in an ignorant, insular, brainwashed state by the mullahs that head them. Survival instinct is, out of necessity, an aggressive mechanism. "People in the Western world are not calling for despotism to fight despotism. They are calling upon their leaders to win a fight for the survival of good values and liberty. My old neighbour, rancher Ray McKibbin, would have known exactly what to do in a time like this. He and his friends did it in 1939. They accepted that, in order for their children and grandchildren to have freedom, justice and liberty, some of them would have to give their lives in the fight against Nazi oppression. We have fought the wars of the '90s as 'clean' wars where nobody seems to get hurt. However, all it has proven to the evil members of the human race is that we no longer consider our values important enough to die for. If we have reached that stage, then we'll run the risk of dying anyway--if not as individuals, then as whole nations. Some say, 'Give peace a chance.' Peace had its chance and this time around, more than 5,000 people paid for it with their lives. War came to them whether they wanted it or not. "For me, the prospect of relinquishing my freedom to follow my Christian values is one where I can honestly say, 'I'd rather die.' If I have to get my hands bloody, or even lose my life so that my generation's children don't have to die in lots of 5,000 for no greater crime than being free, then I guess that's the choice I'll have to make. "I'm a soldier and a Christian. I have to do as my government and leaders decide. However, I believe that I should be used by my leaders to help those who don't have what I have. If that requires more risk to my own life, then I'm sure God will provide. No greater love can a man have than to be willing to give up his life for a friend. It should work between nations as well. That's why I believe in standing up with the Americans now. We and the Americans should have had the moral courage to do it years ago." _________________________________________________________________ [LINK] Subscribe to take full advantage of the newsmagazine. Write a letter to the Editor. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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