Soldiers Made Me Look Good

by Lewis MacKenzie

  Lest the reader think that the above is an exaggerated work of fiction, included only for effect: the execution described here, and many others, were clandestinely filmed by La League de Femme. The film was smuggled to the West in 1998.

  Why are we in Afghanistan? I, for one, rest my case, conscious of the fact that the obvious question that follows is: “If the gross violation of human rights is sufficient justification for intervention, then why aren’t we in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Nepal and God knows how many other countries around the world?” Good question—and the fact is, we should be more interventionist, under the provisions of the UN’s Responsibility to Protect. For reasons well beyond Canada’s influence, the rigor mortis that characterizes the UN Security Council’s decision-making process precludes such action. In the case of Afghanistan, the attacks of 9/11 provided an opportunity to remove one of the most brutal regimes on the planet and at the same time to remove at least one of the sanctuaries for transnational terrorism.

  * Figures for NATO and non-NATO countries were calculated by dividing their Afghan deployments into the strength of their standing armies.

  25: “More With Less”

  “Canada’s less than one per cent of the world’s population was doing more than ten per cent of the multinational military ‘dirty work.’ ”

  AN OBSERVATION ABOUT THE EARLY 1990S

  IT WAS EVER thus.

  The coincidence of the end of the Cold War and the expanding profile of transnational terrorism since the attacks of 9/11 presents the Canadian military with new challenges. This in spite of the naive and ill-informed call from many—including some politicians who should know better—that we should “return to our historical role as peacekeepers” as if that were possible.

  For the past three and a half decades, the primary concern of every chief of defence staff (CDS) has been the survival of the Canadian Forces. Political parties of all political stripes have regarded defence budgets as discretionary government spending, which can alternatively be made available to fund more attractive vote-getting projects. Starting with Pierre Trudeau’s halving of Canada’s standing NATO commitments in the mid-1970s and continuing on a downhill slide to the slash-and-burn years of Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin in the 1990s, the defence budget’s real purchasing power was a favourite target in every election.

  The military spends its budget allocations in only three ways: new equipment, operations and personnel.

  If new equipment contracts are cancelled, hefty penalties must be paid—witness the over $500 million penalty paid as a result of Chrétien cancelling the EH101 helicopter contract on his way to political victory in 1993. Lack of funding in the equipment budget means that equipment well past its “best-by date” is kept in service, even though this policy means exorbitant increases in maintenance costs and a huge deterioration in operational capabilities.

  Domestic operations, which are dictated by the government, include military surveillance of the north, coastal patrols by sea and air, search and rescue, and commitments in support of NORAD—all the while maintaining forces at the ready to aid the civil power in the event of emergencies and disasters. Overseas operations are driven by Canadian foreign-policy decisions, which dictate worldwide military commitments—for example, in the skies over Kosovo, in the North Atlantic and in the deserts of Afghanistan. As a rule, governments do not reduce the Canadian Forces’ operational demands even when the military leadership disagrees with particular commitments. In 2003, when the military indicated that it was not capable of mounting a two-thousand-strong force for deployment to Kabul without severely jeopardizing the integrity of the army following Chrétien’s surprise announcement, the CDS was told to get on with it, no matter what the repercussions.

  With little if any direct control over equipment purchases and operations, the CDS of the day was left with only one option to save money and meet Chrétien’s diminishing budget—cut people! During the 1990s, soldiers were actually paid a bonus to take an early release. Many highly trained personnel in the critical ranks of sergeant, warrant officer, captain and major took up the offer because they faced a downsizing military and reduced promotion opportunities. Regrettably, these ranks are the most critical to any military. Without them, new soldiers don’t get trained and led in the field, and generals don’t have viable organizations to task.

  During these decades of personnel cuts various CDS were subjected to a good deal of criticism from the rank and file, who saw them capitulating without a fight to government directives that guaranteed a reduction in the Canadian Forces operational capabilities. With the rare exception of General Jean Boyle, who was forced to resign during the Somalia inquiry and who was obviously out of his depth as CDS, the criticisms were blatantly unfair and unwarranted. It was essential for the generals who were appointed as CDS to understand how the political game was played in Ottawa. Without their having that understanding it is not unreasonable to speculate that the Canadian Forces would not exist as a viable military force today. Operational experience in the field was almost non-existent for generals in the Canadian Forces because most Canadian overseas military commitments were too small to justify putting them in charge.

  The end of the Cold War ushered in new challenges for the Canadian Forces. A few voices in the wilderness, including my own, opined that greater demands would be placed on the Canadian soldier now that the stabilizing standoff between the U.S./NATO and the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact was history. We were deemed merely to be angling for increased defence budgets, and our comments were dismissed as irrelevant. Plans to withdraw the Canadian Forces’ standing NATO commitment that was stationed in Europe were accelerated, and in 1993 the forces were withdrawn and their overall strength was immediately reduced by the thousands.

  What followed was the greatest demand in pure numbers and complexity for the Canadian military since the Second World War—Cyprus, Cambodia, Croatia, Bosnia, Somalia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Congo, Rwanda, The Golan, Macedonia, Kosovo, Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Iraq/Iran—and the list went on. At one stage in the first half of the 1990s, Canada’s less that one per cent of the world’s population was doing more than ten per cent of the multinational military “dirty work” with eight thousand soldiers, sailors and air personnel deployed abroad on operational duty.

  This ten-year period of intense activity created an ever-growing cohort of middle-rank officers who today, as generals and admirals, make operational capabilities and leadership their number one priority. In some ways, their job has been made easier because the government, the public and the international community are continuously watching and evaluating the Canadian Forces, and therefore the support, be it moral or financial, is more forthcoming. While the defence budget is still woefully lower than called for by Canada’s position and obligations in the world, the annual cuts to defence funding that once characterized each federal budget have disappeared—at least for now.

  The combination of operationally oriented leadership and increased funding has started the resuscitation of the Canadian Forces. Unfortunately, the devastating cuts to personnel and funding during the 1990s means that too many overdue expenditures are desperately in need of financing, all at the same time. Many major pieces of equipment are beyond both their “best by” and “rust-out” dates: vehicles, helicopters, search and rescue aircraft, fighters, tanks, frigates, destroyers, joint supply ships—all need attention. The public, when it sees quick buys for operationally necessary purchases for the war in Afghanistan, assumes that these acquisitions solve the problem for those types of equipment in the army. Artillery purchases are a good example of this perception. But the numbers purchased are tiny compared with the requirement, since everything is in the shop window in Afghanistan. Similar equipment for training at home and for the other much larger artillery units in Canada are not funded.

  General Rick Hillier, appointed CDS in 2005, introduced initiatives strongly supported by Defence Ministers Gordon O’Connor and Peter MacKay. These
have set in train a significant transformation of the Canadian Forces with a momentum that will be maintained despite Hillier’s retirement, which is scheduled for July 2008. Forces are designated for tasks at home—surveillance and defence in the air and at sea, particularly in the north, search and rescue, counter-terrorism, emergency response, aid to the civil power when requested and the like. Other forces are specifically organized and prepared to take on expeditionary tasks such as the current mission in Afghanistan and Canada’s modest commitments in southern Sudan and Darfur.

  But it is in the area of expeditionary capabilities that I feel we as a country and as a military are falling woefully short. Certainly the purchase of four C-17 strategic aircraft is a good move and, it is hoped, will wean us from renting ancient Antonov aircraft at exorbitant rates; large aircraft complement expeditionary capability. They cannot, however, provide the strategic heavy lift on their own. That can only be provided by purpose-built ships. This subject is so critical to the operational capability of the Canadian Forces that it warrants its own chapter, which follows.

  26: An Army Afloat? Yes, Please!

  “Aye, Aye, Sir, and we will be ready to deploy in about three months—once we arrange the lift and logistics for our contingent.”

  NOTIONAL STAFF OFFICER AT NATIONAL DEFENCE HEADQUARTERS

  IN 1965 I WAS temporarily assigned to the Infantry School in Camp Borden, near Barrie, Ontario, as an instructor for officer candidates. At the same time I was selected for a career prerequisite company commander’s course, but the schedule conflicted with my instructing schedule. The powers that be decided that my instructing duties took priority and that, as a consolation prize for missing the company commander’s course, I would attend the first intake of a new, two-month course referred to as “Staff School,” which would be conducted in Toronto the following year.

  One of the intimidating assignments on the course—and critical to the final grade—was a major writing assignment on a military subject of the student’s choice.

  In spite of my youth and naïveté, and being one of the few lieutenants on a course designed for captains, I launched into the subject of a particular vanishing and critical capability in the Canadian military. Word had it that our one and only surviving aircraft carrier, HMCS Bonaventure, would be decommissioned within three years. With the Bonaventure’s loss, our ability to quickly launch the equipment of an expeditionary force would disappear. Only a year earlier, the “Bonnie” had moved the equipment for the first Canadian contingent assigned to serve in Cyprus with a new UN force. This capability allowed our soldiers to patrol their areas of responsibility before those of any other nation in the UN force except the United Kingdom, which had permanent bases on the island.

  An expeditionary capability gives a nation the ability to send a self-contained force—in the case of Canada, 1,000 to 1,200 troops, with their combat vehicles, supplies, medical support and air support—anywhere in the world with a nearby coastline. Over ninety-five per cent of the scores of locations Canada sent its soldiers to since the Second World War had the prerequisite coastline. Even with an aircraft carrier, it had to modify the ideal self-contained deployment method and was forced to send soldiers by air to marry up with their equipment, which had been delivered by sea at the destination. That’s workable if the situation at the arrival point is relatively peaceful, but it is irresponsible if it’s not.

  The solution, I wrote, particularly for a nation bordering on three oceans, was to have a genuine amphibious expeditionary capability with purpose-built ships, specialized equipment, trained soldiers, sailors and airmen located on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. My paper received a decent mark but was ignored, as were all the other student submissions. This was the norm in Canada’s military during the four decades of the Cold War. Writing assignments were just that—writing exercises. They were not considered to be of any potential use to decision makers in the policy world.

  For the next thirty years, Canada’s capability for deploying its operational forces to overseas missions by using its own resources gradually disappeared. This became a source of considerable embarrassment. Each time our government decided that Canada would participate in a multinational mission, the folks in NDHQ would search the world’s inventory of commercial ships available for rent, focusing on the cheapest ones for all the obvious reasons. The best deal might well be in the South China Sea on another contract, unable to make it to Halifax for another month, but it could well get the contract to move our vehicles and equipment. To get our troops abroad, renting massive Ukrainian or Russian Antonov aircraft became the norm. The fact that the troops and their equipment would not arrive together, and that this would be accomplished at an exorbitant cost to the Canadian taxpayer, had to be accepted if we wanted to play with the big boys.

  Shortly after my retirement from the Canadian Forces in 1993, I was asked to make a presentation at a military symposium in Halifax. During my speech I launched into a bit of a rant (perhaps a major rant) about our lack of any real expeditionary capability. Since I was speaking in the port city of Halifax, which would be a primary beneficiary of any move to create such a capability, my comments made it into the media. Out in British Columbia, Ralph Fisher, a retired navy commander who had served on two of our long-since-retired aircraft carriers, read the comments and called me. We had spoken a few years earlier about the same subject, but this time we decided to raise the profile of this serious deficiency in our Canadian Forces.

  Over the next year, Ralph, his team of retired colleagues and I completed a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of the amphibious expeditionary capability. The study, entitled “Sea Horse,” included a number of recommendations that, if implemented, would see such a capability established within the Canadian Forces within five years.

  “Sea Horse” envisioned the purchase of purpose-built ships stationed on each coast and designed to carry a battle group of at least a thousand soldiers with their vehicles and equipment. The ships would have a medical facility as well as back-up logistics support for the troops once they were put ashore by both boat and helicopters. If a model was needed, all one had to do was witness the ships being built and used by the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain, Italy and many other countries to meet the post–Cold War security challenges.

  Realizing that we would probably have to settle for an initial purchase of one ship to prove the worthiness of the concept, we decided that it would be best to locate it on the east coast at the Port of Halifax. I appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence and outlined the “Sea Horse” concept. I explained that the force would need a mounting facility from which to deploy and that it would be massively expensive to construct. There would be a requirement for a year-round deep port, jetty, crane, long runway, railhead, good road network and accommodation and facilities for over a thousand soldiers. It would take billions of dollars to create such a complex, but they needn’t worry because it already existed at the underutilized Canadian Forces Base Shearwater, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

  I went on to explain that such a capability would have a very positive impact on the government’s decisions about any deployment of the Canadian Forces overseas. Without a true expeditionary force capability, any government had to rush through the process leading to the decision to deploy the forces to an operational theatre. Why? Because once the order was given, the response from the military leadership was along the lines of “Aye, Aye, Sir, and we will be ready to deploy in about three months— once we arrange the lift and logistics for our contingent.”

  With the Canadian Forces’ expeditionary capability up and running, the government could be more methodical and thorough in its planning for any participation in a particular mission, be it security, humanitarian or disaster relief. During that process, the expeditionary force could set sail and station itself in international waters close to the potential mission area. If the decision was made by the government to
participate, the response from the military would be closer to “Aye, Aye, Sir, and we will be there in six hours!” If the government decided against participation, the expeditionary force would weigh anchor and return to its home port or elsewhere.

  We decided to submit our recommendations to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and provide copies to leaders in the opposition and the Defence Department. Relations between the prime minister and me were somewhat strained as the result of an accusation he had made against me the previous year. In response to a question from a journalist who had quoted me as saying the defence budget was too small by half, the prime minister indicated that I was just interested in a bigger lunch with the arms dealers.27 I was furious, because I had made it a point not to be associated with any lobby group or to join any company selling equipment to the military. I had turned down a number of attractive offers to join the management teams and boards of these companies and had gone out of my way to maintain my independence as a media commentator. I didn’t even join my friends in the Canadian Legion, because the Legion had a responsibility to lobby the government on veterans’ issues.

  I wrote the prime minister a personal letter advising him of my independence and indicating that it was beneath the dignity of his office to make such false and unsupported accusations. I explained that my comments regarding the underfunding of the military were reasonable and justified and that I would be pleased to participate in any planning undertaken to rectify the situation. I indicated that the prime minister’s face-to-face invitation to me to join his team in the 1993 federal election presumably indicated some respect for my opinion on defence issues. When the contents of the letter subsequently ended up in the media, the response from the prime minister’s office (PMO) to inquiring journalists indicated that Chrétien stood by his comments.