Esprit de Corps

Last week the court martial began for Captain Robert Semrau, the Canadian officer in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment who was charged with second degree murder for the alleged execution of a wounded Taliban prisoner on or about October 19, 2008 in Helmand province.  When the charges were first laid against Semrau on December 31, 2008 there was considerable chatter among the military community in Canada, especially as the details of the incident were made public. 

The presence of General McChrystal at the podium of the Chateau Laurier Hotel ballroom would therefore have been a welcome sight for the weary and demoralized pro-war lobby.  As the recently appointed commander of NATO’s ISAF coalition in Afghanistan, McChrystal is most notably the architect of the new U.S. troop surge strategy.  Looking every inch the professional career combat officer, McChrystal played up to the home town audience with lavish praise for the effort and sacrifice made by Canadian soldiers.  The U.S. Commander recognized that in terms of casualties per capita of troops deployed in theatre, no other allied nation has suffered more loss on the battlefields of Afghanistan. 

Immediately following General Natynczyk’s abrupt about-face last week, the opposition parties began howling for Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s head to roll. Only hours after reaffirming the Conservative government’s patent statement that no Afghans detained by Canadian troops had suffered subsequent abuse and torture at the hands of the Afghan authorities, Natynczyk dropped his bombshell. Not only had credible evidence suddenly and miraculously been handed to the Chief of Defence Staff, but that incriminating battlefield report also indicated awareness amongst troops on the ground of previous instances of abuse by Afghan authorities. In fact the report notes that photos of the detainee were taken to illustrate his healthy condition at the time of being handed over by the Canadians. Any subsequent abuse at the hands of the Afghans could then be fully corroborated, and our soldiers exonerated.

With President Barack Obama’s official consent to a troop surge in Afghanistan, the White House spin-doctors did their best to reassure a war-weary American public that this war won’t devolve into another Vietnam fiasco.

Of course, there are still a number of American diehards who refuse to concede that the Vietnam conflict was a defeat for America. I kid you not. I once had an irate caller berate me for even suggesting that lessons in counterinsurgency could be learned from the disastrous U.S. campaign in Southeast Asia. “One and a half million dead Vietnamese to just 50,000 American soldiers killed – how do those numbers add up to a military defeat in your [expletive deleted] brain?”