ON TARGET: Canada’s Links To Ukraine’s NAZI Past Are Not ‘Fake News'; They’re Real!

14th SS  Galizien Division

By Scott Taylor

A story last week in the National Post revealed the disturbing fact that there are actually monuments in Canada that glorify Second World War Nazis. There is no denying the truth of these allegations as they were accompanied by photographs of two offending statues.

One is in Oakville, Ontario and it is dedicated to all those who served with the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division. The second, located in Edmonton, Alberta, honours Roman Shukhevych, the wartime leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

The original source of these revelations was a series of tweets from the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. This led to an immediate response from the Canadian Ukrainian community denouncing the Russians for attempting to incite divisiveness in Canada with “fake news.”

We saw a similar response back in March when it was first reported that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War. Instead of admitting that this was true, Freeland attempted to portray herself as a victim of Russian disinformation.

The problem with the simplistic ‘blame Russia’ excuse is that it does not change history.

Freeland’s grandfather was indeed a Nazi collaborator who, as the editor of a Ukrainian-language newspaper, published anti-Semitic rants and encouraged volunteers to join the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division. This is the same unit that is immortalized and honoured by the statue in Oakville.

Despite the chorus of Ukrainian apologists who claim otherwise, members of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division were no Boy Scouts. Notorious SS General Jurgen Stroop was one of the Division’s early instructors. Stroop is perhaps best known for his annihilation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

Following Stroop’s example, the Galizien Division was involved in the punitive destruction of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka in 1944. Men, women and children were executed in cold blood. One surviving witness described how children were killed by having their heads smashed against trees. The crime committed by the residents of Huta Pieniacka was that they had been harbouring Jews.

The gory details of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division’s atrocities are catalogued in the book Hitler’s Foreign Executioners: Europe’s Dirty Secrets, written by award-winning historian Christopher Hale.

Then there is the controversy about the true nature of Roman Shukhevych, the Ukrainian wartime leader who is presently immortalized with a statue in Edmonton. To many Ukrainians, Shukhevych is a hero who only fought alongside the Germans initially as a matter of practicality while in pursuit of an independent Ukraine. When the Nazi fortunes were reversed and the Soviets were again advancing into Ukrainian territory, Shukhevych did indeed turn the guns of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on his erstwhile German allies.

SS Leader Heinrich Himmler inspects the Galizien division 1944

However, there remains the sticky issue of Shukhevych’s role in the 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews in Lviv. At this juncture, Shukhevych was commanding a militia unit that he called the Nachtigall Battalion. Shukhevych’s band of eager volunteers, working alongside German military troops, was responsible for the murder of between 4,000 and 6,000 Jews.

Even if Shukhevych and his men later fought against the Germans, this cannot possibly exonerate him from his role in the Holocaust.

While the Canadian government may wish to show absolute solidarity with Ukraine during this current crisis with Russia, we cannot do so by rewriting history.

Freeland’s grandfather was a Nazi.

Shukhevych is a mass murderer and perpetrator of the Holocaust even if he later presented himself as a simple patriot.

The 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division was not a ‘national liberation army’ as Ukrainian apologists for the unit would have us believe. According to author Hale, “Both the formation and the conduct of the ‘Galizien’ reflect its origins in the German plan for mass murder.”

Selectively denying any aspect of the Holocaust is still denial.

It is not fake news if it is true, and the Russians couldn’t use the existence of Nazi monuments to embarrass Canada if such tributes did not actually exist. And they do.

ON TARGET: Current Mess In Libya: How Much Is Canada To Blame?

John Baird Minister of Foreign Affairs

By Scott Taylor

It has been six years since the NATO-supported Libyan uprising murdered President Moammar Gaddafi and toppled his regime. Canada was proud of the fact that the big boys – namely the UK, U.S. and France — had let us appear to be leading the charge against Libya.

Canada’s then Foreign Minister John Baird was the loudest among the chorus of NATO voices bellowing for regime change, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard was publically named as the allied force commander, our CF-18 fighter jets were among the first in operation in the skies above Libya, and the RCN frigate HMCS Charlottetown plied the Mediterranean coastline to enforce the UN arms embargo.

While it was never admitted at the time, the fact that members of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) marched in the November 24, 2011 victory parade on Parliament Hill would appear to confirm that we also had special forces boots on the ground during that conflict.

In addition to that parade, complete with a ceremonial flypast of fighter jets and helicopters, Canada also fast-tracked the Order of Canada process to bestow this honour on LGen Bouchard in recognition of his glorious victory in the desert.

That is an awful lot of glory for such a one-sided martial contest, which pitted the world’s most capable military alliance against a fourth-rate developing-world African security force. It was also a very premature exercise in self-congratulations.

It quickly became evident that what NATO achieved was not regime change — in the absence of a replacement administration, we plunged Libya into a state of violent anarchy.

The disparate militias that had fought together against Gaddafi loyalists refused to disarm and they immediately began fighting among each other.

A British parliamentary report into the Libya intervention was tabled last September and it was a scathing indictment of UK Prime Minister David Cameron. The report concluded that the collective intervention of the UK, France and the U.S. (no mention of Canada) resulted in Libya’s “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL (Islamic State) in North Africa.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama summed it up much more succinctly when he described the 2011 Libyan intervention as a “shitshow” and called it the low point in his foreign affairs legacy.

To be fair to Obama, Libya was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal pet project. Anyone doubting this need only watch the famous video clip of Clinton during her October 20, 2011 CBS television interview. At one point during the taping the Secretary of State learns that Gaddafi has just been murdered in the street by a rebel mob. She throws her head back, laughs and says triumphantly, “We came, we saw … he died,” followed by more unrestrained laughter. Laughing at news of a murder — any murder — is clinically sociopathic. But I digress.

Although Libya is not in the news much these days, there have been some significant developments in that war-ravaged country of late, not the least of which is the release of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi from captivity this past June.

Gaddafi’s second oldest son had been held prisoner by a militia group in the city of Zintan since his capture in the waning days of the civil war. Saif had always been seen as the heir to his father’s throne. Those familiar with the Libyan uprising of 2011 know that it was primarily an inter-tribal affair, aided and abetted by Islamic extremists and the might of NATO.

The six years of subsequent anarchy have left Libya a failed state, with a citizenry longing for stability. For this reason alone, Saif has already become a political force on the embattled Libyan landscape.

Last week he announced his intention to run in next year’s presidential election. With the backing of the Warfalla and Qadhadhfa tribes — Libya’s two most powerful tribes — and former loyalists of his father flocking to his banner, Saif has a strong shot at winning at the ballot box.

If that scenario does evolve, Canada will have to do some serious soul-searching into our own allegedly lead role in that disastrous 2011 intervention. It is never too late for us to follow Britain’s lead in conducting an extensive parliamentary review into how we could have gotten it so wrong in Libya. So wrong that it looks like Gaddafi’s son will get the last laugh.

Video of Hilary Clinton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM

ON TARGET: Is 'Victory' In Iraq Even Possible?

Destroyed city of Mosul

By Scott Taylor

With more than 800 Canadian troops presently deployed in what is still recognized internationally as Iraq, one would think that there would be a lot more news about the ominous developments in that war-ravaged country.

The problem is that, when Canadians first entered the fray back in 2014, the Harper government of the day had virtually no understanding of the complexity of the long-raging conflict in that region.

The Canadian public was coming fresh off a 12-year costly failure in the form of our doomed intervention in Afghanistan, but Harper was keen to get our troops back in action against Islamic extremists … somewhere, anywhere. Daesh’s sudden offensive out of Syria and into central Iraq was the perfect solution to the problem.

These evildoers were so, well, evil, that Canadians had no objection about sending our soldiers into harm’s way if it meant destroying these fanatical psychopaths.

To keep things politically saleable, Harper promised combat aircraft would bomb the bejeezus out of Daesh’s (aka ISIS or ISIL) bulldozers and dump trucks from the safe altitude of 20,000 feet, and the initial 200 Canadian special forces troops deployed on the ground would only be used in a training role, which they misguidingly labelled ‘Advise and Assist.’

The mainstream media, like old fire station horses hearing the alarm bell, rushed into action to breathlessly sell this new mission to the Canadian public. In those heady early days, no one was asking questions such as, Just who are our soldiers fighting for? What will final victory look like in Iraq? Nobody seemed to even care.

The focus was on killing those bad guys known as Daesh.

No one wanted to acknowledge that this meant our soldiers were on the same side as President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces that were also battling Daesh in Syria. Canada had cut all ties with Assad in 2011 and John Baird, the Foreign Affairs minister of the day, had bellowed, “Assad must go!”

By sharing the same enemy in Daesh, this meant that Canada was also aligned with Assad’s Hezbollah and Iranian allies.

Closer to home in Iraq itself, Canada was in direct military support of Iranian-mentored Iraqi Shiite Arab militias with a notorious reputation for committing atrocities against Sunni Arabs.

Minister Baird and the Harper government had also cut off all diplomatic ties with the evil Iranian regime. Even bad old Russia was under sanctions for annexing the Crimea from the Ukraine. But in the skies above Iraq, the Russian air force flew alongside the brave combat pilots of the RCAF.

All very confusing, but as long as Daesh remained a common threat then this polyglot collection of disparate factions could put aside their vast differences in pursuit of a single goal.

That objective has now been almost fully realized, as Daesh has been driven back into just a few tiny strongholds in both Syria and Iraq. Now it is time for that unholy alliance to turn on itself.

When the Trudeau Liberals were elected in 2015, they kept their campaign promise to bring home the CF-18 combat planes from the Iraq mission. However, public sentiment remained supportive of a continued role against Daesh, so Trudeau bolstered the number of special forces trainers and everyone turned a blind eye to the fact that ‘Advise and Assist’ was a joke. Our soldiers were in direct combat alongside the Kurdish militia they were sent to train.

This is where things get a little tricky. The Kurds our soldiers trained and fought for have never lied about their ultimate goal of achieving an independent state. Against the wishes of the U.S. and western allies, including Canada whose official policy supports a unified Iraq, the Kurds held a successful referendum on September 25 that delivered an overwhelming victory for the separatists. As everyone predicted, this has led to negative responses from neighbouring Turkey, Syria, and Iran, all of them dealing with their own Kurdish separatist factions.

More importantly, it has led to a full-scale showdown between the Baghdad regime’s military — the one Canada purports to support — and the Kurdish militia our soldiers have spent three years training.

On June 29 Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that Canada would extend the military mission in Iraq by two more years. What is still not clear, especially as civil war between these factions appears imminent, is who exactly our soldiers will be assisting for the next two years. And even more unclear is what we think eventual victory will look like.

ON TARGET: Afghanistan: Where Did We Go Wrong?

By Scott Taylor

There were news stories out of Afghanistan last week detailing how the U.S. is expanding and entrenching the so-called ‘Green Zone’ in the centre of Kabul. 

An ambitious two-year construction project will bring together currently isolated outlying facilities into one massive protected zone. In addition to U.S. military and diplomatic posts, the ‘new and improved’ Green Zone will now house all embassies and most of the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This full-scale investment in building an even stronger set of fortifications reveals that, while the U.S. obviously intends to remain in Afghanistan for decades to come, it no longer has any false hope that it will eventually win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. 

The corrupt and demoralized Afghan Security Forces have proven woefully inept at containing the Taliban and other active insurgent groups which now include Daesh (aka ISIS).

Canada cut its losses back in 2014 when it ended a 12-year military commitment to the mission in Afghanistan. However, that mission came at a considerable cost, with 158 soldiers killed, another 2,000 wounded or injured physically, and an estimated 4,000 suffering the unseen mental wounds known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Worse still is the fact that Canada’s withdrawal from the mission did not stop the suffering for many of our veterans. An estimated 130 soldiers have taken their own lives since returning from that war.

To their credit, last Thursday the Department of National Defence in conjunction with Veterans Affairs Canada announced a joint strategy to better track the mental health of veterans after they leave the military. While care and comfort for our suffering soldiers is a positive step, an even bigger gesture to demonstrate that veterans’ lives matter would be to start investigating just how we could have gotten Afghanistan so wrong for all that time?

When Canada jumped on the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force bandwagon in 2002, the plotline was that we would commit a 600-man battle group until the Afghan Security Forces were self-sufficient and Afghanistan staged national elections in 2004. In 2002 we were told that the hated Taliban had been deposed, Afghan women were liberated from their burqas, and the U.S. was bringing democracy to a fun-loving bunch of thankful Afghans. Who would not want to be part of that success story? 

Even once it became a shooting war in earnest and Canadian soldiers found themselves targeted and killed by fanatical insurgents, the media dropped the ball by taking on the role of unquestioning cheerleader instead of diligently reporting the truth. 

The regime of President Hamid Karzai was elected by an illiterate population that is ignorant of what democracy even means. However, it was glaringly apparent that this regime was composed of the same ruthless warlords who had driven suffering Afghans to support the Taliban. It was for this corrupt cabal – the most corrupt in the world — that Canadian soldiers fought and died. 

To keep Canadians on side with the war effort, Prime Minister Stephen Harper claimed that to question the mission was to question our soldiers. Others, like former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander, repeatedly claimed that we were one schoolhouse away from success, and he chastised the media for focussing on the negative. 

When Canada concluded its military commitment in early 2014, the apologists and tub-thumpers claimed that it was “too soon” to reflect on whether Canada’s expenditure of blood and gold was worth it. They still held out hope that Chris Alexander’s final schoolhouse would finally turn the tide in the war. 

Now, almost four years later, the U.S. is digging deeper bunkers instead of schools.

Last year Britain established the Iraq Inquiry under the direction of Sir John Chilcot. The results tabled last July savagely criticized UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for his decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. While Blair shrugged off the findings, the Chilcot report nonetheless mauled his reputation and shone some light into heretofore very dark corners. 

Canada should do the same sort of official examination of how we ended up sending our soldiers into a war they could not win; and one in which they should never have had to fight. Holding our politicians, diplomats and senior military accountable for the fiasco might go a long way to reassuring our soldiers that it won’t happen again.

ON TARGET: Canada Is No Longer A Peacekeeping Nation

The peacekeeping monument in Ottawa seems out of place now that were out of the peacekeeping game

By Scott Taylor

One of the persisting myths in Canada is that we are a nation of peacekeepers. Hell, we practically claim that former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson invented the concept of deploying neutral troops to enforce ceasefires between belligerents during the Suez Crisis in 1956.

A certain nostalgia exists for those days when Canada was front and centre around the globe, our troops wearing the distinctive blue berets and attempting to stop factions from killing each other.

It was this sentiment that Trudeau’s Liberals tapped into during the 2015 election campaign, when they promised a foreign policy that would make Canadian peacekeeping great again.

The problem is that, after two years in power, there has been no movement whatsoever towards fulfilling this promise. Ironically, this November Canada will be hosting a United Nations peacekeeping conference for international ministers of defence in Vancouver. What makes it ironic is the fact that, were we not the hosts of this event, our own Harjit Sajjan would find himself barred from entering.

That’s right folks. In order to attend this conference each of the national representatives must have a minimum level of skin in the game, and Canada’s paltry current contribution of a token handful of UN observers is not even close to the requirement.

To be fair, there has been talk — lots of very specific talk — followed up by absolutely zero action.

Last August, it was Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance who first teased the media with the notion of a peacekeeping mission. Hours later, via teleconference, MND Harjit Sajjan confirmed Vance’s cryptic comments and all signs pointed to the African continent.

More details soon followed with it being announced that the mission would involve 600 soldiers, 150 police officers and all for a budget of $450-million. However, this very specific force was never allocated to any particular mission. Fourteen months later, still no decision has been made regarding into which country they will be sent.

While Canada has gotten completely out of the peacekeeping game, we have continued to deploy our combat forces to global hot spots for the purpose of training foreign belligerents.

Instead of sending Canadian soldiers in to disarm, demilitarize and stabilize disputed territory, we are actually deploying our troops to train young men on how to better kill.

Between 2002 and 2014, during Canada’s military commitment to Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers trained and mentored tens of thousands of Afghan males — some as young as 16 — on how to handle weapons. These members of the Afghan Security Force have been tasked with propping up what remains arguably the most corrupt regime on the planet — the one the U.S. installed in Kabul. Not surprisingly, the demoralized cannon fodder that the Canadians trained continue to flounder in the face of the far more motivated Afghan insurgents.

Based on the self-professed ‘success’ of the Afghanistan training mission, Canada deployed special forces operatives into Iraq in October 2014 to ‘advise and assist’ Kurdish militia.

The Kurds are honest about their motivation in fighting against Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL), which remains the eventual creation of their own independent state. They are so open about this end goal that they wear the flag of Kurdistan, not Iraq, on their uniforms. Now, these Canadian-trained Kurds have pulled out of the fight against Daesh as they prepare to fight against Iraqi security forces in their quest to secede.

Neighbouring Turkey, Iran and Syria have all vowed to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdistan, as this will only embolden the Kurdish separatist movements in their own countries.

If Turkey, a NATO ally, does militarily intervene against the Kurds in northern Iraq, it will now be doing so against Canadian-trained Kurdish militia. The Iraqi central government, which Canada’s Global Affairs department purports to support, has also indicated it will mobilize its Shiite Arab militia to prevent Kurdish independence.

In other words, Canada has gotten as far away from peacekeeping as possible. Instead of curbing conflict, we are actively enabling it by creating legions of warriors in complex conflicts, whose ultimate objectives all too often do not match Canada’s desired end result. Training more soldiers to end wars is like drilling holes in the bottom of your rowboat to let the water out.

ON TARGET: Switching Sides In Iraq

Canadian special operations forces in Iraq

By Scott Taylor

Last week there was a brief news release from National Defence entitled “Canadian Armed Forces now Advising, Assisting Iraqis near Hawija.” It garnered little media attention as it seemed like a simple relocation of Canadian troops following the U.S.-led alliance’s successful capture of the city of Mosul earlier this summer.

Canadian soldiers are still battling Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) — albeit it is not officially called combat — but now we are taking the fight to them in their last stronghold in the town of Hawija.

The DND news release deliberately blurs the complexity of the Iraq conflict by generically stating that we are continuing to support “Iraqi Security Forces [ISF].”

This falsely implies that the ISF is one big happy family, when in fact it is an unholy alliance of diverse factions, each with their own very divergent objective in a post-Daesh Iraq.

The closest the news release comes to stating the truth is in one vague sentence: “The CAF has continued to shift its contribution to ISF elements involved in ridding other Iraqi centers of Daesh’s control.” What is not said is that by shifting our support between elements of the ISF, we are in fact switching sides prior to the next round of fighting in Iraq’s multi-sided civil war.

Since 2014, when they first deployed, Canadian special forces trainers have been advising, assisting and fighting alongside Kurdish peshmerga militia.

These Kurds have enjoyed absolute autonomy from Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. They call the region Kurdistan and have proudly flown the Kurdish flag over their cities and towns for the past 26 years.

The peshmerga also wear that bright red, white and green flag with a yellow sunburst on their camouflage uniforms even though such a bright patch defeats the purpose of wearing camouflage.

Instead of instructing the Kurds to remove the tactical hazards, Canadian soldiers must have thought they looked cool and our general officers misguidedly gave them official permission to wear the flag of Kurdistan on Canadian uniforms.

I say misguidedly because Kurdistan is not recognized as an independent state and Canada’s official foreign policy supports a unified post-Daesh Iraq under a central Baghdad authority. 

The future status of the Kurdish region is the battle line for the next round of clashes in this war-weary country.

In the upcoming fight against Daesh in Hawija, the Kurds have already opted out of the fighting, hence Canada’s ‘shift’ to other elements of the ISF.

Instead, the Kurds are digging in and preparing to repulse any other Iraqi factions from entering the territory that they presently control. That territory just happens to include the city of Kirkuk and the oilfields of Baba Gurgur.

This rich resource was seized by the Kurds back in 2014 as Daesh swarmed through central Iraq. While the ISF fled from Daesh, the Kurds took advantage of the chaos to push their peshmerga south to seize Kirkuk.

Those oil fields pump approximately 40 per cent of Iraq’s total output and are seen as the economic engine necessary to support an independent Kurdistan. The problem is that Kirkuk was never a Kurdish city. It has always been known throughout Iraq as a Turkmen centre with an Arab minority.

The Turkish-speaking Turkmen are Iraq’s third largest ethnic minority — behind Arabs and Kurds — but they rarely warrant even a passing reference in mainstream media reports.

Furthermore, Baghdad has made it clear that they will not simply relinquish such a vast economic resource to the Kurds.

Despite tremendous pressure from the Iraqi government (which rejects its legality), neighbouring Iran, Turkey and even the U.S., Kurdish Regional President Masood Bazarni is proceeding to stage his independence referendum on September 25, 2017.

While considered non-binding, a “yes” result is not in doubt. Now all that remains to be seen is just how much Kurdish independence will ignite within Iraq and how far it will extend into the Kurd-populated neighbouring countries of Iran, Turkey and Syria.

The Canadian soldiers were advised by the Americans last May to gently remove the flag of Kurdistan from their sleeves. However, we still have trainers advising, assisting and fighting alongside both the Kurds and the central Iraqi Security Forces.

Before they end up fighting each other, Canada needs to pick a side or, better yet, get the hell out of Iraq. Daesh is finished there, so our work is done.

ON TARGET: Build A Missile Defence System – And Let The U.S. Pay For It

Donald Trump

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Drumpf.jpg

By Scott Taylor

A couple of related events last week were added together by the usual cast of fearmongers in yet another attempt to scare the bejeezus out of the Canadian public.

First off it was North Korea’s megalomaniac President Kim Jong-un (aka Dear Leader), who test fired yet another long-range missile harmlessly into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It flew well over Japan and, as the Chicken Littles were quick to point out, it fell from the sky at a distance that now puts the U.S. base on Guam Island within crazy Kim’s range. Scary stuff.

Then we had a bombshell dropped by none other than Lieutenant-General Pierre St- Amand, the Canadian officer who currently serves as the Deputy Commander of NORAD at Peterson Air Base, Colorado Springs. St-Amand told a parliamentary committee that in the event of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack against North America, “The extent of the U.S. policy is not to defend Canada.”

St-Amand’s revelation visibly shocked the parliamentarians in attendance and he hastened to soften the blow by suggesting that any decision regarding the protection of Canadian targets would be made by the Americans “in the heat of the moment.”

The news stories aimed for the maximum shock value, focussing on the fact that Canada is not under the U.S. missile umbrella — at a time when North Korea is disturbing fish in the Pacific as far away as Guam.

To give St-Amand’s comments more gravitas, media reports noted that NORAD,  of which the good general is deputy commander, has the responsibility to defend the skies and maritime approaches to North America.

However, in an interview just weeks earlier, St-Amand pointed out the fact that, while NORAD monitors threats, if that threat is from an ICBM then it becomes the responsibility of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and U.S. Space Command. In other words, not NORAD.

The usual suspects took St-Amand’s comments to heart and immediately renounced the Trudeau Liberals for continuing to reject participation in the U.S. missile defence system.

Despite all the partisan political jabs, the fact remains that while Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin chose to opt out of missile defence in 2005, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had nine years in power to reverse that decision, but wisely chose not to.

I say wisely because there is no present or foreseeable future scenario wherein a rogue nation would target Canada with such a weapon. If North Korea or Iran should ever actually fire a long-range nuclear warhead at North America, it would only do so in a defiant gesture of suicidal finality.

Their objective would be to hurt the U.S. knowing that the retaliation would be swift and apocalyptic.

Should that rogue rocket’s trajectory be faulty (so far Kim can only hit ocean-sized targets in his own backyard), Canada could indeed end up on the receiving end.

However, it would have to be one heartless S.O.B. in USNORTHCOM that would see a missile meant for the U.S.A. going astray and “in the heat of the moment” decide not to protect Canada because we didn’t help pay for missile defence.

Canada is not the U.S.A. We are not a superpower wielding military might around the globe. We do not profess to be the world’s policeman. Canada does not have anything akin to the CIA which actively engages in destabilizing foreign countries and overthrowing hostile regimes.

In fact, at the same Parliamentary hearing that St-Amand dropped his “we are unprotected” bombshell, Mark Gwozdecky, the Assistant Deputy Minister for International Security at Global Affairs, told everyone to relax about North Korea. “There’s no direct threat to Canada,” said Gwozdecky. “In fact on the contrary, in recent contacts with the North Korea government … the indications were they perceived Canada as a peaceful and indeed a friendly country.”

We are not the target, but we live next to the target. That said, if U.S. President Donald Trump can build a wall to keep the Mexicans out — and make Mexico pay for it — surely we can tell The Donald to build a missile defence system that protects Canada from threats aimed at America. And yes, America can pay for it.

ON TARGET: Nazis Are Bad ... Period.

Just because Latvian SS kept fighting Soviet Communism after WW2 does not make them heroes. 

https://megingjord88.deviantart.com

By Scott Taylor

There is a controversial new video out on NATO’s official YouTube channel entitled Forest Brothers. The gist of the 8-minute film is to lionize the brave Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian fighters who took to the woods to resist the Soviet Union’s 1945 occupation of the Baltic States. These desperate guerrillas were supported by many of the local population and were thus able to continue resisting the Soviets until the 1980s.

This is a virtually unknown chapter of the Cold War, as it occurred within the Soviet-occupied territory. No one talked about armed resistance by nationalist groups, as the Soviets presented themselves to the world as one big happy family.

The theme of this new piece of NATO propaganda is to liken the resolve and heroism of these historical “Forest Brothers” to the current special forces units of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. According to the film, the modern-day Baltic warriors, like their “Forest Brother” forefathers, are facing overwhelming odds — this time at the hands of President Putin and his murderous Russian horde. The timing of the release of the NATO short film is no doubt aimed at magnifying the threat posed by Russia conducting major military exercises this summer on their side of the border.

Unfortunately for students of this era, the film totally rewrites history with the purpose of demonizing Russians. The bigger problem is that the movie is also exonerating Nazis, many of whom were complicit in the atrocities of the Holocaust.

The narration in the film claims that, in 1945, Baltic fighters “who had fought on both sides” during the Second World War took to the forests to fight for their national interests. This statement makes no sense and it is patently false. The Baltic states had the unfortunate geographical situation that put them between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

In the famous 1939 non-aggression pact signed between the two, Hitler allowed Stalin to occupy and annex the three Baltic states. When Hitler broke that pact in June 1941, his troops quickly pushed the Soviets out of the Baltic.

Very few Latvians, Lithuanians, or Estonians chose to withdraw and fight for Stalin, but in a dark chapter of Baltic history, they volunteered in droves to fight for the Nazis. Anti-Semitic militias quickly and aggressively rounded up the Jewish population for extermination.

One of the most ruthless of these militias was the Latvian Arajs Kommando unit. In 1943, Germany formalized the alliance by forming Baltic volunteers into Waffen SS troops. Latvia alone provided enough volunteers to man both the 15th and 19th Waffen SS divisions.

As the fortunes of the war turned against Hitler, the Germans and their allies were forced back. The 15th Latvian SS Division was able to surrender to Western allies, but the 19th found itself trapped on the Courland Peninsula battling the Soviets to the very end. Once Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin and the dream if his Third Reich was extinguished, those Baltic volunteers in SS uniforms took to the woods to avoid capture. Because of their affiliation with the Waffen SS and, in particular, the hard-core Arajs Kommandos who perpetrated the Holocaust on the Baltic Jews, they faced either the Soviet Gulags or execution.

To be fair, the re-enactors in the NATO Forest Brothers film clearly show these Soviet resistors using German weaponry and wearing German-style uniforms. To say that they fought on both sides of the war is untrue, and to lionize those who were in any way involved in the Nazi Holocaust is abhorrent.

Canada currently has 400 soldiers forward deployed in Latvia to provide a deterrent to Russian aggression. Next March 19, the Latvians will stage their annual parade in Riga to commemorate the glory of their WWII Waffen SS Legion. That’s right, Canadian troops will be present as Latvians pay tribute to Nazis.

Latvians are at least honest enough to commemorate their past openly. For NATO to retell history and to glorify the Waffen SS as anti-Soviet heroes is simply wrong — no matter how much they want to demonize Russia.

ON TARGET: If Russia Is Gun Crazy ... America Is Gun Bonkers

https://www.concealedcarry.com

By Scott Taylor

I happened to catch a news item on CBC’s The National last Thursday night that illustrates how modern Russian society celebrates their association with the world famous Kalashnikov assault rifle.

It is true that, since it was first created by gun designer Mikhail Kalashnikov back in 1947, the weapon that still bears his name has become the most prolific assault rifle around the globe. It is simple to operate and rugged enough to withstand the most inhospitable conditions. It is also relatively cheap to produce and therefore apopular option for armies in developing countries, and guerrilla forces.

However, the spin put on the Kalashnikov by the CBC reporter was that Russians are glorifying a weapon that, in her words, is the “choice of criminals, thugs, and soldiers.” This would of course be a terrible national trait — celebrating criminal armaments — were it even remotely true.

A quick check of the facts reveals that assault weapons are used in less than two per cent of gun-related crimes committed in North America, and of that miniscule fraction, only a small percentage are of the Kalashnikov variety.

To illustrate just how much love Russia has for this historical automatic weapon, the CBC filmed a Moscow nightclub wherein two deactivated AK-47 Kalashnikovs had been cleverly used to replace the handles on the club’s front doors. Those Russians really must be firearm crazy!

Then there was the CBC trip to a kiosk at the Moscow airport operated by none other than the Kalashnikov manufacturing company. The merchandise that seemed to most fascinate the reporter was the collection of Kalashnikov t-shirts that came in — wait for it — children’s sizes. More proof that these whacky Russians begin indoctrinating even their young infants into a sort of gun-worship mentality as soon as they can walk.

Of course it is worth remembering that this kiosk is at the airport, where local citizens are not usually prone to shop for clothing, therefore the merchandise is obviously intended as souvenirs for foreigners.

Still, CBC is our state-funded national broadcaster and they must have had their reasons for providing this segment on Russian gun worship.

A quick bit of research will reveal that there are an estimated 14 million privately owned firearms in Russia. That’s a staggering ratio of 8.9 weapons for every 100 residents.

That seems to be an arsenal worth scarring the bejeezus out of Canadians, especially as we do not worship guns and we pride ourselves on strict gun control laws. Except that Canada’s private gun ownership dwarfs that of Russia with a ratio of 30.8 weapons for every 100 residents.

This could perhaps be partially explained by the fact that we share a common border with the United States. Talk about a scary gun culture! The U.S. has a ratio of 112.6 privately owned firearms in America for every 100 residents. That is three times the Canadian average, and more than nine times the gun owner ratio of Russia.

As for indoctrinating their youth, it took only seconds of research on the Internet to find images of a pink baby girl’s onesie adorned with twin holsters and automatic pistols — for sale in the U.S.A.

As for lionizing individual weapons, American gun aficionados still affectionately refer to the Colt .44 Peacemaker revolver as the “gun that won the West” without any historical reflection on what that meant in terms of displacing Indigenous peoples at the time.

Instead of trying so desperately to demonize the Russians over their comparatively tiny gun ownership, perhaps CBC News should focus more on the real dangers in our own backyard.

ON TARGET: Trump was right, then he was wrong!

Donald Trump

Photo: Collegehumor

By Scott Taylor

Last Monday night, when U.S. President Donald Trump made his long-anticipated announcement regarding the war in Afghanistan, even he had to admit that he has his doubts about his chosen path. “My original instinct was to pull out,” said Trump, “and historically, I like following my instincts.”

Senior Pentagon and National Security advisors have instead managed to convince The Donald to ignore his inner voices and give his blessing to yet another continuation of the bloody occupation of Afghanistan.

This time will be different though as Trump assured the American public that under his guidance the U.S. military’s objective will be to win. Unlike his weak-kneed predecessors who attempted to build a nation in Afghanistan, the Trump-led warriors will simply focus on killing bad guys.

Turning their backs on the situation in Afghanistan, Trump claimed, would result in creating another failed state wherein international terrorists could plot and plan attacks against America.

While it is true that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was residing in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks, the truth is that there are presently a large number of failed states around the world where terrorist cells abound.

Ironically, many of these black holes of anarchy were created as a result of U.S. meddling and their ill-conceived campaign to eliminate terror. I refer to Libya, Iraq, and Syria where U.S. invasions, interference and subterfuge have destabilized huge swaths of territory and led to the creation of numerous fanatical factions such as Daesh (aka ISIS), al-Nusra and al-Qaeda-linked militias.

To stay in Afghanistan militarily in order to make America safe again would mean that the U.S. needs to begin planning similar occupations of Iraq, Libya, Syria and let’s throw Somalia in there as well.

Trump also said that his renewed commitment to Afghanistan was not a blank cheque, nor will it be open-ended. Unlike former President Barack Obama, Trump declined to put an exit date on the new mission as he insists that victory will be determined by achieving objectives. Of course, he declined to identify what exactly those objectives are.

To achieve his planned reversal of fortunes in the war, Trump will be deploying an additional 4,000 troops to boost the 8,400 U.S. soldiers already based in Afghanistan.

To put this in perspective, Obama’s surge strategy, aimed at winning the war once and for all, saw a troop increase of 30,000 soldiers, which brought the American total force deployed in country to over 100,000. Added to that number were an additional 40,000 international soldiers, including 3,500 Canadians. And let’s not forget the 400,000 Afghan security forces that NATO soldiers have been training since 2001.

Somehow Trump expects to accomplish victory with 12,400 troops when 140,000 NATO and U.S. soldiers failed?

Trump also indicated that the U.S. will continue to focus on the training of Afghans in order to make them self-sufficient. Despite every military apologist and pundit explaining to their audience that it takes time to build a military from scratch, the truth is that the best trainers in the world — including Canadian soldiers — have spent the past 16 years trying to make soldiers out of Afghan recruits. If it hasn’t worked yet — and it hasn’t — then it never will.

To get a sense of the futility of mentoring Afghan security forces I would highly recommend watching the VICE News documentary This is What Winning Looks Like. It is an excellent 90-minute exposé of the rampant drug use, sexual misconduct, corruption and lack of professionalism that embody both the Afghan Army and police forces.

Although the film was produced in 2013, I assure you that things have only gotten worse since the number of NATO and U.S. troops was greatly reduced over the past four years.

This is without a doubt the longest war in U.S. history. Some diehard Afghan war hawks will claim that the Korean War is a frozen conflict, and because the U.S. never withdrew, South Korea has blossomed into an economic dynamo. If U.S. troops were constantly being targeted by South Korean suicide bombers, they definitely would not have stayed there for 70 years.

Afghanistan will never be another South Korea, and there is a good reason that this rugged patch of Central Asia is known as the “Graveyard of Empires.” Trump missed his chance. He should have followed his instincts and pulled out of a war he can never win.

INTERVIEW: www.conversationsthatmatter.tv  

ON TARGET: "Is Trump A Racist?"

Donald Trump

Wikimedia

By Scott Taylor

In a scene from the 1980 classic comedy movie The Blues Brothers, the title characters are stuck in a traffic jam. The cause of the delay is a group of Nazis blocking a bridge while police restrain a heckling mob of anti-Nazi protestors. When informed by a policeman that the protestors had won a court decision authorizing them to protest, The Brothers ask which organization is responsible, and the policeman informs them it is the Illinois Nazis. Jake Blue states, “I hate Illinois Nazis” and Elwood immediately drives straight into the crowd of Nazis who comically leap into the water below the bridge.

Despite the uncanny similarity, there was nothing funny about the incident in Charlottesville, wherein a white supremacist drove his car head-on into a crowd of anti-Nazi protestors killing one and injuring 19 others. Like the Illinois Nazis in the movie, the alt-right movement, including neo-Nazis and the Klu Klux Klan, had obtained an official permit to demonstrate.

Ostensibly, this collection of white supremacists wanted to express their objection to the Charlottesville city council’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

Lee was a masterful battlefield commander who fought in the failed attempt for 11 southern states to secede from the Union and establish their own confederacy. The confederates were opposed to the abolition of slavery, therefore the tribute to General Lee has become viewed as a symbol glorifying the slave trade.

However, the alt-right gathering in Charlottesville was not an academic assembly of individuals intent on resisting the advance of revisionist history. Instead, it quickly became a blatant demonstration of white supremacy, complete with a Nazi-style torch-lit parade.

To cap it off, James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car straight into the crowd of anti-Nazi hecklers. Why this is not being called an act of terrorism, I have no idea. When Islamic extremists drove into crowds in Barcelona, London, Berlin, and Nice no one hesitated in labelling them terrorists, and I’m pretty sure those on the receiving end of Fields’ car rampage were just as terrified as those other victims.

Nevertheless, the biggest story to emerge from Charlottesville was the reaction from U.S. President Donald Trump. His first response was to universally condemn “hate,” and went on to express the opinion that this existed “on many sides.” Over the next two days Trump took a tremendous amount of heat for not singling out the alt-right for their responsibility in the incident.

Trump did finally issue a stern rebuke, wherein he named the KKK, neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups. However, he almost immediately reversed course by once again stating that there was blame on both sides. Describing the anti-Nazis as the alt-left, he pointed out the fact that the alt-right had obtained a legal permit for their demonstration, as if that somehow made it all okay.

By contrast, immediately following last Thursday’s attack in Barcelona, Spain, in which 14 civilians were killed and another 100 wounded by a rampaging vehicle, Trump took to the Twitter-sphere to denounce the attackers.

As Daesh (aka ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack, Trump revised a long-debunked myth regarding how the perpetrators of the Barcelona attack should be dealt with just as U.S. General John Pershing had done in the Philippines in 1899. Although historians are adamant that it never actually happened, Trump claims that Pershing had his soldiers dip their bullets in pigs’ blood before executing captured Muslim terrorists in order to prevent the dead from ascending into heaven. Never mind that this would seriously clog up a rifle, Trump also erroneously claimed that “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” That is simply not true.

To recap: a neo-Nazi drives into a crowd of anti-Nazis in Charlottesville and Trump points out that the anti-Nazis did not have a permit to assemble. A Muslim extremist drives into a crowd in Barcelona and Trump wants to not only execute them in this life, but deny their souls for eternity.

On the plus side, no one is talking about North Korean nukes or Russians fixing the U.S. election.

For those of you too young to remember 37 years ago….This clip from the Blues Brothers comedy movie will seem incredibly prophetic give the recent incident at a Nazi rally in the US.

Only now it is the Nazis driving through the crowd!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsxwhRiiWtc 

ON TARGET: North Korea: Is The Fate Of The World In The Hands Of Two Madmen?

Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump

Photo: http://fpif.org/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-soul-brothers/

By Scott Taylor

With all of the fear-mongering going on these days, one could be forgiven for believing we are on the eve of a nuclear Armageddon between North Korea and the U.S.A. Military experts are coming out of the woodwork to take to the airwaves, all of them eager to convince us just how dangerous North Korean President Kim Jong-un really has become.

Graphic designers have hastily cobbled together detailed diagrams showing all the various ranges of Jong-un’s missile inventory, the latest one clearly showing that Ottawa and Toronto are inside the danger zone.

The usual list of Canadian tub-thumping Colonel Blimps have penned the expected warnings that, although America would be Jong-un’s intended target, his missiles could inadvertently strike a Canadian city. He aims for Chicago and instead wipes Winnipeg off the map. Scary stuff indeed.

One Canadian fear-monger went so far as to plot out an Austin Powers-worthy scheme wherein Doctor Evil, aka Jong-un, is going to use his old 1960s era Soviet submarine to launch a nuclear torpedo into the U.S. Navy’s facility at Bangor, Washington. That port, located on the Kitsap Peninsula near Seattle, is home to the nuclear-armed Trident submarine fleet.

According to the doomsday theorist, Jong-un’s nuke will set off the U.S. Navy’s arsenal of nukes and Vancouver will be vaporized. Terrifying stuff!

Even more alarming was the rhetoric used by President Donald Trump in response to Jong-un’s threats. The Donald told reporters that if North Korea continues to issue threats, they will be faced with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” People took this statement to mean that Trump would launch a pre-emptive, massive nuclear strike against North Korea.

This position was foretold in 1999 by then billionaire businessman Donald Trump during a television interview on American public affairs program Meet the Press. In that interview Trump said that he would first negotiate with North Korea if possible, but that time would be running out on that option. Trump would not want to wait “for five years [when there will be North Korean] warheads all over the place pointing at New York City.”

For the record, this would have been in 2004, 13 years ago, and even according to the most exaggerated of the graphic diagrams, New York still remains beyond the reach of Jong-un’s missiles.

In fact, Jong-un himself has only threatened to make a demonstration missile test firing towards the U.S. military bases on the Western Pacific island of Guam. To be clear, the North Korean madman is not suggesting he will actually hit Guam, nor has he said the weapon will be armed with any warhead, be it nuclear or conventional.

The threat from North Korea is to land the rocket 30 to 40 kilometres from Guam. It behooves all of those even mildly worried about this current crisis to consult a map showing Guam’s location.

As for all the rumblings about North Korea having successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads and the speculation that Jong-un already possesses 60 of these miniaturized weapons, keep in mind this information is coming directly from U.S. intelligence agencies.

Yes, that would be the same U.S. intelligence agencies that lied to the world in 2003 about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq. Fool me once …

What would be cool would be if someone would contract a graphic designer to illustrate the massive U.S. and allied military countermeasures surrounding North Korea.

This infographic should also include the United States’ nuclear arsenal, which includes more than 4,000 un-miniaturized warheads that are capable of wiping all of North Korea off the planet, hundreds of times over.

The scariest part of this whole equation is not the goofy-looking Korean with his alleged 60 tiny nukes and a wonky missile program; it is the unstable megalomaniac in possession of the U.S. nuclear launch codes who utters threats of delivering “fire and fury.”

It is worth remembering that the only nation in history to have ever actually employed a nuclear bomb against human beings is the United States. In April of this year, Trump authorized the first use of the Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB or Mother of All Bombs) against targets in Afghanistan; the MOAB is the largest non-nuclear explosive device designed to date.

Let’s hope Trump does not decide to up the ante.

Kabul Regime: Making Trump look good by comparison

Publisher Scott Taylor and General Abdul Rashid Dostum

By: Scott Taylor

While Canada may have concluded a twelve year military commitment to the war in Afghanistan back in the spring of 2014, few taxpayers realize that we continue to spend over $150 million annually in support of the Afghan Security Forces. That is definitely not chump change and as such we should not only be concerned with how effectively that money is being spent, but also we should be following the internal happenings of the Afghan regime that we are paying so much to protect.

In terms of return on investment, the most recent quarterly report from the U.S. Special Inspector General - Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) paints a pretty bleak picture. From 1 January to 8 May 2017 the Afghan Security Forces have suffered a total of 2,531 soldiers killed and another 4,238 were wounded. That amounts to roughly 45 Afghan Security Force casualties a day, every day, which is at least five times higher than at the peak of fighting when U.S. and NATO forces were handling the combat operations.Despite the billions of dollars spent on weapons, equipment and training, the Afghan Security Forces are getting chewed up on the battlefield at an unsustainable rate.

Even more alarming was the SIGAR statistics for that same four month period, wherein they found at least 12,073 Ministry of Defence personnel were simply “unaccounted for”. This has been a long running theme throughout the rampantly corrupt Afghan forces, which has become commonly known as “Ghost Soldiers”. It is common practice in most units to draw pay and rations for soldiers who were killed, deserted or simply never existed. Likewise the clever Afghans continue to take fuel deliveries for vehicles that were long since disabled in order to sell the gasoline on the black market.

Even weapons and ammunition are sold, often to the very insurgents those troops are ostensibly being paid to fight. The Taliban’s primary source for weapons and ammo is the U.S. Supplied Afghan Security Force, and they have long since realized that it is far easier to simply buy them from disgruntled Afghan government troops than it is to attempt to capture them.

Canada’s $150 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions spent annually by the U.S. to prop up this ragtag army, but nevertheless it is a lot of money to be pumping into failed system that ultimately benefits the insurgents we are hoping to thwart.

Then there is the bigger question of what exactly we are hoping to protect with this fourth-rate security force. How corrupt and dysfunctional can the Afghan government really be? Well, let’s take a look at the most recent political developments involving the Vice President. Just last week General Abdul Rashid Dostum attempted to return to Afghanistan from exile in Turkey, but his private plane was refused landing rights by the authority of the government of President Ashraf Ghani and Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah.

Dostum’s alleged crime is the kidnapping and sexual assault of his political rival, Ahmed Eshchi, the governor of Jawzjan Province. What is even more crazy about this is that back in 2010, when I interviewed General Dostum in Kabul he was under house arrest for kidnapping, beating, and raping another of his political rivals. I also interviewed Dostum’s alleged victim in that case, Akbar Bey, a prominent leader of the Afghan Turkmen community. Bey could not believe that Dostum was seemingly above all laws as the Kabul regime needed his continued loyalty and that of his devoted ethnic-Uzbek followers

Dostum has been a notorious war-lord dating back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In those days he saw himself as a communist sympathizer, but when the Soviets withdrew he switched sides. Throughout his martial career Dostum has also been accused of numerous war crimes.  However, immediately following the 9-11 terror attacks in 2001, he telephoned then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to say he would be America’s best ally in Afghanistan. Kidnapping, rape, and mass murder allegations aside, the U.S. repaid Dostum’s loyalty by making him the Vice President in 2014.

Now Dostum is not just threatening to return to Kabul, but he has put together a coalition of other former warlords with which he intends to save Afghanistan from the corrupt regime of Ghani and Abdullah. Given this state of affairs is it any wonder that the Afghan Security Forces are demoralized? The outrageous political drama in Kabul makes the Trump White House look like a well oiled machine.

Surely there are better things on which to spend Canada’s $150 million annual stipend?

ON TARGET: Trump And The Transgender

Donald Trump

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore - Flickr

By Scott Taylor

On July 26, U.S. President Donald Trump sent out a series of tweets to the effect that the American military will no longer “allow or accept” transgender personnel in its ranks.

At the time of sending out the transgender tweets, Trump’s White House was in the midst of the most vicious infighting since The Donald was sworn into office on Jan. 20. If by sending out these unexpected tweets Trump was hoping to generate controversy for the purpose of deflecting the media focus from his embattled regime, then the U.S. president is not as crazy as he looks. The transgender ban blew up an immediate backlash from human rights groups and LGBTQ activists worldwide.

The sheer shocking content of Trump’s transgender ban messages caused pundits to forget that the U.S. military is governed by Congressionally approved policies, not by presidential tweets. In response to the growing controversy, it was none other than U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who advised the media that “there will be no modifications” to the current policy regarding the employment of transgender personnel.

Under a year-old plan brought in by former president Barrack Obama, there are currently an estimated 15,000 personnel in the U.S. military who identify as transgender, and of that number 6,000 are on active duty. No doubt Trump’s proclamation that “the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military” will be incredibly worrisome to this veritable legion of transgender people already in uniform.

The two reasons Trump cited for the ban were the “tremendous medical costs” and the “disruption” to unit cohesion that these individuals generate.

Number crunchers were quick to calculate that the currently serving transgender personnel cost the military health services between $2.4 million and $8.4 million (U.S.) a year.

While this is not chump change, to keep things in perspective, the U.S. military annually spends in excess of $84 million on drugs such as Viagra to remedy erectile dysfunction.

As for Trump’s allegations that transgender soldiers would be a disrupting factor within their units, one need only take a short walk down memory lane.

Up until 1948, racial segregation was the official policy of the U.S. military. Throughout the U.S. civil war, the First World War and the Second World War, black volunteers were segregated into their own units, most often with white officers and usually relegated to a support role rather than frontline combat duties.

Canada similarly segregated blacks and Asians into labour battalions during the First World War, as the racist attitudes of the day led to the common belief that they made inferior soldiers and would be a disruptive factor if merged with the predominantly Anglo-Saxon combat regiments.

Canada was ahead of the U.S. in terms of racial integration, and in 1982 we took a major step in terms of sexually integrating our armed forces by allowing women into heretofore men only combat arms trades. The previous rationale for keeping women out of the frontlines was that their presence would be a disruption. The Canadian military’s performance in the Balkan peacekeeping missions of the 90s and the decade-long deployment to Afghanistan has since proven the merit of co-ed combat units.

The U.S. military quietly followed our lead and began allowing females into combat trades in 2013.

Canada lifted the ban on LGBTQ personnel serving in uniform in 1992, and has subsequently funded dozens of sexual reassignment surgeries over the past 20 years. It is estimated that around 200 personnel serving in the Canadian Armed Forces identify as transgender. Previous thinking was that LGBTQ soldiers would be a disruption to their units. Again, experience on the battlefield and in garrison has proven that this is not the case.

Soldiers put more stock in their comrades’ professionalism and dedication, rather than the colour of their skin, their gender or their sexual preference. But having never served in uniform himself, Trump has no way of knowing that.

ON TARGET: Let Edward Cornwallis Be Remembered For Who He Really Was

Statue of Edward Cornwallis

Photo Credit: http://tari-stock.deviantart.com/

By Scott Taylor

There has been a lot of controversy recently in Halifax over the statue of Edward Cornwallis, that city’s founder.

On Canada Day, a crowd of Mi’kmaq and their supporters gathered at the base of the statue to decry Cornwallis as a perpetrator of genocide against Indigenous Peoples. In their opinion, Cornwallis symbolizes a ruthless chapter in Canada’s colonization.

Challenging the First Nations demonstrators was a group of five Proud Boys waving the alt-rights adopted symbol of Canada’s old Red Ensign national flag. Embarrassingly, the gaggle of Proud Boys turned out to be members of the Canadian Armed Forces. All five were immediately suspended with pay, and Rear-Admiral John Newton hastily offered a full apology for their actions.

Following up on this incident, on July 15 another crowd gathered in Cornwallis Park with the stated objective of tearing down this alleged tribute to genocide. But cooler heads prevailed and, in the end, the compromise solution was to cover the image of Lord Cornwallis with a tarp. Halifax Mayor Mike Savage was on hand at this second demonstration and he acknowledged that removal of this polemic statue may yet be the final solution.

One could argue that, on the plus side, at least it has generated interest in what was heretofore just another bronze image of a British historical figure in a Canadian public space.

Edward Cornwallis was born into nobility in 1713, and at the age of 18 he purchased a commission in the British Army. His one claim to fame during the War of the Austrian Succession came at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, when he stepped up to take command of his battalion. The public mocked him for his subsequent retreat with the appalling loss of 8 officers and 385 of his men.

Cornwallis also fought at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, wherein the English army shattered the Jacobite Highland clans. While he played only a bit part in the battle, in the aftermath of the Scots’ defeat, Cornwallis led a punitive force into the Highlands.

It was here that Cornwallis committed his first atrocities. His orders were to bring back no prisoners, and his elite unit used mass murder and rape to pacify the rebellious Highlanders into submission.

Pleased with his actions, British parliament dispatched Lord Cornwallis to North America in 1749 for the purpose of establishing a colony that could compete with the French foothold of Louisbourg on Cape Breton. The site that Cornwallis chose was Halifax, perfect for its deep harbour and easily defended approaches.

One problem with this location was that it violated a former treaty with the Wabanaki Confederacy of First Nations, which included the Mi’kmaq tribes. The Wabanaki allied themselves with France, and the Acadians and Mi’kmaq did kill British settlers. In retribution, Cornwallis ordered his elite Rangers to hunt down the Mi’kmaq and he made the now-infamous offer to pay a bounty for Mi’kmaq scalps.

This conflict became known as Father Le Loutre’s War and it should be noted that the French also paid the Mi’kmaq for English scalps. It also should be pointed out that Cornwallis left Halifax long before those clashes and massacres were concluded, but nobody has yet to decry his successor, Peregrine Hopson, as a symbol of colonial genocide. But then again there are no statues of him.

Personally, I believe the statue of Cornwallis should remain in place so that it can be used as an educational tool for taking a closer look at the past myths that have shaped our nation’s history. Not only did Lord Cornwallis and other individuals like him commit heinous war crimes against, in his case, the Scots and the Mi’kmaq, but we were so immune to any empathy for his victims, that we actually glorified his ‘accomplishments’ with a statue and street names.

This is the lesson that needs to be taught.

ON TARGET: Mosul: This Is What Victory Looks Like

Destroyed City of Mosul

Photo credit: https://www.almasdarnews.com

By Scott Taylor

Last Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi officially declared that the brutal nine-month battle to retake the city of Mosul was finally over. However, just four days later, explosions were still rocking the shattered rubble in the city’s downtown core as the last of the Daesh (aka ISIL or ISIS) fighters continued their fanatical resistance.

If one can be dispassionate about Daesh’s evil ideology, then from a purely military perspective their prolonged defence against overwhelming odds was one hell of a martial feat. It was estimated at the outset of the siege that Daesh defenders numbered fewer than 4,500. On the attacking side, the U.S.-led alliance numbered more than 100,000 ground troops plus airpower. This loose-knit coalition of disparate militias included Iraqi government troops, Shiite militia and Kurdish peshmerga.

The professional ‘stiffening’ of these forces was provided by a large number of U.S. and Iranian military advisors. Canada also contributed to the mix with approximately 200 special forces soldiers in an advise-and-assist role. The Canadian troops are attached to the Kurdish militia, which is loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s leader, Masood Barzani.

Although Canadians have repeatedly been told that our soldiers are not involved in combat operations, the commanders on the ground have taken extreme liberties with the word ‘assist’ in their advise-and-assist mandate.

Such assistance to the Kurds has taken the form of using anti-tank missiles to destroy Daesh vehicles, and a world record sniping shot that killed a Daesh fighter at the incredible range of 3,500 metres.

I am of the perhaps somewhat biased view that Canadian soldiers are not among the best in the world … they are the best in the world. That said, this means that the Daesh defenders of Mosul were not only up against a staggering quantity of attackers, they were also pitted against an impressive quality of warriors.

Add to this mix the fact that the allied forces could call upon the unchallenged might of the U.S.-led aerial armada that included a fleet of unmanned drones capable of around the clock observation and missile strike capabilities.

The fighting may finally be over, but the devastation is nearly complete, particularly in the western area of the city, which was Daesh’s last bastion of resistance. Nearly every building in West Mosul has been destroyed.

To protect the ground troops from possible Daesh vehicle-borne suicide attacks, the allied air force deliberately cratered every intersection in the city with precision bomb strikes. The bridges spanning the Tigris River, which connected East and West Mosul, were all destroyed in the fighting, either by allied aircraft or Daesh demolition.

The pile of rubble is reminiscent of the Second World War’s aftermath of the Battle of Stalingrad. The devastation in Mosel is so complete that it makes Haider al-Abadi’s claim of victory akin to U.S. General Westmoreland’s famous Vietnam War quip that in order to save the village, they needed to destroy the village. Only this time the village was Iraq’s second largest city and the damage is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

The question now begs as to who will oversee the reconstruction of Mosul? It was the deliberate exclusion of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority by al-Abadi’s Shiite regime in Baghdad that led Mosul’s Sunni residents to welcome Daesh as liberators in the summer of 2014. That was when Mosul was an undamaged metropolis, not a heap of broken bricks and destroyed infrastructure.

If history repeats itself, as it so often does in the Middle East, the Sunni minority will be further punished by the victorious Shiite militias, many of whom are woefully ill-disciplined and fighting an ideological war of revenge against the Sunnis.

To the west of Mosul, Daesh retains control of the city of Tal Afar, which is a Turkmen enclave. The city is presently besieged by Shiite militia assisted by Iranian advisors. Neighbouring Turkey has warned that it will take military action if the Shia militia is allowed to enter Tal Afar and exact revenge upon the Turkmen.

As each domino falls, it seems this conflict only gets more complex and any notion of a ‘victory’ remains undefined. Canada has no say in resolving any of these major issues, yet we have just committed our military to at least two more years in Iraq. We will very soon need to choose which Iraq we support, because it is very unlikely to continue to exist in its present form.

ON TARGET: Khadr Was A Victim, Not A Terrorist

Two soldiers kneel over the wounded Khadr.

http://bit.ly/2u52P9Q

By Scott Taylor

The Liberal government certainly stirred up a flurry of emotion with last week’s announcement that Canada will pay out a whopping $10.5-million in compensation to Omar Khadr.  Those who are firmly in the anti-Khadr camp howled with indignity that this payout is in essence a reward for a terrorist.

To back up their argument they point to the fact that Khadr confessed to having thrown a grenade which killed U.S. soldier Christopher Speer and wounded another American infantryman. This makes Khadr a murderer in the eyes of his detractors.

The terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘murderer’ are indeed evocative, but in the case of Khadr they are not warranted. Yes, Khadr’s father Ahmed was indeed a full-fledged member of the notorious al-Qeada terrorist network. Following the post-9/11 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Ahmed returned to the land where he had fought against the Soviet occupation in the 1980’s, this time bringing along with him his sons Abdurahman and Omar. Their intention was to resist the U.S. military, whose objective was to round up or eliminate any and all who could be linked to the 9/11 terror attack.

The fact is that Omar Khadr was just 15 years old at the time. This puts him in the same category as boy soldiers of Africa whom Canada considers to be the victims of their circumstance.

There is video footage showing the 15-year-old Omar assembling an improvised explosive device (IED). As these sorts of insidious weapons were responsible for the deaths of 97 Canadian soldiers deployed into Afghanistan, it is easy to understand that this is an emotional sore point for the anti-Khadr crowd.

However, as the name would indicate, an IED is simply a homemade landmine and a rudimentary weapon. Used against other combatants, they are not instruments of terror, no matter how frightening they may be.

Which brings us back to the incident in which young Khadr was captured. This was clearly a firefight with distinct combatants on both sides. Nobody was out to terrorize anybody, and Khadr was equipped with conventional firearms.

To call throwing a grenade in a battle ‘murder’ is ludicrous in the extreme. To follow that logic, given that Khadr was shot twice and suffered shrapnel wounds prior to being captured, the American soldiers involved should be charged with attempted murder.

There is also no clear-cut evidence that Khadr actually threw the grenade that killed Speer. During his lengthy captivity at Guantanamo Bay, Khadr was tortured by his U.S. captors and his ‘confession’ to Speer’s murder was a key condition in securing his release from prison. There was never any independent verification of Khadr’s action.

The compensation being paid now to Khadr is in recognition of the fact that the Canadian government failed to protect Khadr following his capture. He was a Canadian citizen, a minor, caught up in the violent chaos of post-9/11 Afghanistan. He also had the misfortune of having a father who firmly adhered to a jihadist ideology.

That he was allowed to languish in the brutal conditions of the notorious Guantanamo Bay facility amidst hard-core terrorists and equally sadistic U.S. interrogators is indeed a failure on the part of previous Canadian governments.

Does this in turn warrant him a $10.5-million pay day? How can you possibly put a dollar figure on what Khadr went through?

Likewise, the widow and family of Christopher Speer have a court ruling that awards them $134-million (U.S.) from Omar Khadr as a result of him ‘murdering’ the American soldier. With Khadr now in receipt of his payout, the Speers are already seeking to seize that compensation money for themselves.

That Speers was killed while serving his country is indeed a tragic loss. However, I fail to see why his family would be entitled to such a massive sum to offset their loss. He was killed in battle, he was not murdered in his bed.

ON TARGET: Extending Mission In Iraq Is Wrongheaded

Harjit Sajjan

By Scott Taylor

Last Thursday the Liberal government gave Canadians a pre-Canada Day gift in the form of a clarification on our military role in Iraq. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan joined Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland at the press conference to announce the extension of the Canadian Armed Forces’ ‘advise and assist’ mission until March 2019. That revised end date was unfortunately about the only thing that is now clear about Canada’s commitment of troops to Iraq.

Since 2014, Canada has deployed special forces personnel to assist Kurdish militia in the battle against Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL). This effort is part of a U.S.-led coalition operation to wipe out Daesh evildoers. Unfortunately for this hodgepodge collection of allied forces, the only unifying goal they share is eliminating the threat of Daesh.

Once that objective has been achieved, every one of these disparate militias — be they Shiite factions, secular Sunnis or Canadian-trained Kurds — is prepared to fight the other for the spoils.

The Kurds that Canada supports make no secret of the fact they are fighting for an independent state. Masood Barzani, the warlord turned elected president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has declared that a referendum on independence will take place this September.

This will, of course, prove an awkward situation for our government as it has always been Global Affairs Canada’s stated policy to support the sovereignty of a unified Iraq.

Our soldiers on the ground — with permission granted by none other than Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance — have been recklessly flaunting Canada’s stated foreign policy by wearing the flag of Kurdistan on their combat uniforms. Vance’s explanation — that our wearing of Kurdish flags helps to foster good will between the Kurdish soldiers and the Canadian trainers — borders on the absurd: Canadian soldiers should not be wearing foreign flags on their uniforms, especially when that flag is a symbol of a breakaway non-recognized state.

In the joint Sajjan–Freeland announcement, it was stated that Canada will not be solely in support of the Kurds as the war in Iraq moves into the next post-Daesh phase. According to the Liberal government, the Canadian military now has the option to train “new potential partners within the Iraqi security forces.” If that is the case, then someone better tell our soldiers to take off their Kurdistan flags.

It will be interesting to see just which faction or factions Canada chooses to support. Elite soldiers in the Iraqi army loyal to the regime in Baghdad were recently found guilty of vicious war crimes committed during the battle in the city of Mosul, and the Shiite militia has an equally sullied reputation for committing atrocities. There are no white-hatted good guys in the complex factional violence that has gripped Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

This is the other thing that was notably bizarre about the announced extension. The Canadian government acknowledges that we will keep troops there for at least two more years, but it makes no attempt to even describe what we hope to achieve within that time frame. There is no goal, no objective, no explanation of what victory will look like.

It is simply a promised commitment to keep Canadians in harm’s way for a set period of time. Just like our repeated mission extensions in Afghanistan, there is not even any hint that those running this war expect to be successful anytime soon.

Offsetting the announced extension of the mission in Iraq was the confirmation that, despite pressure from NATO, Canada will not be sending troops back into Afghanistan. Given that there is just as little hope for a successful conclusion in Iraq, that decision is not very comforting.

We are not sure who we will be training in Iraq and we have no idea what we hope to achieve there, but we do know we will stay until March 2019, and that we will spend $378-million doing it.

How do you justify extending a war when you cannot describe what ‘victory’ will look like?

ON TARGET: Real Life Not Imitating Art

Brad Pitt in the movie War Machine

By Scott Taylor

I recently had the opportunity to watch the new, made for Netflix movie War Machine, starring Brad Pitt. The subject of the film is the U.S. led war in Afghanistan with Pitt playing the fictitiously named Lieutenant-General Glenn McMahon. While the name is changed to provide some Hollywood artistic licence, the movie closely depicts the real life Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal and the events that transpired during his command of the Afghan mission in 2009.

The opening scene has Pitt as McMahon strutting through the airport in Dubai along with his attendant staff officers. The narrator sets the scene, telling us that the war in Afghanistan is going poorly and therefore a new General – McMahon is being brought in to jump start the whole allied campaign. The plotline follows McMahon’s attempts to do just that, up until he is fired and the final scene is his successor and a fresh set of staff officers striding through an airport, full of confidence en route to Kabul to turn things around.

War Machine is a brave diversion from the usual rah-rah, war movie genre, propaganda in that it portrays former Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a powerless puppet of the U.S. . In one dramatic scene McMahon pursuesKarzai right into his private Presidential bedroom in order to get the Afghan leader’s permission to launch a large offensive. Karzai replies that both men know such permission is not his to grant – “but thanks for asking” he tells McMahon.

There is also a poignant moment after the big offensive begins and naturally enough, innocent civilians are killed. True to his beliefs, McMahon flies to the front lines to explain to Afghan villagers – through his translator – that the U.S. is intent on bringing Afghans security, democracy and freedom.

The bewildered Afghan elder replies concisely “Just leave.”

It was refreshing to see that a U.S. moviemaker understands that despite all of our good intentions and ideals, since 2001 the West has delivered nothing but violence, corruption and insecurity to the Afghan people.

Then of course came the real life news last week that the U.S. is committing more troops to Afghanistan, and urging NATO allies such as Canada to do the same. There will be a new commander and a new strategy and this time, by golly, we are going to get it right. U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis admitted to a Senate Committee “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now. And we will correct this as soon as possible.”

Of course, Mad Dog neglected to say how the U.S. will do things differently after sixteen years of futile intervention. The only response seems to always be more troops.

Then we had former U.S. General David Petraeus – famous for his briefly successful, but ultimately failed surge strategy in Iraq – telling the media that we should brace ourselves for a “long-haul, generational war” in Afghanistan.

As if sixteen years isn’t already of generational length, Petraeus went on to point out that the U.S. has had a ‘long haul’ military presence in Korea for more than 65 years. Not mentioned by Petraeus was the fact that Korea and Afghanistan are as different as soap and beans. In Korea, the U.S. fought alongside Korean allies to prevent them being overrun by the North Korean Communist forces. This was successfully achieved in 1953 with the ceasefire agreement establishing a clearly defined boundary between North and South Korea. In Afghanistan the U.S. led intervention never eliminated the Afghan insurgency, and the U.S. trained and equipped Afghan forces are woefully inadequate to fight the war on the their own.

A better analogy would be that of the U.S. failure in Vietnam. If the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan now, the corrupt cabal that they installed in Kabul will collapse just like the South Vietnamese, U.S. backed government did in 1975.

It is for certain that the U.S. would not have spent 65 years in Korea if every day their soldiers were being attacked and killed by fanatical Koreans.

The War Machine Afghan elder had the right answer “just leave”. The Afghan people are hardy survivors who will eventually sort out their own future – even if it does not resemble a western democracy.

ON TARGET: When The Good Guys Are Bad It is Time To Quit Iraq

By Scott Taylor

Earlier this month the Toronto Star published an exposé complete with graphic photographs depicting horrific torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq. What made the story and images so shocking was that this barbarism was not the handiwork of Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) evildoers, but rather that those atrocities were blatantly perpetrated by the Iraqi Emergency Response Division (ERD).

The ERD is considered to be an elite counter-terrorism unit under the command of the Iraqi government’s Ministry of the Interior. The ERD has been a critical factor in the allied effort to recapture the city of Mosul from Daesh.

Canadian Special Operations Forces Command soldiers are working closely with Kurdish militia in that same vicious struggle to retake Mosul. While Canadians are not directly in support of the ERD, the soldiers in this elite unit are very much Canada’s close allies in a common struggle.

That is why the images of the ERD’s torture victims is so disturbing. The photos were taken by Ali Arkady, a photographer embedded with the ERD troops who seemingly had no qualms about allowing themselves to be filmed putting knives to prisoners heads, pressing fingers into eye sockets, or beating trussed up captives suspended from the ceiling.

Even more bizarrely, the ERD soldiers actually provided Arkady with a video depicting the execution of a terrified captive. In other words, there is no shame or guilt associated with their ruthless brutality; these guys are happy to have their violent exploits broadcasted for all to see.

Last week, General Jonathan Vance, Canada’s chief of defence staff, reacted to the torture revelations in an interview with the Toronto Star. “It doesn’t even fall into the category of understandable. In fact it mirrors what Daesh is doing, and you lose if you don’t maintain the moral high ground in this kind of war,” Vance said.

Vance also conceded that Canadians might question why Canada’s military is involved in a conflict wherein our allies are committing the exact same atrocities as those evildoers we are fighting against.

However, instead of questioning Canada’s role, Vance saw the ERD’s brutal behaviour as further proof as to why Canada should stay in Iraq. “They’re horrible. They need training, advice, and assistance,” he said.

To his credit, Vance apparently gets the fact that the ceaseless cycle of violence in Iraq’s interfactional conflict will continue unabated as long as reciprocal revenge is waged.

What Vance does not understand is that this level of barbarity is not going to be stopped by a few more lessons in a classroom, taught by good old Canadian combat soldiers with a firm grasp of the Geneva Convention. We do not have a training plan

that stresses the fact that prisoners are not to be beheaded, eye-gauged, or chained to the ceiling for days at a time. Some things we tend to simply take as a given.

Another problem with Vance’s assertion that training and assistance could turn the ERD around is the fact that they are not some “ragtag militia” as he asserted to the Star. The ERD are among the best-trained and motivated units available to the Iraqi central government in Baghdad.

When Daesh first rolled out of Syria and captured a vast swath of Iraq in 2014, the U.S.-trained and -equipped Iraqi army collapsed without much of a fight. Tens of thousands of soldiers defected en masse, leaving their weapon arsenals and vehicle fleets at the disposal of Daesh fighters.

The only thing that prevented Daesh from seizing Baghdad was a desperate call-out for volunteer Shia militias to stem the Sunni Muslim fanatical Daesh.

Those same Shia militias are still in the fight against Daesh and, therefore, are also ostensibly Canada’s allies in this fight. Unlike the Iraqi government’s ERD unit, these Shia militias are truly ill-disciplined and ragtag.

They are also fighting for purely factional-based revenge against Daesh’s Sunni supporters.

If a photographer embedded with an elite Iraqi government unit can uncover rampant occurrences of torture and execution, one can only imagine what sort of revenge abuse is being meted out by Canada’s even more notorious allies — the Shia militia.

Vance was right in his first assessment of the torture revelations: Canadians should seriously question why we are taking sides in this barbaric bloodletting.