ON TARGET: Canada Bears A Share Of Responsibility For Ukraine's Comic-Opera Hijinks

Mikheil Saakashvili

KOMMERSANT PHOTO

By Scott Taylor

Last Tuesday there was a bizarre incident in the streets of Kiev. Ukrainian security forces had descended on an apartment building with the intent of arresting Mikheil Saakashvili on charges of having taken money with the intent of destabilizing Ukraine.

Rather than submit quietly to authorities, Saakashvili took to the roof of his eight-storey apartment block and threatened to jump. Eventually, the police were able to forcibly bundle the defiant Saakashvili into a van, but by that time thousands of protestors had arrived to block the street.

After an hour-long violent standoff between riot police and Saakashvili’s supporters, the prisoner was released from the van and herded through the crowd.

Not content with simply having secured his temporary freedom, this chap Saakashvili then proceeded to lead the crowd to the Ukraine parliament buildings where he gave an impassioned speech. He called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko a “traitor to Ukraine” and accused him of being “the head of an organized crime ring.”

As for the police trying to arrest him, Saakashvili denounced this as the Kiev regime “trying to get rid of a loud voice telling them they are thieves.”

The crazy part about all of this is that Saakashvili is the former president of neighbouring Georgia, and a former close friend and ally of Poroshenko. The allegations levelled by Saakashvili against Poroshenko are not some Russian media ‘fake news’ story, but rather insight from someone who was, until recently, part of the Kiev regime’s inner circle.

Educated in the U.S., Saakashvili was America’s strongest ally in the Caucasus when he ruled Georgia from 2003 until 2013. He was elected on an anti-corruption platform, but his popularity waned as his methods became increasingly authoritarian.

Saakashvili’s failed military operation against the breakaway territory of South Ossetia in 2008 resulted in Russian intervention and a huge setback for the Georgian armed forces.

By the time he lost the 2013 parliamentary elections, Saakashvili was himself facing charges of corruption.

Opportunity for resurrection soon knocked when unrest unfolded with the December 2013 Maidan Square protests in Kiev. With the United States’ blessing, Saakashvili became an ardent supporter of the anti-Russian movement, which eventually ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

In 2015, Poroshenko rewarded Saakashvili by appointing him as the governor of Odessa. To assume the post Saakashvili had to become a Ukrainian citizen, which in turn meant renouncing his Georgian citizenship as his home country does not allow dual citizenship.

It was a bit of a no-brainer choice for Saakashvili, as any return to Georgia will see him arrested on the outstanding corruption charges. However, by the end of 2016, Saakashvili made a bold statement by resigning his post as governor. He publicly blamed Poroshenko for the continued corruption in Ukraine and threatened to create his own opposition political party.

While Saakashvili was back in the U.S. earlier this year, Poroshenko returned Saakashvili’s favour by simply issuing a presidential decree revoking the ex-governor’s Ukrainian citizenship.

Despite now being publicly stateless, Saakashvili made a grand — albeit illegal — re-entry into Ukraine this past September with the help of a crowd of supporters.

Less than three months later in another comic opera drama, Ukrainian crowds have now once again intervened to secure Saakashvili’s freedom.

Canada has played a role in the Ukraine crisis from the outset when Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird marched arm in arm with protestors in Maidan Square. Since February 2014, we have sunk millions of dollars into not only initiatives aimed at democratic reforms, but also military training of the Ukraine military forces used to prop up this Kiev regime.

At present, Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, herself being of Ukrainian descent, continues to offer Canada’s 100 per cent carte blanche support to the government of Ukraine.

While Freeland purports to support the people of Ukraine, it must be noted that Poroshenko presently has just a two per cent approval rating; allowing for a margin of error, this equates to zero. Then there is Saakashvili, who is presenting himself as his adopted country’s anti-corruption saviour, while unable to return to his own country where he is himself wanted for corruption.

And somehow this is all Russian President Putin’s fault?

ON TARGET: Canada Does Not Share Common Values With Corrupt Kosovo Regime

Hashim Thaci (left) circa 1999, celebrating NATO’s victory in Kosovo

By Scott Taylor

Last Tuesday there was a story in the Toronto Star wherein Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci gave a warning to Parliament during his visit to Ottawa that Russian meddling in world affairs will have consequences for Canada.

It was Thaci’s assertion that Russia has been spreading “fake news” in an attempt to depict Kosovo as a failed state.

In a massive leap of logic, Thaci claimed that “by attacking [our shared] principles and values, [the Russians] are attacking Canada as well.”

As is all too often the case, the media coverage of Thaci’s “blame Russia, praise Canada” comments were stated without providing any context as to the man uttering them, or the failed state he represents.

Simply put, Hashim Thaci is a career criminal and a ruthless thug. Back in 1993, at the age of 25, Thaci became a member of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at that time was listed by the CIA as a terrorist organization.

Thaci’s self-given nickname was “Snake” and he was responsible for trafficking drugs and weapons for the KLA. In 1997, he was convicted in absentia for committing acts of terrorism and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

However, in 1998, as KLA Albanian separatist forces were openly waging an insurgency against Yugoslav security forces, the U.S. State Department had a change of heart. The former terrorist organization KLA suddenly became the freedom fighter KLA, and Thaci was propelled into the unlikely role of statesman.

In March 1999, NATO forces, including Canada, intervened in Kosovo on the side of the KLA separatists, waging a 78-day bombing campaign to force a Yugoslav capitulation.

Thaci and his fellow KLA compatriots, also ruthless thugs, emerged as the dominant political force in post-war Kosovo. Elected as prime minister in 2007, Thaci announced a unilateral declaration of independence on February 17, 2008.

Despite the fact that the U.S. immediately recognized this new state and heavily pressured countries such as Canada to do likewise, Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council continues to prevent Kosovo’s official membership and recognition. Likewise, Kosovo has been blocked from joining both NATO and the European Union by member states that have concerns about separatist movements within their own countries.

For Thaci to blame his fledging state’s woes entirely on Russian “fake news” takes the term “fake news” to a new low.

The German Intelligence Agency BND conducted a recent investigation into Thaci and his regime and concluded that “the key players (including Thaci) are involved in inter-linkages between politics, business, and organized crime structures in Kosovo.” In other words, they are openly running a narco-criminal enterprise.

Another report prepared for the Council of Europe implicated former KLA commanders of serious human rights abuses. The most serious allegations against Thaci’s cronies included drug trafficking and the hideous crime of human organ trafficking. Innocent victims — both ethnic Serbian and Albanians — were allegedly executed for the purpose of harvesting their organs for sale on the black market.

As for Thaci blaming the Russians for circulating fake news about the current economic situation in Kosovo, the non-fake facts speak for themselves.

Kosovo is presently the second poorest state in Europe, sitting just ahead of impoverished Moldova. Its 2016 GDP per capita is merely $10,000 (US) compared to Canada’s $46,400 (US). Overall unemployment is over 33 per cent, with youth unemployment sitting at 60 per cent. Since the declaration of independence in 2008, tens of thousands of Albanian Kosovars have joined the ranks of migrants flowing into Western Europe.

These numbers are not from Russian media sources, but rather the CIA World Factbook.

Canada and the rest of NATO failed the Albanian Kosovars when they intervened militarily in 1999 to liberate them from Yugoslav authority, only to leave them in the hands of criminals like Thaci and his KLA henchmen.

To bring Thaci to Ottawa, forgive him his past and present sins, and then trumpet his anti-Russia rhetoric as sage advice is folly in the extreme. For Thaci to suggest that his values and those of his corrupt Kosovar regime are the same as Canadian values is an insult to Canada.

ON TARGET: Corrupt Afghan Regime Does Not Deserve Any More Military Support From Canada

Afghanistan’s Vice President, Abdul Rashid Dostum (left) faces multiple allegations of sodomizing his political rivals.

By Scott Taylor

At the recent Halifax International Security Forum (HISF), Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah echoed previous calls from NATO and the U.S. for Canada to return militarily to the international mission in Afghanistan.

Abdullah lamented the fact that Canada, along with most contributing NATO nations, had withdrawn from combat operations in 2014. Since that juncture, the internationally trained, equipped, and paid for Afghan Security Forces have proven woefully inept at containing resurgent Taliban and Daesh (aka ISIS) forces.

The Afghan military’s steady reversals have forced U.S. President Donald Trump to increase American troop levels from 8,000 to 14,000 in a desperate attempt to simply hold the line. Trump has also authorized a far more aggressive policy towards the use of allied airstrikes, which have predictably increased the number of Afghan civilian casualties dramatically. Not exactly a successful recipe for winning over Afghan hearts and minds.

In addition to his presentation at the HISF, Abdullah told the CBC that he had personally met with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan to request Canada’s renewed support in providing military trainers. One has to hope that Abdullah’s request fell on deaf ears.

It is worth remembering that the international effort to equip and train the Afghan Security Forces to become self-sufficient began back in early 2002. Nearly 16 years and $70-billion (U.S.) later, hundreds of thousands of Afghan recruits have received weapons and training at the hands of some of the best soldiers in the world, and yet the Afghan National Army remains a demoralized rabble.

A recent U.S. report identified that the Afghan army lost over 5,000 personnel in the past year alone due to a combination of combat deaths, desertion and, in all too many cases, defection (with their weapons) to the Taliban. The Afghan National Police force lost another 4,000 recruits for the same reasons.

For Abdullah and Trump to conclude that the answer to this problem is to send in more Canadian troops to train more Afghan youths to become soldiers, is akin to that Three Stooges episode wherein the mentally challenged trio drill a hole in the bottom of their rowboat to let the water out.

If motivated for a cause they believe in, Afghans have demonstrated over the centuries that they are unconquerable. As the Soviets discovered during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, disillusioned Afghan conscripts on the other hand are virtually useless.

Over the past 16 years, NATO has yet to learn that even well-paid Afghan army volunteers — soldiers in Afghanistan make three times the salary of a high school teacher — their dubious motivation is to stay alive to cash their paycheque rather than wilfully die for a cause.

Ironically, Abdullah — the man begging for more foreign troops to prop up his hated regime — is very much a part of the reason that the Afghan military is so inept.

Abdullah’s title — Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan — was created when the 2014 presidential election failed to produce a verifiable result. Rather than admit their experiment with democracy had failed, and with Abdullah refusing to concede to his rival Ashraf Ghani, the U.S. brokered a power-sharing deal. Thus, Ghani became president and Abdullah got the title of CEO.

To placate Afghanistan’s Uzbek minority, controversial warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum was name first vice-president.

Over the years Dostum has been accused of numerous war crimes involving the execution of prisoners. However, he is currently in Turkey in temporary exile as a result of allegations that he tortured and sodomized Ahmad Ishchi, a provincial governor and political rival.

Seven of Dostum’s bodyguards were recently tried in absentia and found guilty of raping Ishchi. This is not something new for Dostum; when I last interviewed him in Kabul in 2013, he was under house arrest for having tortured and raped Akbar Bey, a Turkmen rival. That was during the election campaign, and despite his current exile, Dostum remains vice-president of Afghanistan.

Why would Canada even consider putting our soldiers back into harm’s way to train soldiers to prop up this corrupt regime?

ON TARGET: Trudeau’s Peacekeeping Strategy: Pay Other Nations To Send Their Women Into Harm’s Way

By Scott Taylor

Last Wednesday, the Trudeau government used the backdrop of the United Nations peacekeeping summit in Vancouver to make what amounted to a non-announcement on Canada’s future role as a peacekeeper.

This is something that Trudeau and the Liberals had campaigned hard for during the 2015 election. It was music to the Canadian public’s ears to hear that Canada was going to move away from contributing to U.S.-led military interventions and get back to the good old days of monitoring ceasefire lines in bright blue UN helmets.

Then the Liberals were swept into power and those promises to make Canada a great peacekeeper again suddenly weren’t so easy to implement. In August 2016, Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance told the media that the Canadian Army would soon be embarking on a peacekeeping mission to Africa.

This bombshell was supported by statements from Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan. The details announced were pretty specific as we were told this future mission would involve 600 soldiers, 150 police and cost as much as $400-million.

What was never decided was where exactly in Africa this expeditionary force would actually be deployed. In an almost comic opera farcical skit, poor old Sajjan and a number of top military officers flew around the world — not just Africa — seeking a viable role in any one of the ongoing UN peacekeeping missions.

Fifteen months later, we found out that the answer to that question is ‘none of the above.’ Instead, Canadians were told that we will be contributing a grab bag of expertise and equipment to various other nations that will actually conduct the dangerous operations in actual war zones.

Yes indeed Canada has a fleet of C-17 Globemaster III strategic airlift transport planes and 15 brand new heavy-lift Chinook helicopters now available to fly other countries’ troops into conflict zones and keep them supplied.

However, when it comes to us offering up training to other nations’ peacekeepers prior to them deploying into theatre, that begins to stretch credulity just a little bit.

Canada has not engaged in any large-scale UN missions since the conflict in the former Yugoslavia ended with the signing of the Dayton Accord in the summer of 1995. That would be before most new Canadian recruits were even born, and any veterans of those Balkan missions would now be well into the twilight of their military careers.

How exactly are we supposed to instruct others in something we have not practiced for over two decades?

Even more bizarre was the announcement of a special $15-million fund that will be used as an incentive to get other UN nations to contribute a higher percentage of females to peacekeeping missions.

This is all part of Canada’s new ‘feminist’ foreign policy, and it is also something which the UN has been paying lip service to for quite some time. In fact, to shed some light on the dearth of women deployed by the UN to ceasefire lines, celebrity actress Angelina Jolie personally addressed the summit in Vancouver.

Of the 13,000 UN police officers currently deployed, only seven per cent of that force are women, and when it comes to the 87,000 combat soldiers wearing blue helmets, a mere two per cent are female.

The UN has long sought to double those percentages, but over the past 21 years virtually no progress has been made to achieve that goal.

So it will now be Canada to the rescue with a big tempting pot of money meant to encourage other countries to send a higher percentage of their own women into harm’s way.

The ratio of women in the Canadian Armed Forces currently stands at 15 per cent and Canada prides itself on having one of the highest female-to-male ratios of any military in the world.

I have frequently stated that, in my opinion, Canadian soldiers are not among the best in the world, they are the best in the world. Why then are we not actually leading by example and demonstrating to the world what a difference professional female peacekeepers could bring to a UN mission if deployed in sufficient numbers?

Instead we are using our nation’s wealth to encourage more impoverished countries to deploy far less capable female soldiers into harm’s way in order to advance the Trudeau Liberals’ domestic feminist agenda.

ON TARGET: Ukraine Crisis: Backing A Corrupt Kiev Regime Does Not Benefit Ukrainian People

President Petro Poroshenko

By Scott Taylor

Last week there were all sorts of rumblings in Ottawa that Canada is considering a proposal to implement a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

First it was a statement from Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland stating that the Liberal government “has been at the heart of international efforts to support Ukraine, and we are working hard to ensure any peacekeeping effort guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Then it was the turn of Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, who declared that, if he were prime minister, he would support the peacekeeping proposal from Ukraine’s government. “This mission would allow Ukraine to restore control over its eastern border with Russia, ensuring the Russian military stays within its own country, and out of Ukraine’s,” stated Scheer.

It is clear from Freeland’s and Scheer’s statements that either they know nothing about peacekeeping or they know nothing about the current conflict in Ukraine.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan only added to the collective ignorance when he confirmed Canada is considering a peacekeeping proposal from Kiev, which would “respect Ukraine’s original borders.”

There is no way that the pro-Russian rebels in the breakaway Donbass region of Ukraine are simply going to surrender their hard-fought-for territory to a Canadian soldier in a blue helmet. Similarly, Canada officially recognizes the Crimea to be sovereign Ukraine territory, which would mean somehow expelling the Russian troops that annexed the region in 2014.

Defeating rebels in a civil war and starting a territorial war with Russia is not peacekeeping. Russia’s counterproposal — to have international peacekeeping troops patrol the current ceasefire lines between the rebels and Ukraine government forces in advance of demilitarizing the area and conducting negotiations — seems to fit the traditional model of peacekeeping. Sajjan, however, has rejected this offer for the reason that it would “freeze” the conflict along the current lines.

Unless I missed something, I thought the idea of freezing the bloodshed was the whole rationale behind peacekeeping.

The whole premise is mute as long as Russia has a veto at the United Nations Security Council, and the timing of this discussion comes on the eve of the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Conference in Vancouver on November 14 and 15.

Trudeau’s Liberal government has not kept its 2015 election campaign promise to make Canada a great peacekeeper again, despite an August 2016 announcement of an imminent UN mission to somewhere in Africa.

As that deployment of 600 troops at a budgeted cost of $400-million never materialized, Canada’s current paltry commitment of just a few dozen peacekeepers on UN duty does not meet the minimum entry requirement for the upcoming defence ministers’ meeting.

That’s right folks, if we were not the host nation, we would not be allowed to attend the gathering in Vancouver. Which is what makes this bluster about a Ukraine peacekeeping mission so interesting.

Canada can claim it wants to participate in a robust mission to bring peace to Ukraine, but by adding the proviso that this means restoring all sovereign territory to Kiev’s control ensures a Russian veto. This of course will allow Canada to unleash a new wave of anti-Russian rhetoric while breathing a sigh of relief that we will not have to actually deploy troops.

The Canadian delegation can strut around at the Vancouver conference and look like we are fire-breathing peace activists prepared to put Putin in his place … if only he wouldn’t use his UN veto to thwart our plan.

For the approximately 1.4-million Ukrainian-Canadian voters, the Liberal government’s restated pledge to respect and recognize Ukraine’s original borders will be music to their ears.

For the long-suffering people of Ukraine, however, Canada’s blank-cheque approach to supporting the regime of President Petro Poroshenko must be greeted with incredulity. Under Poroshenko’s corrupt leadership Ukraine’s economy has failed to recover, and the president’s personal approval rating is at a mind-blowing two per cent.

Like Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Poroshenko is a billionaire oligarch and both countries rank 131st out of 176 nations in terms of corruption. That is where the similarity ends as Putin has an 81 per cent personal popularity rating and Russia’s economy — despite the international sanctions — continues to grow.

If Canada truly wanted to assist the Ukrainian people and not the despised regime that runs it, we would focus more on eradicating the rampant corruption in Kiev before trying to force more Ukrainians in a breakaway territory to submit to it.

ON TARGET: When Is A Terrorist Not A Terrorist

Syfullo Saipov

By Scott Taylor

In the wake of the Halloween day terror attack in New York City, we had the immediate media overreaction the minute it was gleaned that the perpetrator, Sayfullo Saipov, was inspired by none other than Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS).

U.S. President Donald Trump was at his twittering best as he denounced Saipov as a “degenerate animal” and he vowed a tenfold vengeance upon Daesh evildoers.

The fact that Saipov had immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan led Trump to tweet out his long-stated opposition to the United States’ diversity visa lottery program. It was through this lottery selection process that Saipov was admitted into the U.S. in 2010. Despite every indication Saipov became radicalized after he immigrated, The Donald insists that his ban on Muslim immigration is the only thing that will keep America safe again.

Stephen Paddock

As for Saipov’s connection to Daesh, well we know that he requested an ISIS flag to decorate the hospital room in which he is recovering from the gunshot wound he received when New York police ended his killing spree.

Then there is the claim made by Daesh in their own Al Naba newspaper wherein they describe Saipov as a “caliphate soldier.” That would of course be the same self-proclaimed caliphate that has now been reduced to a couple of hard-pressed pockets in Iraq and Syria. In fact, one has to wonder just how those last few fanatics can still have a newspaper in which to claim credit for Saipov’s rampage.

However, just in case there is any doubt, U.S. Homeland Security officials are telling us that, while Saipov received no direct training from Daesh, his methods were “straight out of the ISIS playbook.” That particular guide to terrorism is entitled “Just Terror Tactics” and was published late last year by Daesh evildoers.

So, just to quickly recap Saipov’s attack: he rented a truck at Home Depot and drove it down a crowded bicycle path, killing and injuring all that he could. In the truck he had a bag of knives for beheading people, but failed to grab it when he rolled the vehicle. Instead, he grabbed a pair of imitation handguns, which he brandished while shouting “Allah Akbar!” (God is great) until the NYPD shot him and took him into custody.

If U.S. Homeland Security is to be believed, then we can conclude that the Daesh handbook on terror attacks is not very sophisticated, and relies upon the perpetrator’s suicidal fanaticism.

The immediate response from New York City and State officials was that they would not give in to such acts of terrorism. This has become the common response to any terror-related incidents by both U.S. and Canadian officials.

It is of course a ridiculous statement as there is no alternative. We cannot surrender to a handful of zealots.

What we can do instead is let the terrorists alter the way in which we conduct our lives and that is exactly what U.S. officials have proposed in the wake of Saipov’s attack.

Transportation departments are tasked with installing barricades and additional safety measures to prevent future vehicular attacks. One cannot fathom how many sand trucks and concrete barriers it would take to make that even possible, not to mention the disruption that will cause to already congested city traffic.

On the flip side of all of this is the U.S. reaction to Stephen Paddock’s October 1 non-terrorist attack in Las Vegas.

Using a rental van, a bag of kitchen knives and two fake guns, Saipov was able to kill 8 and injure 11 innocent people. Using an arsenal of legally purchased assault rifles, non-terrorist Paddock killed 58 and caused injury to another 546 innocent concertgoers.

Saipov’s attack sparked an immediate demand from Trump to tighten immigration controls and federal officials have already ordered increased safety measures.

Paddock’s shooting rampage created 31 times the carnage, but there has not been a single change nor even a pledge to change America’s ridiculous gun laws.

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.