ON TARGET: Saudi Arabia Spends a Fortune On Defence and Still Cannot Defend itself

By Scott Taylor

On September 14, there was a series of missile and drone attacks that struck Saudi Arabian oil processing facilities near the city of Abqaiq. The result of the impact by an estimated 17 warheads was to cut Saudi oil production in half, taking nearly 5 million barrels a day off the world market. This of course caused speculators to drive up the price of oil, and within hours this was reflected in a spike in prices at gas pumps across Canada.

The Houthi led government forces in Yemen claimed responsibility for the strike, yet Saudi Arabia insists that Iran was the culprit. Iran has categorically denied responsibility for the attacks.

For those not closely following the bouncing ball of Middle East events, here is a summary leading up to this current crisis.

In 2015, the Shiite Muslim Houthi minority in Yemen, with Iranian backing, overthrew the Sunni Muslim Yemeni government, led by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. His military force defeated, Hadi fled into exile.

Almost immediately, Saudi Arabia led a military coalition into Yemen in an effort to restore Hadi and his Sunni supporters. This conflict is seen as yet another in a series of proxy wars throughout the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In the wake of this latest strike at Saudi oil production, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reaffirmed the position that America is firmly backing Saudi Arabia and that all possible means of military retaliation against Iran are on the table.

Initial reports talked of the U.S. military potentially targeting Iran’s oil refinery at Abadan, which is one of the world’s largest, or the Khark Island crude oil export facility, or both.

I may be missing something here but unless the objective is to drive oil prices back above USD $100 per barrel, how could taking even more oil off the world market benefit the global situation?

The real puzzle is why would it fall to the U.S.A to do Saudi Arabia’s military bidding when it comes to a stand off with Iran?

For those not familiar with the statistics it may come as a bit of a shock to know that Saudi Arabia is the third largest defence-spending nation in the world behind only the U.S.A and China. As a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product, Saudi Arabia leads the world at a whopping 12.5% of GDP on defence.

For the record, Canada currently spends just 1.2% of GDP on defence with both the NATO Secretary General and Donald Trump urging us to raise that amount to at least 2% of GDP.

The actual dollar figure spent on defence by Saudi Arabia is USD $67 billion annually, which is more than three times the estimated USD $19 billion spent by rival Iran. For an even more ridiculous comparison, poor old Yemen spends just USD $1.4 billion per year on the military – fifty times less than what the Saudis spend and yet the Saudi military has been unable to subdue the Yemeni Houthis in more than four years of intense fighting.

One of the first questions that needs to be asked is why, with so much spent on defence, was Saudi Arabia unable to protect such a strategic asset as the massive oil processing plants at Abqaiq? The Yemen rebels have been launching pinprick drone missile attacks on targets inside Saudi Arabia for some time now – although nothing on the scale and scope of the September 14 attacks.

Sophisticated air defence systems are capable of dealing with most modern drone threats, and from the enormity of their defence  budget, Saudi Arabia could certainly afford the best such systems in the world.

The other glaring conundrum is why the U.S. would feel the need to commit its own military resources to retaliation against Iran. Surely with all the deadly hardware the U.S. has sold to Saudi Arabia over the decades they should be capable of taking care of their own regional squabbles.

For Canada’s part, the Harper government broke off all diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012 and Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland froze out the Saudis in the summer of 2018 as a result of the Kingdom’s widespread domestic abuse of human rights.

Canada has no dog in this fight but everyone on the planet will have a stake in the outcome.

Stay tuned.

ON TARGET: Trump Calls Off Peace Talks: Unwinnable War In Afghanistan Continues For USA

By Scott Taylor

In the days leading up to the anniversary of 9/11, U.S. President Donald Trump sent out a bizarre tweet claiming that he had just called off a secret summit at Camp David. According to Trump, senior leaders of the Taliban along with President Ashraf Ghani and Afghan Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah were about to jointly announce the signing of a peace deal.

This would have fulfilled one of Trump’s key election campaign promises to bring an end to America’s longest running war. Trump also made a lot of noise at the time about how he was going to win the war in Afghanistan, because despite his absolute absence of any military experience, he is somehow a self-proclaimed master strategist.

Now Trump claims that on the eve of him making what would have been a landmark announcement, he called off the Camp David meeting and shut down the peace talks completely. “They are dead.” Trump tweeted, referring to the status of peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Trump’s claim that senior Taliban leaders were to be on hand, on American soil to announce the deal was somewhat startling. However, the fact that the U.S. has been holding peace talks with the Taliban was not news. For the past 18 months, U.S. negotiators led by former Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad have been taking place in Doha, Qatar.

The fact that these discussions were taking place without any inclusion of representation from the impotent tag team of Ghani and Abdullah is certainly telling. By excluding the corrupt cabal, which the U.S. has installed in Kabul and propped up for the past 18 years means that the U.S. senior leadership has given up on the Ghani- Abdullah regime.

The real power struggle in Afghanistan has always been between the U.S. and the Taliban since America initially invaded in 2001. Despite all the rhetoric and effort put into arming and training the Afghan security forces to be self-sufficient – and this includes more than a decade long Canadian military contribution to the cause – the fact is that Afghan security forces remain all but useless.

The training and weaponry are not the problem, what they lack is the motivation to fight. While the Afghan soldiers wish to live in order to cash their U.S. provided paycheques, the Taliban fighters are more than willing to die for their cause.

Thus, while the U.S. currently maintains 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the Afghan security forces number around 400,000, the U.S. soldiers remain the Taliban’s biggest threat.

The plan being hatched in Qatar was to see the Americans withdraw all remaining 14,000 troops in exchange for the Taliban promising to never again allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for foreign terrorist forces.

This agreement in principle must have scared the bejeezus out of Ghani and Abdullah because by its very nature, the deal surmises that the Taliban will be in control of Afghanistan the minute that the last U.S. soldier departs from the airfield in Bagram.

This was widely understood by Canadian soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan. Our soldiers fought, died, and were wounded propping up an Afghan regime so despised by its own population, that despite millions of dollars in weaponry and training, Afghan soldiers could not defeat their own countrymen.

But now with a single tweet Trump has called off those peace talks. The genesis for Trump’s sudden about-face was that the Taliban had set off a car bomb in Kabul, which had killed a “great, great” American soldier, along with a Romanian soldier and 11 civilians.

Despite Trump’s campaign promise to end the war, there are currently more U.S. troops in Afghanistan than when Barack Obama left office.

Trump will spin this whole cancellation and claim that this incident only proves he is still a master negotiator who was not intimidated by the Taliban’s continued campaign of terror. However, by calling off the peace deal he has committed American forces to an indefinite continuation of a war they could never win.

Time is definitely on the side of the Taliban, as they do not have four-year election cycles.

ON TARGET: Canadian Troops Should Not Be Used as Props to Commemorate Nazi Collaborators

Photo taken on Aug. 21, 2019. (Sambir municipal council/Facebook)

By Scott Taylor

There was a bizarre little story last week out of Ukraine, which was picked up by Radio-Canada International. It centered on Canada’s official participation in the dedication of a monument at a Jewish Cemetery in the town of Sambir.

Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Roman Waschuk and at least three uniformed Canadian military personnel took part in the formal ceremony. The promise of this event was to promote a reconciliatory path forward for Ukrainians and Jews. This of course is a very delicate subject given the history of violent anti-Semitism in this region of western Ukraine.

In fact, the August 21 memorial dedication in Sambir itself served to clearly illustrate these divisions.

While the site of the ceremony was on the edge of a Jewish cemetery, which also served as a mass grave for some 1,200 Jews slaughtered in 1943 during the Holocaust, the monument was not dedicated to those victims.

Instead it featured a large granite cross and was erected in honour of 17 members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) who were allegedly executed by the German Gestapo in 1944. For the record, the OUN were Nazi collaborators who were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and a 100,000 Poles.

By the end of WWII all of the approximately 6,000 Jewish residents were dead or expelled and during the decades of Soviet communism the eradication of this community went unrecognized.

Fast forward to year 2000, and under the initiative of Canadian Jewish philanthropist Jack Gardner a stone monument was erected in Sambir to commemorate these Holocaust victims. In a shocking turn of events local Ukrainian nationalists tore down the monument and instead erected three ten-metre tall wooden crucifixes. These three crosses were claimed to honour the 17 executed OUN members, which are now immortalized by the new granite monument.

The exact circumstances surrounding the deaths of these 17 OUN fighters was questioned in the Times of Israel by noted Swedish historian Per Rudling. As an expert in the history of the OUN, Rudling found the Ukrainian version to be ‘dubious’ because while the OUN had briefly turned against the Germans, by August 1944 when the alleged executions occurred, the OUN was in full collaboration with the Nazis.

The August 21 ceremony also featured participation of Ukraine’s Chief Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, which drew stern criticism from prominent Jewish leaders and Holocaust scholars.

Efram Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre told the Times of Israel “It is incomprehensible how a Rabbi would participate in such a ceremony. This is clearly a white wash of the horrible crimes committed against Jews in Sambir and only reinforces the highly problematic tendency in Ukraine to hide Holocaust crimes committed by Ukrainians.”  

Rabbi Bleich claimed that his participation in the event was a ‘necessary comprise’, which will eventually pave the way to a monument recognizing the Jewish Holocaust victims as well.

This bring us back to the official participation in such a controversial ceremony by a Canadian diplomat, and even more disturbing the use of our soldiers in uniform being as symbolic props.

I’m sure none of the soldiers present that day were aware of the war crimes associated with the OUN. Whether or not the 17 executed members of the OUN actually committed crimes against Jews is irrelevant. The organization to which they belonged was responsible for horrific crimes against humanity. If local Ukrainian nationalists in the town of Sambir wish to revise their history and continue to exhibit blatant acts of anti-Semitism that should not be supported by Canada. It certainly should not be given the appearance of official sanction by having Canadian soldiers commemorate those who collaborated with Hitler’s Nazis in perpetrating the Holocaust. 

In WWII there were over 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians who proudly wore the Canadian uniform and bravely fought to defeat the Nazi’s. They are the ones deserving of official Canadian commemoration.

ON TARGET: Canadian Armed Forces Member Outed As An Alleged Neo-Nazi Recruiter

By Scott Taylor

The saga of Master Corporal Patrik Mathews continues to be a puzzler, with a plethora of unanswered questions. What we do know for sure is that Mathews joined the Canadian Army reserves eight years ago as a Combat Engineer. He was promoted twice to his current rank, and received training in the usual Combat Engineer skill sets like basic firearms handling, construction, demolition and explosives training.

Thanks to the intrepid, and courageous investigative journalism of Ryan Thorpe with the Winnipeg Free Press, it was recently revealed that Mathews was also the Manitoba based recruiter for a Neo-Nazi hate group known as the Base.

The founder of the Base is an American who goes by the public name of Roman Wolf. Their manifesto is based on white supremacy and they are actively arming and preparing themselves for the “coming race war”.  Recruiting posters for the Base began to appear on Winnipeg streets in July. With slogans like ‘Save your race – Join the Base’ and Nazi style images these flyers attracted the interest of Thorpe and the Free Press.

Thorpe was very quickly able to convince his Base interviewers that he was a legitimate volunteer who possessed the anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant mindset, which they were seeking.

After speaking with none other than head honcho Roman Wolf, Thorpe was granted a face-to-face meeting with Mathews. Although Mathews bragged to Thorpe that he was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Thorpe could not confirm this fact with the military prior to publishing his first story.

Once it was confirmed the MCpl Mathews and the Base recruiter were indeed one and the same person, DND went into full damage control mode. The problem was that nobody seemed to be singing the same song sheet.

Mathews’ Brigade Commander, Colonel Gwen Bourque told the media that the CAF had been blissfully unaware of the young Combat Engineer’s extra-curricular Nazi activities. This was quickly contradicted by Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance, who told CBC that Mathews has first been placed under suspicion for his viewpoints back in April. Vance said that at that juncture Mathews began to receive counseling. However, following an undisclosed escalation in Mathews activities in July, the alleged Neo-Nazi was placed “under full fledged analysis investigation by our national counter-intelligence unit” said Vance.

So, Mathews’ local Brigade headquarters knew nothing, but the feds in Ottawa had it fully under control? Got it.

Then there is the question of Mathews’ actual status in the CAF at the time the story broke. One version had it that Mathews had requested a voluntary release back in April; presumably around the time he was ordered to take counseling.

It was explained by DND spokespersons that these releases could take up to one year to process. Given the revelation by the Free Press that Mathews was in fact a recruiter for the Base, this process was being expedited so that he would not return for duty in the fall.

Further official clarification explained that the Reserve Combat Engineer unit to which Mathews belonged was stood down for the summer between May and September.

On Friday, August 23, after the story broke and his identity was confirmed, Mathews apparently asked his employer for time off so he could return his military gear.

I believe now that Mathews is indeed ‘essentially suspended’ as General Vance has claimed, but it is unclear whether or not Mathews indeed requested his release prior to this story breaking.

Although the RCMP subsequently raided Mathews home and seized what were admittedly legally registered firearms, no charges – either military or civilian have been filed in this case. So why then did Mathews disappear from sight?

This will no doubt play out in the days ahead, but one of the bigger questions we should be asking is why did it take a newspaper reporter endangering himself in order to surface the truth about these Neo-Nazis?

A few phone calls and some gutsy role-playing and Thorpe was able to get inside the Base. We have agencies with trained personnel and weapon permits that are supposed to be doing that sort of thing to protect all Canadians.

ON TARGET: Canadian Armed Forces Sexual Misconduct Stats Don’t Lie….But They Can Be Misleading

By Scott Taylor

On August 13, the Canadian Armed Forces tabled a report which reflected some progress is being made towards reducing rampant sexual misconduct in the ranks. The official spin is that the military is seeing a ‘steady decline’ in complaints of inappropriate and criminal behaviour.

The yardstick used to determine this short term trend is based on the sexual assault tracking system which was put in place four years ago. The genesis for implementing such a tracking system stemmed from a scathing report written by former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps, wherein she concluded the CAF was rife with a male dominant culture of sexual misconduct.

Last year there were a total of 302 reported complaints which is down 25% from the previous year, and 33% fewer cases than in 2016-2017 which was the first year DND began tracking sexual assaults.

Any downward trend is to be commended, but that figure of 302 reported sexual misconducts in a single year seems alarmingly high given the relatively small numbers involved, and the very nature of the institution in which these personnel serve.

It needs to be noted that females represent just 15% of the Canadian military and that women would constitute nearly 100% of the complainants. A previous Statistics Canada survey conducted last November reported that 1.6% of regular force members had been the victim of a sexual assault during the previous 12 months. That percentage adds up to approximately 900 serving personnel, but when one adjusts that figure to reflect the 15% female ratio, that percentage jumps to a staggering 10%.

The large discrepancy in numbers between the Stats-Can survey and the military’s tracking system could in part be explained by the fact that the vast majority of incidents of sexual assault go unreported.

Some feel that what appears to be progress in terms of fewer complaints being filed is in fact reflective of female service members losing trust in the system that their complaints will be properly dealt with.

Marie-Claude Gagnon is a former naval reservist who founded ‘It’s Just 700’ – a support group for military victims of sexual trauma. The title of the group represents the approximately 700 women who participated in Justice Deschamps external review in 2015.

In responding to these latest DND tracking system results, Gagnon told the Canadian Press “Since 2015 the CAF has been enticing victims to report sexual misconduct yet not providing then with adequate support and not consulting with them when they made very important changes that impact victims.”

Another theory on why the ‘steady decline’ in reported cases may in fact be a false positive,  was a significant spike in those cases that were reported by the victim’s supervisor. Last year, 15.2% of the recorded complaints came from a supervisor as opposed to the previous year when only 9.2% of cases logged were initiated by a third party.

Military regulations make it very clear that service members are responsible for reporting misconduct to which they have been made aware, and failure to do so could result in sanctions against them for negligence.

Under such circumstances, some have theorized that victims are therefore hesitant to come forward as it will oblige their supervisors to take action.

One camp believes the numbers are under-reported because victims feel nothing will be done, while the other camp thinks victims are now afraid to come forward  because official action will be taken.

As confusing as this may be, it remains crystal clear that the Canadian military has a huge problem with sexual misconduct.

I want to believe there is in fact a ‘steady decline’ in incidents. I do not buy into the theory that the CAF is simply a representation of Canadian society as a whole.

Yes, the individuals who wear the uniform are human and therefore fallible, but the institution is dedicated to defending Canadian values at home and abroad. Those values are not reflected by sexually assaulting a fellow soldier.

ON TARGET: Symbolic Body Art Signifies Bigger Problems

From Pinterest

By Scott Taylor

What started out as an almost comical, albeit embarrassing incident in Halifax has led the Canadian Armed Forces to once again amend their policy on individual service members’ deportment.

This whole saga began last June in a Tim Horton’s outlet when a member of the Royal Canadian Navy was observed displaying a contentious tattoo on his right forearm. An offended civilian patron quick-wittedly snapped a photo of the tattoo, which had the word ‘infidel’ graphically, altered into the shape of an assault rifle.

As the sailor was in work dress uniform, complete with a ball cap displaying the name of the ship to which he was assigned, this did not require the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes to identify the culprit once the images were made public. The sailor was subsequently questioned by his superiors as to the symbolic meaning of his inked image. According to the official RCN response, the sailor meant no offense to any religion or culture. However, in light of the commotion caused by the social media coverage of this incident, the sailor has agreed to tattoo over the contentious image at his own expense.

So case closed: Chalk another one up to the fact that the CAF is an organization composed of fallible human beings capable of poor judgment on occasion?

Not so fast. Although they insist that the timing is purely coincidental – and definitely not in response to the Tim Horton’s incident - the CAF have just brought in a whole series of new directives regarding tattoos.

The new guidelines were issued on Monday 12, August, by the office of General Jonathan Vance, Chief of the Defence Staff. Military members were warned that anything considered to be sexually explicit, discriminatory, racist, extremist, homophobic, misogynistic, sexist or evidence of membership in a criminal organization, should not be permanently tattooed on their bodies.

The new policy also makes a point of stating that tattoos are forbidden on the face and neck. However, members are allowed to request special consideration if they wish to have their face or scalp tattooed for religious or cultural reasons.

I am blissfully unaware of any religion or culture, which requires a face tattoo, but I am assuming in their efforts to embrace inclusion, the CAF policy planners felt it prudent to include that particular clause.

As an institution the CAF have been grappling to deal with widespread sexual misconduct throughout the ranks. In 2015, General Vance announced the implementation of Operation Honour as a concentrated effort to eliminate such misconduct.

As such, it would be very surprising if anyone in uniform would be so unaware of the career consequences of getting a sexist image or slogan tattooed anywhere on their person.

However, the real concern lies with images which could be associated with criminal organizations such as motorcycle gangs, and more alarmingly white supremacist groups.

Military Intelligence officials report that at least 30 CAF members were discovered to have been associated with hate groups in the past year.

Forbidding such members from displaying symbolic tattoos will prevent future embarrassment for the institution, but it does not remove the criminals or white supremacists from the military.

Maybe policy makers should have taken the opposite tack when dealing with tattoos. If members harboring such deep sentiments regarding sexism or racism that they wish to permanently brand themselves with a vulgar message – that says a lot about their true character.

Instead of ordering members to cover over offensive images, why not use these symbols to identify personality disorders? I’m not saying that any service member with a questionable tattoo be discharged, but it is safe to say that if someone is sporting “the Mayor of Boobtown” on his forearm he might need a little counseling regarding sexism in the workplace.

Symbols of racism, criminal entities, or white supremacy on the other hand have absolutely no place on those who wear the uniform in defence of Canadian values.

ON TARGET: Liberal’s Broke Promise to Make Peacekeeping Great Again

Members of the CH-147 Chinook medical team practice exiting the helicopter under the watchful eye of the force protection team in support of Operation PRESENCE - Mali around Gao, Mali. (Photo: MCpl Jennifer Kusche)

By Scott Taylor

Last Friday was National Peacekeepers’ Day and in honour of this momentous occasion Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted out the following message: “Canadian Peacekeepers put themselves in harm’s way to protect Human Rights, lay the foundations of peace and help rebuild societies after war. Today we honour them for their tireless work.”

This sentiment certainly echoes the Liberal Party’s 2015 election campaign promise to make Canada a great peacekeeper again.

That pledge to get Canadian soldiers wearing the U.N. Blue berets again, rather than sending our military to participate in U.S. initiated global conflicts, seemed to resonate with the electorate, and Trudeau swept into power with a majority government.

In the summer of 2016, less than one year into their mandate, the Liberals announced that Canada would be committing a force of 600 military and 150 police for a twelve month deployment, at a budgeted cost of $450 million, to an unnamed U.N. mission in Africa. That was first announced by Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, and subsequently confirmed by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

Then nothing happened. Despite the fact that the U.N. had several missions involving ongoing peacekeeping efforts in Africa it seemed that the Canadian government could not decide where to commit their promised resources.

Fast-forward to November 2017 and Canada played host to a U.N. Defence Minister’s conference in Vancouver. At that juncture Canada had so few actual military personnel assigned to U.N. missions that were we not the host nation, we would not have been allowed to participate in the conference.

Trudeau announced at that meeting that Canada was prepared to commit 200 ground troops, transport and armed helicopters, cargo planes and military trainers for future U.N. peacekeeping operations.

This pronouncement led to a round of mild applause, but keen eyed pundits were quick to ask what happened to the original 2016 pledge of a 600 strong force in Africa?

General Vance was quick to reaffirm “We will be deploying up to 600,” but that this figure would include soldiers not actually deployed to the foreign peacekeeping operations.

In the end, Canada settled on providing the medical airlift capacity for the U.N. mission in Mali. This effort included the deployment of two CH-147F Chinook helicopters – one of which is configured as a mobile air ambulance complete with a surgical suite, four armed CH-146 Griffon utility helicopters and approximately 250 military personnel.

The mission was to be twelve months in duration, and as such it was to have been concluded on July 31 of this year. Unofficially, this termination date has been extended until at least the end of August. The Romanian Air force, which is to replace our contingent, is not yet ready to deploy. Despite repeated pleas from U.N. authorities for Canada to remain until at least October, when the Romanians will be in place, the Canadian government has steadfastly refused to officially extend our solitary peacekeeping effort.

This is in stark contrast to the rapidity with which Canada has been extending all of our current non-U.N. foreign military deployments. We presently have two separate missions in Iraq totaling up to 850 personnel and at least four Griffon helicopters. The Special Forces train, advice and assist role, and the NATO training mission have recently been extended to 2021 and 2020 respectively. The commitment of 200 trainers to Ukraine was recently extended to 2023 and the provision of a battle group 500 strong to Latvia is open ended.

No matter when exactly our last chopper departs the Mali mission, it will certainly be prior to the federal election on October 21. So after a four-year term, Canada under the Liberals will be back to contributing zilch to the U.N., while we continue to deploy considerable forces on U.S. or NATO led military adventures.

Will this impact the election results? I doubt it.

Unlike the mission to Afghanistan, our soldiers are thankfully not returning to Canada in coffins on a regular basis. Canadians did not relate to the mission in Mali, they did not debate it, and according to recent polls the majority of our population do not even know what purpose our Canadian Armed Forces serve.

At least Trudeau thought enough to thank the peacekeepers for their tireless work. Happy International Peacekeepers Day indeed.

ON TARGET: Kandahar Cenotaph Dedication Ceremony: Paying Tribute To War We Could Not Win

Photo from: https://stalkingcat.blogspot.com/2006/08/ramp-ceremony-held-at-kandahar.html

By Scott Taylor

On Saturday, August 17, the Department of National Defence will host a dedication ceremony for what has come to be known as the Kandahar cenotaph. The original structure had been a personal peer tribute erected by Canadian soldiers still serving at the Kandahar Airfield to commemorate their comrades who were killed in Afghanistan. By the time Canada concluded its combat mission in 2011, and packed up the cenotaph, it included plaques representing 161 fallen Canadian soldiers and civilians.

Once it was repatriated to Canada there was much discussion as to where the cenotaph should find a permanent residence, as it is a moving symbol of Canada’s sacrifice in the Afghan mission.

With various government agencies doing what they do best – blocking all proposals regardless of their merit – DND finally decided to handle the problem within its own sphere of control. Thus, it was decided that the Kandahar cenotaph would be placed within the Nortel Campus of National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

For anyone familiar with the geography of our nation’s capital it is readily apparent that far from being in a central location, the Nortel Campus is well off the beaten path. Furthermore, as a functioning military headquarters facility it is a secure premise with no public access.

So, while the new permanent location is far from ideal, DND went one step beyond when they held the original dedication ceremony on May 13, without inviting or even notifying the families of the fallen. Word of the event first surfaced through social media posts three days after the VIP ceremony. Naturally enough this sparked an emotional backlash from many of the grieving families. This being an election year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to make things right. As a result of Trudeau’s public pledge, we now have the upcoming ceremony, which will allow for travel costs and accommodation for up to six guests for each of the 161 individual soldiers and civilians who are represented on the cenotaph.

There are to be an estimated 1200 invited guests in attendance on August 17, with a projected catering bill alone in the range of $50,000.

I have no doubt that this time around the Kandahar cenotaph will be well and properly dedicated with all the pomp and ceremony worthy of such an occasion.

However, it will also inevitably be a bitter and sad experience for all of those assembled mourners who will be grieving the loss of a loved one.

It needs to be remembered that the dead were not the only sacrifice made by Canada’s sons and daughters in Afghanistan. There were over 2,000 soldiers wounded or physically injured during that decade long conflict and there are countless thousands more who continue to suffer from the invisible wounds caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Like the families of the fallen, the families of the wounded continue to struggle with the realities of the Afghanistan conflict’s aftermath on a daily basis.

When Canada concluded its combat mission in 2011 and then completed the military training assistance to Afghanistan in 2014, the die-hard hawks in the media who had blindly cheerleaded the war effort, said it was “too soon to calculate whether the sacrifice was worth it.”

They held on to the faintest of hopes that somehow the seeds of democracy, which we had helped to sow, would suddenly sprout into a peaceful utopia of prosperity and we could all rejoice.

Well now it is clear that this will never transpire. The U.S. has been negotiating directly with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. In exchange for the promise that the Taliban will not harbour any future terrorist threats in Afghanistan, the U.S. will begin drastically reducing the level of American troops.

Trump recently quipped that he could still ‘win’ the war in Afghanistan, but would not do so because he “doesn’t want to kill 10 million people.” Threatening to wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth is simply macho buffoonery by the Donald in the face of the humiliating reality that the Afghan insurgents have after eighteen years of resistance beaten the world’s greatest superpower.

Yes, August 17 will be a sad commemoration of lives lost in a war we could never win. And for the record, no, that sacrifice cannot be justified.

ON TARGET: Do We Really Need An Iranian Sock Puppet To Tell Us Trump Is Dangerous?

By Scott Taylor

For years now we have been told by various western intelligence agencies that Russia is using social media platforms to interfere in foreign elections and referendums. We are to believe that it was the Russians who manipulated the Brits into voting for Brexit, infused the American populace with bigotry which led to Trump’s election win, confused Ontario voters into making Doug Ford premier, and now they somehow seduced the British card-carrying members of the Conservative Party into making Boris Johnson the U.K.’s prime Minister.

Since the internet, and in particular social media platforms are chock-o-block full of fake news and conspiracy theories I was always puzzled as to exactly how the Russians were able to navigate through a sea of misinformation in order to play the Pied Piper leading us all so far astray.

Thankfully, last week the Washington Post ran a story outlining how not only Russia, but now Iran as well is planting the seeds of social discord via the internet. According to the Post, it was an Iranian ‘sock-puppet’ – the term used for fictitious online persona – who sent a tweet at a Hawaiian Congressman. The alias used by the Iranians was that of ‘Alicia Hernan’ whose fake identity purported her to be a “wife, mother and lover of peace”.

The message sent to the Congressman was a reference to President Trump: “That stupid moron doesn’t get that by creating bad guys, spewing hate filled words and creating fear of ‘others’, his message is spreading to fanatics around the world. Or maybe he does.”

Wow, pretty harsh words and some name-calling to boot? It would seem that Iranian intelligence services are going to great lengths to portray the Donald as a danger to world peace in order to make Americans vote for the Democrats. According to the Post, Alicia Hernan was one of 7,000 phony Iranian accounts that were shut down by Twitter this year alone.

Meanwhile, in the non-fake news category, last Monday Trump blew up a storm of controversy during an Oval Office meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. In typical Trump fashion, the U.S. President told reporters that he could win the war in Afghanistan within a week by simply blowing it “off the face of the earth.”

Given that Trump actually has the codes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the fact that in 2017 America dropped the world’s largest – Mother-of-All-Bombs aka MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast) non nuclear bomb on Afghanistan, officials in Kabul were quick to demand clarification.

According to Trump “If [the U.S.] wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people… Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone.”

While it is certainly true that the American military possess the combined firepower to blast Afghan cities into rubble and kill millions of innocent civilians, what is not clear is how that would in any way be considered a ‘win’. 

Afghanistan is an impoverished, underdeveloped nation with largely illiterate and unskilled workforce. The U.S. military and their Afghan allies toppled the Taliban and declared victory in 2001. That was eighteen years ago and despite the expenditure of nearly one trillion dollars, and countless lives, Afghanistan remains defiant to U.S. rule.

In response to Trump’s threat to wipe Afghanistan “off the face of the earth”, a Kabul regime spokesperson stated, “The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate.” History has proven this to be the case dating back to the Afghan defeat of Alexander the Great. It is not a baseless claim that Afghanistan has become the graveyard of empires.

What Trump did not explain was how his “victory” would be cemented over the 20 million Afghans who would – according to his numbers – survive his threatened apocalypse. One has to imagine they would be pretty peeved to find themselves in a smouldering crater. But I digress.

What I have to question is why foreign state actors – like Iran and Russia would expend such energy creating ‘sock-puppets’ to fabricate the impression that Trump is a dangerous moron.

Just roll the cameras and let Trump prove that point himself.

ON TARGET: Examining The Khadr Case

By Scott Taylor

There was a news story earlier this month detailing how the widow of a U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan could lay claim to the $10.5 million payout which was awarded to Omar Khadr. Naturally enough this set social media platforms abuzz with the usual hate frenzy aimed at Khadr.

The online arguments are heavy on emotion but often fall wide of the actual facts in the case. It is therefore probably a good idea to recap the main points of the entire Khadr saga.

Khadr was born in Canada to immigrant parents from Egypt and Palestine. His father Ahmed was undeniably an Islamic extremist with links to al Qaeda. Khadr would have been influenced by his father’s religious beliefs.

Ahmed Khadr brought his son to Afghanistan to fight against the Americans, but at the time that Omar was wounded and captured he was only fifteen years old. For him to have been a boy in a war zone is the sole responsibility of his father. Even in civilian courts any crime committed would have him tried as a minor and Khadr could best be described as an exploited boy soldier.

In order to secure his release from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay after eight years of captivity, Khadr plead guilty to “murder in violation of the law of war.”

After being returned to Canada, Khadr claimed this confession to murder was a coerced statement made under the duress of alternately facing continued custody.

I have always been perplexed at the fact that the U.S. authorities could consider a soldier killed in battle to have been murdered.

The details of the July 22, 2002 firefight in the Afghan village of Ayub Kheyl show that it was a set piece battle, planned and executed by U.S. Special Forces. They were aware that this hamlet contained foreign fighters and Taliban. They called in several airstrikes from Apache helicopter gunships and an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, which dropped a 225 kilogram bomb.

As the U.S. Special Forces teams began mopping up, a grenade was thrown, killing Christopher Speer and wounding his comrade Layne Morris. No eyewitness has ever claimed to see Khadr throw the grenade, but he was the sole survivor – and barely a survivor at that.

Khadr was so badly wounded in the clash that he would have died without the skilled treatment by a U.S. medic on the scene.

Deemed an illegal combatant, Khadr was taken to Guantanamo Bay despite the fact he was an underage Canadian citizen. There he would endure eight years of brutal captivity before pleading guilty in exchange for his release to Canada.

It was Canada’s failure to protect Khadr’s rights, which the Supreme Court of Canada determined in 2010, “offended the most basic Canadian standards of treatment of detained youth suspects.”

It was that ruling which in turn led to the 2017 decision to pay Khadr a $10.5 million settlement for the government’s failure to prevent his detention and torture by American authorities. For the record, Khadr was not awarded the settlement because he was a terrorist.

For their part, Christopher Speer’s widow Tabitha and Layne Morris who lost an eye in the 2002 skirmish, took Khadr’s murder confession before a Utah court. That court ruled that Khadr is to pay the pair a total of $134 million USD in compensation.

It is this State Court judgment with which Speer’s widow and Morris intend to use to lay claim to any of the compensation cash paid out to Khadr.

Again, I cannot understand the rationale behind the Utah court’s judgment in this case. Speer and Morris were soldiers in combat at the time of their respective death and injury. Why would they, in this instance be compensated such a massive amount of money when the lump sum death benefit paid to the family of a Canadian soldier killed in battle is only $400,000?

Whether he confessed to the murder or not, it is difficult to label it a homicide when at the time the ‘victim’ was himself shooting at and attempting to kill the ‘murderer.’

That is called combat.

ON TARGET: Getting the Kandahar Cenotaph Dedication Ceremony Right

These plaques, with images of Canadians – and Americans under Canadian command – killed in Afghanistan, are part of the Kandahar Cenotaph now on display at National Defence Headquarters (Carling) in Ottawa. Photo: Master Corporal Levarre McDonald, Canadian Forces Support Unit (Ottawa). ©2019 DND/MDN Canada.

By Scott Taylor

Back in mid-May, the Department of National Defence blew up a media storm of controversy when they held a private dedication ceremony for what had become known as the Kandahar cenotaph. Three days after the May 13 dedication, DND simply posted up some photos on social media, alerting people to the fact that there had been no media advisory, no media present and most importantly, no inclusion of the families of the fallen.

Naturally enough this sparked outrage, and in the face of the public backlash Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to get to the bottom of this blunder. Ironically, Defence Minister Harjitt Sajjan – who had attended the private ceremony inside DND’s Nortel Campus – was standing behind Trudeau as he made his statement to the media.

While responsibility for this error in judgment would not be much of a mystery, the decision has now been made to hold a dedication ceremony only this time they will invite the families. The plan is now for DND to pay the travel expenses for up to six family members of each of the 161 Canadian soldiers and civilians commemorated on the cenotaph.

The original structure at the NATO airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan had begun as a sort of impromptu tribute to fallen comrades. Regretfully, it continued to grow in size and scope as Canadian casualties steadily mounted. Following the cessation of Canada’s combat role in 2011, the cenotaph was crated up and repatriated to Canada.

Plans were tossed around for a suitable public location in Ottawa, including one proposal to place it at the Navy Reserve facility at Dow’s Lake. Personally, I still think it would be best suited for permanent placement at Beechwood, Canada’s National Military Cemetery.

However, in the end, possibly owing to the inability to get all involved governmental agencies to agree to a single plan – it was decided to place it inside the DND Nortel campus.

This remote site is not central to Ottawa and as a functioning military headquarters, only accessible by military personnel and DND civilians.

Following the clamour raised back in May, arrangements were made to allow the public to set up pre-arranged, escorted visits – which I’m sure is not without its own administrative hurdles.

Commemorating the fallen is a noble and necessary exercise as these were Canada’s brave sons and daughters who went into harm’s way on the orders of the Canadian government.

Beyond simply honouring their sacrifice it is also incumbent upon us as citizens to question whether the price paid was worth the cost. In World War One Canadian soldiers helped defeat the German Kaiser and preserved the British Empire. In the Second World War, Canada and the Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Those who fought in Korea successfully kept the south free from communism.

The war in Afghanistan was not a victory. It was Canada’s longest war to date. We ended the combat mission in 2011 and concluded our military training mission in the spring of 2014. However, the war continues to rage in that country and there is no longer even any talk of a possible victory. The Taliban now control more territory than at any point since the U.S. declared them ‘toppled’ back in 2001.

More importantly, the U.S. is now seemingly giving up on the corrupt regime which they installed in Kabul to replace the Taliban. That would be the same corrupt regime that those 161 Canadian names on the Kandahar cenotaph died while attempting to prop up.

In recent peace talks held in Qatar it was announced that the U.S. are close to a deal with the Taliban. The basis for this deal would be the withdrawal of U.S. forces in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for foreign terrorists.

Not included in these talks are either President Ashraf Ghani or his ridiculously titled sidekick, Chief Operating Officer Abdullah Abdullah, the dubious duo that ostensibly rule Afghanistan.

This signals the U.S. is giving up on them and realizes that without U.S. troops in theatre, the Taliban will eventually prevail.

Since this will bring us full circle to the situation back in 2001, how can anyone justify the expenditure of so much blood and gold over the past eighteen years?

If Canada really wanted to honour the fallen, we would conduct a full parliamentary inquiry into how and why we were drawn into a war we could not, and did not win.

ON TARGET: Rank Has It's Privilege: 7 Years Imposed Restriction For VCDS

Lieutenant-General Wynnyk, Commander of the Canadian Army

By Scott Taylor

Last week Postmedia broke the story that Canada’s Vice Chief of the Defence Staff has been collecting benefits known as Imposed Restriction (IR) allowance for the past seven years.

Lieutenant-General Paul Wynnyk was first posted to Ottawa as the deputy commander of the army back in 2012. At that juncture in his long military career Wynnyk chose not to move his wife to Ottawa from Edmonton, and instead he made the choice to live and work on his own in the nation’s capital.

By keeping Edmonton as his primary residence, Wynnyk was entitled to collect $1600 in rent allowance per month and an additional $100 for parking in IR benefits. More importantly under this arrangement his wife could retain her job as associate clinical professor in the Department of Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

So far, so good. The policy of IR benefits is designed for exactly that purpose of avoiding the trauma and cost of uprooting entire families in the short term. However as Wynnyk’s career progressed, he was promoted and appointed to a series of positions, which were all based in Ottawa.

Thus the short term evolved into a full seven years and the tab for Wynnyk’s ongoing IR allowance is now over $140,000 in total.

For the record, the average timeframe for a service member to collect IR would be about six months, and the military admitted that it is extremely unusual for that allowance to be paid in excess of five years.

That was the gist of the news story. At no point was it ever even insinuated that Wynnyk had done anything illegal. It was simply noted that the general’s choice comes at a substantial cost to taxpayers.

What was bizarre was the statement issued by the Department of Natural Defence to justify Wynnyk’s extended IR benefits. “The bottom line is that LGen Wynnyk has graciously agreed, time after time, to support the Canadian Armed Forces in its Ottawa HQ so that we can all take benefit from his experience, guidance and leadership while serving well past his eligibility for a full pension at 35 years in the CAF. He has sacrificed his own needs to benefit the institution, for which we are grateful.”

This official statement makes it sound like Wynnyk was volunteering his time to serve Canada out of the goodness of his heart. For the record, a LGen makes in the neighborhood of $250,000 a year. Hardly chump change, and by not moving his wife to Ottawa she retained her job at the University. That was their personal choice.

As for noting that Wynnyk had served his maximum pension eligibility of 35 years, that is a bit of an attempt to mislead.

Service members accumulate their pension at a rate of 2% per year served to a maximum of 35, which equals 70%. That percentage is then based on the average annual salary for the service member’s five highest paid years. So while Wynnyk cannot increase his percentage, he can, and has, added to his actual pension payout by increasing that five best year average total.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have known Wynnyk for many years and consider him to be a highly capable and well-respected senior officer. That being said, the insinuation in DND’s statement is that the Canadian Armed Forces is depending upon Wynnyk’s expertise, guidance and leadership. The problem with that comment is that it does a disservice to the equally professional and equally talented 130 General Officers and Flag Officers currently serving. That’s correct folks, Canada has a total of 130 Generals and Admirals.

It should also be remembered that for the past year Wynnyk was serving as VCDS in place of the suspended Vice Admiral Mark Norman, another individual who embodied expertise, guidance and leadership, but I digress.

The simple truth of the Wynnyk story is that he followed an existing policy and stretched the rules without breaking them. If he had to make any sacrifice to his lifestyle this was purely due to his own personal choice. It was not like he was deployed on a seven year posting to Afghanistan and deprived of being with his family.

The military lifestyle is considered to be a nomadic one. It is also understood that extended separations from family are a hardship, and that is why benefits like IR exist.

Wynnyk played both sides of that coin at the taxpayers expensive and to his own benefit.

ON TARGET: Canada's Mission In Iraq Has No Hope For Success

By Scott Taylor

On June 26, the government of Canada announced an extension to the current mission in Iraq by 12 months, to November 2020. Most Canadians are probably blissfully unaware that we even have troops in Iraq, or that back in November 2018 our military took command of the NATO effort to train Iraqi security forces.

This training cadre consists of 250 Canadians of a total NATO strength of 580 personnel. Based largely in Baghdad, this training mission is separate from the Canadian special forces deployment in northern Iraq, which continues to assist Iraqi forces as they mop up the remnants of the Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) fanatics who have remained defiant in defeat.

In announcing the extension, a lot of emphasis was its commander: Maj.-Gen. Jennie Carignan. A veteran combat soldier with tours in the Balkans and Afghanistan, Carignan will become the first woman to command Canadian troops at that rank level operationally.

By all accounts Carignan is a superb officer and I’m sure she and her fellow Canadians will acquit themselves in a most professional manner. What they will not be is successful in their endeavour, for the simple reason that no one has yet to define what success will be in the end for Iraq.

When the NATO mission was first proposed, and Canada agreed to command it, there was no actual objective stated. It was simply a 12-month commitment of resources and money. Now that has become a 24-month commitment and still no final goal has been stated.

No one has defined the size of the security force Iraq needs or how proficient it should be before NATO’s work is considered complete. During Saddam Hussein’s three-decade rule, Iraq had mandatory-conscripted military service for all adult males. From 1980 to 1988 Iraq battled Iran in a bloody war of attrition. In 1991 the U.S. coalition destroyed a fully mobilized Iraqi army in the mother of all one-sided conflicts, and then repeated that widespread destruction of Iraq’s military when America invaded in 2003.

No one ever formally surrendered the Iraqi armed forces in May 2003, the military and police force simply dissolved, and what units remained were disbanded by the new U.S. masters.

However, by August 2003, as the Iraqi insurgency began to coalesce, the Americans began to recruit and train a new Iraqi security force. Over the past 16 years, the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars, training hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to kill, while outfitting them with the necessary weaponry and vehicles to achieve that objective.

Now the NATO brain trust has determined that yet more young Iraqi males need to learn to be soldiers, and Canada has agreed to command that effort.

Since I cannot wish Maj.-Gen. Carignan success, I do wish her and all the elite Canadian soldiers tasked with this fool’s errand, godspeed and a safe return.

Closer to home on the same topic, there is a new exhibit at the Canadian War Museum. It is entitled ‘Portraits of Courage: President George W. Bush’s Tribute to American Veterans.’ The exhibit features 51 paintings by the former U.S. president depicting former soldiers with visible and invisible wounds, suffered during the wars fighting when Bush was America’s commander-in-chief.

It must be remembered that Canada did not fall for the Bush administration’s lie about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction. As a result we opted out of supporting Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003.

The initiative of bringing the Bush portraits to Ottawa was funded by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft, and her billionaire husband Joe Craft.

What I do not understand is why this collection is being displayed in a museum dedicated to preserving Canadian military history. Paintings of wounded American veterans painted by a former U.S. president are not part of Canada’s military legacy.

If it is intended as a gesture of goodwill to cement Canada-U.S. relations then maybe it belongs in the lobby of Global Affairs Canada headquarters.

ON TARGET: A War Crime is a War Crime…No matter who commits it.

By Scott Taylor

In the summer of 2017, Canadian Special Forces Operatives were deployed to northern Iraq to act as advisors to Kurdish militia who were battling the evil Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) forces. At that juncture in the conflict, Daesh was heavily besieged in the city of Mosul, surrounded by the U.S. led allied ground forces.

Our Canadian soldiers played a very active role in that crucial battle despite the fact that they were officially deployed on a non-combat mission. However one choses to categorize their actions, Canadian snipers did engage and kill Daesh fighters, and on at least one occasion, Canadians successfully destroyed an enemy vehicle with an anti-armour missile.

While the exact nature of Canada’s role in the battle may be disputed, there is no denying that our elite operatives were part of the allied forces that eventually liberated the pile of rubble, which had once been the bustling city of Mosul.

That allied ground force included large contingents of Iraq Shiite militia. As many Middle East analysts had feared, those ill disciplined Shiite militia were motivated more by revenge than anything else, and they committed numerous brutal atrocities against not only Daesh fighters but also many Sunni Arab civilians.

For the record, there were never any allegations of such improprieties leveled against Canadian soldiers. However, the same cannot be said of the U.S. military.

There is presently a court martial in progress at the San Diego Naval Base wherein a highly decorated U.S. Navy SEAL is being tried for numerous charges amounting to a litany of battlefield atrocities.

The individuals who reported Chief Edward Gallagher’s alleged crimes to the military authorities were not a bunch of peace loving hippies who don’t understand the nature of warfare, they were fellow elite U.S. Navy SEALS who were serving alongside the accused in Mosul.

Despite this fact, it still took the U.S. Navy more than a year to bring charges against Gallagher, and his arrest led to a political backlash right up to the White House.

According to his accusers, Gallagher was a bloodthirsty killer who did not discriminate between enemy fighters or unarmed civilians. On one occasion he is alleged to have deliberately shot and killed a teenage girl and on another an elderly unarmed man. Gallagher, despite being a sniper was accused by his comrades of simply taking random shots and indiscriminately spraying rockets and machine gun fire into populated areas with no visible enemy presence.

Evidence tabled at the court martial indicates that Gallagher freely boasted about his propensity to kill – claiming to have averaged three daily kills over 80 days with at least four of these victims being women.

Probably the most horrific allegation against Gallagher was that he stabbed to death an unarmed, wounded, teenage Iraqi prisoner.

Two fellow SEALs testified that upon learning of the Iraqi’s capture, Gallagher had declared “he’s mine” over the radio. When Gallagher arrived on the scene the badly wounded Daesh prisoner was being treated by a medic. Gallagher is said to have stabbed the boy repeatedly with his hunting knife and then posed over the murdered victim for trophy photos.

Despite the fact that witnesses had complained about Gallagher’s actions at the time, a formal investigation was not initiated by the Navy Chain of Command until after the unit returned to the States.

Upon hearing of the allegations against him, Gallagher allegedly threatened to kill his fellow SEALS accusers. This led to additional charges of attempted obstruction of justice and with Gallagher being locked up in the Brig.

That was the case until 30 March when U.S. President Donald Trump personally intervened and ordered that Gallagher be transferred to a “less restrictive confinement.”

On the murder charge of the Daesh prisoner last week, the medic testified that he had in fact sealed off the young Iraqi’s breathing tube. It was he, the medic who killed the prisoner – not Gallagher. No one has refuted the fact that Gallagher stabbed the unarmed victim. The medic freely admitted to being Gallagher’s friend and he testified under an immunity agreement from the prosecutor.

From the perspective of the original Navy prosecutor in this case “Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being. He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”

Nevertheless, should Gallagher still be found guilty, the U.S. Justice Department is reportedly already preparing a possible pardon for Donald Trump’s approval.

The question begs, why?

ON TARGET: Let’s be more creative in our retainment and recruitment of fighter pilots

Lieutenant-Colonel Darcy Molstad, from 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron, 3 Wing Bagotville, Quebec. Lieutenant-Colonel Molstad’s hometown is Edmonton, Alberta. PHOTO: DND

By Scott Taylor

On June 10, Lieutenant General Al Meinzinger, the Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, sent out a message to all personnel outlining several new initiatives which are intended to address the military’s chronic shortage of experienced pilots and ground crew.

As of last fall the RCAF were admittedly short of at least 275 pilots, and the Auditor General report claimed that due to the shortage of qualified personnel, Canada was unable to fully operate the current fleet of CF-18 Hornet fighter jets.

The Liberal government solution to this was to announce the acquisition of 18 used CF-18 fighters from Australia to add to the number of parked planes that we cannot fly or maintain now. But I digress.

The gist of Meinzinger’s latest message is that the RCAF will implement signing bonuses to attract trained fighter pilots back into the service and offer cash retention bonuses to keep those experienced pilots and ground crew in uniform.

The root cause of the present shortage is the worldwide boom in demand for commercial pilots. Some Canadian defence observers have pointed the finger of blame at the singular inability of successive Federal governments to acquire a modern replacement for the thirty-five year old fleet of CF-18’s. The gaping hole in this theory is the fact that when they leave the RCAF they are heading to jobs wherein they will be flying passenger planes. Instead of engaging in high speed maneuvers, vertical climbs and dives they will be making gradual ascents and descents and looking to avoid turbulence.  This is the career change equivalent of a formula one race car driver getting a retirement job driving a school bus.

There was also never a drought of volunteers to learn how to pilot a Sea King helicopter, and those things were in service for over 50 years. What the airlines offer former RCAF pilots is far more than just a lucrative paycheque, they also offer for far more flexibility in terms of where these individuals can reside. At present, if you are going to be part of a fighter Squadron you are stationed at either Cold Lake, Alberta or Bagotville, Quebec.

Neither of these remote centers could be considered an urban hub. This means that employment opportunities for pilots’ spouses is severely limited as are schooling options or special needs facilities for the kids.

During the Cold War, Canada had three fighter squadrons stationed in West Germany; posting to which afforded personnel and their families easy travel access to all of Western Europe. The current options from Bagotville and Cold Lake are, well, a lot less exiting.

I understand the operational necessity of having our fighter aircraft based in these northern bases. However, the question begs, do our pilots and their families need to be permanently based there?

What if our fighter squadrons were officially based in major urban centres for all of their administrative duties, with simulator training capabilities, like firefighters who rotate shifts living at the fire hall? Why not simply transport the pilots and ground crew into Bagotville and Cold Lake when they are to conduct their actual flying operations? Obviously, in a time of crisis it would be a case of all-hands-on-deck, and in such circumstances you would really not want all the families there anyway.

Even flying for the airlines, flight crews spend days away from their families if they are on the long haul routes. Under such a system of commuting in and out of forward operating fighter bases, the spouses could enjoy the career opportunities of a major city, which they are denied under the current arrangement.

Cash bonuses for signing and retention of personnel might work in the short term, but it is necessary to sort out a longer-term solution. There is no indication that the global demand for skilled aviators is going to diminish in the foreseeable future, and RCAF pilots are among the best in the world. It costs a fortune to train such pilots, so perhaps it is time we get more creative about keeping them in uniform. Dangling a cash carrot won’t fool them for long.

ON TARGET: U.S. Absurdity and Hypocrisy In Cuba

By Scott Taylor

On Tuesday, June 4, the Trump administration made the surprise announcement that it was imposing a new set of travel restrictions on Americans wishing to visit Cuba. Effective almost immediately, group educational and cultural trips are no longer permitted, and perhaps most significantly, cruise ships, private yachts and fishing vessels are no longer allowed to visit Cuban ports.

Following Fidel Castro’s revolution 1953-1959, the U.S. had imposed a total travel ban and a crippling trade embargo on Cuba. President Barack Obama relaxed those restrictions in 2016 when his administration opened the door for American tourists to visit the island. Since that juncture, the initial trickle of U.S. visitors has grown into a veritable flood. In the first 4 months of 2019, more than 250,000 Americans travelled to Cuba, and that figure does not include that of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Last week’s announcement will have the intended consequence of financially punishing the Cuban tourist industry.

The reason for re-imposing the ban was explained to the media by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. “Cuba continues to play a destabilizing role in the western hemisphere, providing a communist foothold in the region and propping up U.S. adversaries in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua by fomenting instability, undermining the rule of law and suppressing democratic processes.”  Mnuchin said in a statement.

To be blunt, the only thing that outweighs the absurdity of Mnuchin’s statement is the hypocrisy.

How exactly is the dirt-poor island nation of Cuba “propping up” America’s oil, gas and gold rich adversary in Venezuela?

If Cuba is a communist foothold where is the other foot?

Are we to expect bankrupt, embargoed North Korea to form an alliance with bankrupt, embargoed Cuba enroute to a communist wave engulfing the planet?

As for the allegation of suppressing democratic processes, I’m guessing that Mnuchin is referring to the recent political upheaval in Venezuela. For their part, Cuba continues to recognize Nicolas Maduro as the ruling president of Venezuela. For the record, Maduro was elected in what has been called a flawed election in 2018. The major “flaw” in the exercise of democratic process was that the opposition boycotted the polls.

Since Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998. Venezuela has propped up the Castro regime in Cuba with the provision of heavily discounted oil and gas. So, it is no mystery why Cuba would support the status quo in Venezuela.

On the flipside of that we have the Canadian led Lima Group of fourteen continental American countries, which has simply selected Juan Guaido as the legitimate President of Venezuela. There was no democratic process, as the charismatic, U.S. educated Guaido was simply chosen by a committee of fourteen foreign countries, whose selection process was in turn ratified by the U.S.

As events have since unfolded, Guaido remains an unwelcome choice even to the sanction suffering Venezuelan people. Guaido’s farcical attempt to overthrow Maduro by effecting a military coup April 30 failed embarrassingly and could hardly be labeled as anything close to a democratic process.

Getting back to Cuba, if the Trump administration wants Americans out of there they should start by closing down their naval base and detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.

The very existence of this U.S. military base on occupied foreign soil sorely undermines America’s denunciation of Russia doing the same thing in the Crimea. For the record, the U.S. took possession of this 116 square kilometer site in 1898 after capturing the island from the Spanish.

The U.S. set up a rental agreement with Cuban authorities to pay $2,000 in gold coins per year for the use of the land. In 1934, they raised that rent price to USD$4,085 and dropped the proviso that it is paid in gold. A simple cheque will do.

When Castro seized power in 1959, he demanded that the Americans vacate Cuban soil.

Instead the U.S. have continued to convince themselves that this is not an illegal occupation because every year they dutifully send a cheque for the $4,085 made payable to the “Treasurer General of the Republic”.

The cheques go un-cashed and that bureaucratic position was eliminated when Castro took power.

Nevertheless, if we are to believe Mnuchin, Cuba is the meddler in our Western Hemisphere.

ON TARGET: Canadian Government is Failing to Protect the Privacy of Journalists

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Globe and Mail broke the story about Irving Shipbuilding being allowed to claim a CAD$40 million industrial benefit for a French fry factory as part of a contract to build navy ships. As odd as this might sound, that was not the bizarre part of this news story.

Shortly after the Globe and Mail had asked the government to confirm the investment in an Alberta French fry plant was considered an allowable industrial offset for the navy contract, a lawyer from Irving contacted the newspaper. The message was that the shipbuilder was prepared to take legal action if necessary.

This was the second time in recent weeks that Irving resorted to the tactic of libel chill in the form of threatening reporters with lawsuits over potentially damaging stories.

Back in March my colleague David Pugliese from the Ottawa Citizen made an inquiry to the media liaison desk at the Department of National Defence as well as to Public Services and Procurement Canada. Sources had told Pugliese that there was some alleged welding problems with one of the newly built Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) and he was seeking to confirm the story.

Just hours later, Pugliese was surprised to receive a phone call from none other than Kevin McCoy, the President of Irving Shipbuilding. According to Pugliese, McCoy threatened to sue the Ottawa Citizen if they published a story, which contained false information.

What the Citizen did publish instead was the story of how the government had shared not only the question about welding problems, but also the identity of the reporter working on the story.

In this more recent case of the Globe and Mail French fry story, it was the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development that breached the privacy of the reporter by providing the information to Irving. The fact that Irving did not learn from their earlier public relations fiasco with the Citizen makes me question the competence of their communications department.

In defending the decision to threaten lawsuits, Irving Shipbuilding spokesman Sean Lewis told reporters “We did advise reporters that we would pursue legal action because we knew the reporters had highly inaccurate information that would cause our company, and the reputation of our hard working employees considerable reputational damage.”

Fair enough, a company should have the right to protect its public image. The problem is that in both cases, the reporter’s information was not “highly inaccurate”. Irving did indeed receive a $40 million credit towards its industrial benefit obligations on a navy shipbuilding contract, from a $425 million investment in the Cavendish Farms frozen potato-processing plant in Lethbridge, Alberta. Nobody has ever alleged that there was any misconduct on the part of any of the parties involved.

The crux of the matter is the way in which the AOPS contracts are structured on this major crown shipbuilding project – valued at over $2.4 billion that allows for investment in french fry jobs to offset re-investment obligations. If there are any questions about how that is the case, then it is the government of Canada that has the explaining to do, not Irving.

In the case of the alleged welding problems with the AOPS, DND did subsequently admit there were indeed some minor problems. In other words, without the threatening call from McCoy, which revealed a breach of privacy on the part of DND, there would likely have been no story.

In both instances, suffice to say that Irving overreacted and behaved like a schoolyard bully. Had they simply provided the requested information to their client – the government of Canada, who in turn would respond to the media, they would have avoided controversy.

However, it is also true that had DND, Procurement Services, and the Department of Science, Innovation, and Economic Development simply safeguarded the identity of the journalists as per the existing guidelines under the Privacy Act, Irving would not have known whom to threaten.

The Canadian Surface Combatant project has only just begun and there are bound to be countless more media requests made regarding Irving in the coming decade of production. Let’s hope that government officials have learned from these two lessons that Irving is unrepentantly self-protective.

Public Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough tried to deflect the blame on to Irving when she told reporters that their threat of a lawsuit was “certainly not a behaviour I would engage in, and I wish there was respect shown to journalists for doing their jobs.”

I’m sorry Carla, but that respect would start with government officials not turning over the names of media requests to industry.

ON TARGET: Kandahar Monument Belongs At Beechwood

By Scott Taylor

On Monday, May 13, a low-key, invitation only, VIP ceremony took place at the Department of National Defence’s new Carling Campus. This was held to re-dedicate the monument, which had originally stood on the Kandahar airfield during Canada’s decade long commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan.

The cenotaph began as an impromptu tribute to fallen comrades, and it continued to grow as Canadian casualties mounted. In the end, the Kandahar monument displayed the individual grave markers of all 158 soldiers killed in theatre.

While it was never meant to be permanent, once Canada concluded the mission in Afghanistan, the military felt it was only fitting to repatriate this symbol of sacrifice, which had been created by the comrades of the fallen.

Once back in Canada the problem arose as to where to relocate the Kandahar memorial.

Most potential sites required approvals from multiple government departments, which inevitably got bogged down in the bloated Ottawa bureaucracy. The decision was thus made, and announced, while the Harper conservative government was still in power, that the Kandahar memorial’s new home would be at DND’s new headquarter facility in the sprawling campus that was once Nortel.

For those who were even aware of this project at the time, this decision met no objection and set off no alarm bells. It was simply seen as this touching tribute, made by soldiers, for their fellow soldiers getting a permanent relocation. No biggie.

Three days after the low key, May 13 2019 ceremony was held, DND posted up details of the event on Facebook, and quickly this whole memorial issue became an explosive affair throughout the entire Canadian defence community.

Suddenly people became aware that if this monument is inside a secure military headquarter facility, it will not be accessible to the general public. Families of the fallen were outraged – and rightly so – that they were not invited to attend the dedication, and the vast majority would remain unable to even visit the site. Questions were asked and no answers given as to why DND would quietly put this notice on Facebook rather than the more conventional process of issuing a press release. Columnists and commentators took up the cudgel to bash the brass for their insensitivity over the handling of such a sensitive and emotional issue.

By Wednesday, May 22, the backlash and anger forced the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance to make a vow to set this right. “We’ll turn this around,” Vance told reporters. “Where we want to get to is that anybody who wants to visit that memorial can visit.”

For his part, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he wanted answers as to why the decision was made to hold the May 13 ceremony in secret and to not include the families of the fallen. Ironically, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, the man who should be able to answer for those decisions, was standing directly behind Trudeau as he made that pledge.

General Vance has said that the Kandahar Memorial will not be moved, but rather his team will be tasked with finding ways to allow more public access. While a noble gesture, this will ultimately prove an impossible task. A functioning military headquarters facility needs to be secure from the public by its very nature. Vance has since offered a lengthy apology and insists that they are working to provide continuous scheduled visit opportunities for those who wish access the memorial.

A face saving solution could be to move the monument to the Beechwood National Memorial Center. This is Canada’s equivalent to the U.S. National Military Cemetery in Arlington Virginia. It is an incredible facility that takes great pride in preserving Canada’s military heritage. It is also the final resting place of 27 Afghanistan veterans, the highest concentration of fallen warriors from that conflict in any Canadian cemetery.

Thus it would only be fitting if tributes to all 158 fatalities, in the form of the Kandahar memorial, could have a place of honour in Canada’s national military cemetery. Given that Beechwood is publically accessible, a place where our warriors are buried and soldiers are mourned, I think it would be a perfect fit. It is also a private sector enterprise, which means, if desired, the Kandahar memorial could be relocated there without having to cut through a Gordian’s knot of bureaucratic red tape.

ON TARGET: Trump’s reckless sabre rattling with Iran is all the excuse we need to bring Canadian troops home from Iraq

By Scott Taylor

Almost unmentioned in Canadian mainstream media is the steadily escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran. In recent days the Pentagon has deployed an additional Aircraft carrier battle group and strategic air assets to the Persian Gulf region, citing an increased albeit undefined, threat from Iran. The Americans have also taken the unusual step of withdrawing all unnecessary personnel from their massive embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

This has prompted the German Defence Ministry to suspend their training mission in Iraq. There were approximately 160 German military personnel assigned to that mission.

Canada has decided to go in the opposite direction by extending our military commitment to Iraq until March 2021. Between the approximately 250 Canadians assigned to the NATO training mission, and Special Forces personnel still assisting Iraqi forces in northern Iraq, Canada has an authorized strength of up to 850 personnel in theatre.

Despite the best efforts of the Canadian Armed Forces Public Affairs branch to promote this ongoing commitment, the Iraq mission has become a forgotten front. The threat of Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) has almost been completely stamped out, and mercifully, Canada has only suffered one friendly fire fatality since first deploying troops to Iraq in 2014.

A year ago Canada agreed to take command of the NATO led training mission in Iraq because the Liberal government knew they could not sell the Canadian Public on sending troops back into the Afghanistan war. That is where the NATO leaders wanted us, which seems an incredibly ironic twist in that we originally agreed to go into Afghanistan because it was not Iraq. But I digress.

The problem with the current NATO plan for Iraq – no matter how masterfully it is commanded by Canadians – is that it is doomed to fail. The root causes of the ongoing violent strife in Iraq – devastated infrastructure, rampant unemployment, inter-factional hatred and the resultant failed economy – will not be rectified by training thousands of more young Iraqi males how to kill.

Did we learn nothing from our failed decade long involvement in Afghanistan?

In the bitter fighting which pitted the U.S. led coalition, (including Canadian Special Forces operatives), against the Daesh stronghold of Mosul, that entire city was reduced to rubble. The Iraqi government estimated it will need US$88 billion to rebuild the basic infrastructure yet a mere US$30 billion has been pledged to date by international donors. No one can guess where they will make up the US$58 billion shortfall, but in the meantime Canada will spend more than $400 million a year having our best soldiers teach Iraqi youth how to keep destroying and killing.

For the record, the Iraqi regime in Baghdad recently sought to ban violent video games to prevent their youth from becoming de-sensitized to violence. On the flip side, Canada is leading a mission to teach Iraqi youth how to use real weapons.

Canada’s tenuous grasp of the complex Iraqi equation was perhaps best illustrated back in 2014 when our military trainers first deployed to northern Iraq. A senior level decision was made to allow our soldiers to wear the green, white, and red, with a yellow sunburst flag of Kurdistan on their desert camouflage uniforms. First of all, such a splash of colour defeats the premise of camouflage, but more importantly, Kurdistan is not a recognized independent country. It is rather, the desired end state for the separatist Kurds, whose quest for statehood runs counter to Canada’s official policy of supporting a single unified Iraq.

As everyone familiar with the region predicted, once Daesh was gone, the Iraqi factions began fighting among themselves. Canadian trained Kurdish militia did in fact clash with the central government Iraqi forces that are supported by the Canadian government. Needless to say, the Canadian advisors quietly removed the Kurdistan flags from their combat uniforms.

Now that the U.S. is threatening to widen this conflict by engaging Iran, Canada should admit that this would change the existing parameters. We should follow the lead of Germany, and those non-essential U.S. embassy staff, and remove our personnel from harm’s way. Canadian troops do not shy away from a fight, but no one in their right mind simply jumps into a wood chipper for the hell of it.

The silver lining in this entire brinksmanship between the U.S. and Iran threatening imminent Armageddon is that the price of oil has risen to nearly US$65 a barrel.

ON TARGET: Party Plane Antics Go Unpunished: Tiger Williams’ Charges Dropped

By Scott Taylor

Last week the surprising announcement that the Crown Prosecutor’s Office was staying the single charge of Breach of Trust against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman ignited a massive media storm. This was indeed a major development in a saga that has gripped the attention of the entire defence community since Norman was first suspended from his duties as Canada’s Vice Chief of Defence Staff nearly two and a half years ago.

In the interest of full disclosure, I consider Norman to be a friend and I am pleased that he has been exonerated. This story is still far from over and I will continue to watch with great interest exactly how both the Liberal government and the Canadian Armed Forces chain of command will go about reengaging this fine officer to active duty.

Almost lost in the frenzied coverage of Norman’s case was the announcement that the Ottawa Crown Attorney was dropping the sexual assault case against former NHL hockey star Tiger Williams in exchange for an apology to the alleged victim. Effectively, the dropping of charges in this case closes the lid on a military incident now known as the ‘Party Plane’ scandal.

The particular flight in question took place in December 2017 and was part of an ongoing program wherein RCAF Airbus planes were used to transport VIP’s on morale boosting visits to Canadian troops deployed overseas. Then Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier first initiated the practice in order to inspire our soldiers fighting the war in Afghanistan. The VIP list usually included NHL old-timers like Tiger Williams along with Olympic athletes, rock n’ roll bands and various television personalities.

Over time, many of the VIP’s making repeat tours began to take advantage of the status afforded to them aboard these flights. Rules on drinking alcohol were at first bent and then by the time of the ‘Party Plane’ incident were completely broken.

Facebook videos surfaced showing the band Carpet Frogs playing the Doobie Brother’s 1970 hit song China Grove in the aisles of the Airbus while drunken VIP’s danced. Media soon got wind of the fact that a flight attendant had complained of being sexually assaulted by Williams during that flight, along with many of the other sordid details of the VIP’s urinating themselves and leaving behind coffee cups of tobacco spit.

The story proved impossible for the military to contain. Williams was eventually charged with sexual assault and Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance put a hold on any future morale boosting junkets.

However, to his discredit, Vance also tried to justify what had happened on that flight. “The band was playing in the back of the plane, that’s team building for people who have never met soldiers before and are going to go into maybe a dangerous place” Vance explained to reporters. “So, it’s not Mardi Gras, it’s not a party. It’s a mission.”

While Vance tried to portray this as if the passengers were about to deplane into a war zone, on the flight in question they were enroute to Athens, Greece. Their first visit was to be aboard the HMCS Charlottetown in tourist friendly, Piraeus harbor.

The military also tried to downplay the actual cost of the flight by stating it was a mere $15,000 when in fact and independent estimate put that cost at $337,000 (not including the cost to fly the original flight attendant crew home from Riga, Latvia on commercial flights).

An RCAF flight safety investigation concluded that the drunken antics of the VIP’s had indeed put the other passengers at risk, but Vance inexplicably disagreed with that finding. I am not a safety expert, but I would suspect that fellow passengers inebriated to the point of voiding their bladders involuntarily would be a hindrance to others in an in-flight emergency. Just saying.

The worst part of this whole story is the fact that it all took place while the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, Lieutenant-General Alain Parent, and Canadian Forces Chief Warrant Officer Kevin West were on board.

In her witness statement at Williams’ court hearing last Tuesday, the flight attendant victim of the alleged sexual assault commented on the lack of support she got in this instance from Parent and West. “I was lost, confused and feeling pretty betrayed. I was overwhelmed by the lack of support from the higher ranks.” she wrote.

For the record, no disciplinary or administrative action was taken against Parent or West and both officers are now retired from the military.

The party flights remain on hold.