ON TARGET: DND Propaganda Project Shut Down

By Scott Taylor

Late last week it was reported in the media that the Department of National Defence had ordered a halt to its controversial program of ‘weaponizing’ their Public Affairs branch.

This move comes in the wake of a series of news stories by Ottawa Citizen defence reporter David Pugliese, which outlined how the DND intended to use propaganda to change the attitude and behavior of Canadian citizens.

It was revealed in Pugliese’s reports that the Canadian Forces planned to create “Joint Targeting and Information Operations” capability along with a Defence Strategic Communications team for the purpose of using “defence activities as a means of communication to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of the audiences.”

Now the last time I checked the role of the Canadian military was to protect Canada and Canadian values, not to alter the mental state of Canadian citizens.

What was most shocking about these damaging media revelations was the fact that this program had moved beyond the theoretical and was already being employed here in Canada.

To date the Canadian Armed Forces have spent more than $1 million to train Public Affairs officers on behavior modification techniques.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when the Canadian military was poised to deploy personnel to assist in civilian long term care facilities, the CAF established what it called a Precision Information Team (PIT). This PIT used military personnel to collect and analyze information gleaned from civilian social media accounts.

This information was subsequently passed along to Ontario Premier Doug Ford to inform him that his electorate was not happy with his failure to protect the elderly during the COVID-19 crisis.

It was also reported that the Canadian Forces had a plan to counter potential pandemic-related civil disobedience by using various information warfare techniques, including broadcasting propaganda from vehicle mounted loudspeakers.

The architect behind the “enhancement” plan for the public affairs branch was Brigadier-General Jay Janzen, who is quoted in one of the Canadian Forces strategy documents as stating, “The motto ‘who dares, wins’ is as applicable to strategic communication as it is to warfare.”

Those familiar with military affairs will note that ‘who dares wins’ is the operational motto of the British Special Air Service (SAS) which is one of the most elite commando units in the world.

It is one hell of a stretch to compare elite special forces combat soldiers to a handful of public affair officers monitoring civilian Facebook posts, but hey, you’ve gotta give Janzen credit for his imagination.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing revelations was that of a planned campaign to counter allegations of white supremacists in the ranks of the CAF. In advance of this P.R initiative, DND had compiled dossiers on several Canadian journalists and planned to assemble a gaggle of military-friendly academics and historians to push the narrative that no such problem exists.

However before that plan could be initiated, there was a series of much publicized incidents involving CAF members with alleged ties to white supremacy. The propaganda plan was shelved and now it has been exposed.

Once the activities were made public in the press, the senior military leadership realized that these attempts to ‘weaponize’ the public affairs branch had in fact backfired. Instead of protecting the CAF’s image with Canadians, Janzen’s public affairs enhancement strategy, as well as the other missteps related to the pandemic propaganda schemes, actually damaged the military’s reputation and credibility.

In shutting down this initiative Laurie-Anne Kempton, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Public Affairs – and Janzen’s immediate superior-wrote an email to her staff. “Canadian’s must have absolute confidence in knowing that we completely understand our role in informing the public space of our initiatives and activities” she said, adding. “They must know they are not targets.”

Amen to that.

ON TARGET: The 'Uniting' States of America?

By Scott Taylor

In the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election, the campaign itself and the post election-day chaos, the one point upon which media pundits could agree was the fact that the ‘United States’ of America are in fact deeply divided.

President Donald Trump took every opportunity to pour gasoline on these glowing embers of long-standing divisiveness.

Prior to the vote-casting the Trump camp warned that because of the volume of mail-in ballots which were cast in advance, there would be no possibility of obtaining a final result before midnight on election day.

This was presented by Trump as some sort of anomaly that was sinister by nature and a break from traditional norms.

This claim led the media to fact-check and provide some historical context regarding previous U.S. presidential elections.

The examples given were simply common sense in that in a pre-telegraph  (let alone telephone or television) horse and buggy era, the ballot counting took weeks and months to tally. That was why the original inauguration date was in March rather than the current January 20th.

In pointing out the logistical advancement in conducting a democratic vote process over the past two centuries these commentators missed an opportunity to remind the public as to just how far U.S. democracy itself has evolved in that same timeframe.

When the founding fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution, voting was restricted to all but a select few individuals. Eligibility to cast a vote was restricted to white Christian males who owned property. In some states voters had to first pass a test on their Christian religious knowledge. Gender exceptions allowed wealthy female land owners to cast a ballot in several states.

Following the U.S. Civil War, in 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment extended voting rights to former male slaves and freemen of colour. Females did not officially get to vote in American politics until 1920.

As for the racial divide which exists currently in the United States this has been highlighted by months of Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the U.S.

The tearing down of statues of Confederate generals who fought to keep Blacks as slaves, reminds us that for hundreds of years Black Americans were shackled and sold as chattel.

The U.S. Civil War freed the slaves but it did not miraculously elevate Blacks to equal members of U.S. society. In fact laws were passed to entrench the segregation of Blacks in the southern states in what became known as the “Jim Crow” era.

Officially these laws requiring separate facilities for Blacks and whites ranged from schools to railway cars and even public drinking fountains. Those laws were not repealed until after the civil rights marches in 1964.

While segregation was never formally adopted in the northern states, it was very much enforced in the U.S. military until 1948.

Prior to that date Black units - usually with white officers - served in largely support roles in the various branches of the American forces. In fact it was not until the Vietnam War that Black and white Americans would fight and die in large numbers at each other’s side in combat.

Now in the wake of the BLM movement we have various professional sports franchises finally realizing that their team names could be offensive to minority groups. Which makes me wonder how we could have been so blind to the fact that, for instance, the name ‘Redskins’ might be considered derogatory by Indigenous peoples.

These horrific historical truths need to be taught to Americans. But Canadians cannot simply sit smug and gloat over our neighbour’s foibles as we have many unpleasant chapters in our own history.

Those who bemoan the loss of a truly ‘united states’ wish to make America great again need to know that the reality was far different than the historical myths some would have us believe.

As my Dad used to say, “It ain’t like the good old days: and it never was”.

ON TARGET: Combatting Sexual Misconduct In The Ranks

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Canadian military launched a new initiative to confront what the senior brass call a ‘wicked problem’ in the form of sexual misconduct within its ranks. This most recent plan is called The Path Towards Dignity and Respect and unlike previous campaigns this one does not promise any short-term success.

“There are no quick fixes for achieving culture change. It requires sustained effort and continual assessment to ensure that we remain on track,” wrote General Jonathan Vance in the foreword to this new plan.

Keen eyed readers will recall that it was this same General Vance who launched Operation Honour to stamp out sexual misconduct in the CAF over five years ago when he was first appointed Chief of Defence Staff.

Over a half-decade later it appears that Vance now realizes this is not a problem that can simply be ordered to disappear.

The genesis for these latest efforts to eradicate sexual misconduct from the CAF began with a damning series of news media reports back in 2013. The stunning public revelations led to the commissioning of an independent inquiry by former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps.

After a thorough investigation, Deschamps tabled her report which depicted the CAF to be steeped in a highly masculine sexualized culture, wherein military leaders turned a blind eye to misconduct.

It was in response to Deschamps’ findings that Vance launched Op Honour.

The two-fold objective of Op Honour was to clamp down on any alleged perpetrators while simultaneously establishing a support network for the victims.

This Vance-led initiative was initially praised for bringing forward many more reports of sexual misconduct. The official positive ‘spin’ on this phenom was that it indicated a renewed faith in the system to arbitrate justice and properly support the victims.

However, the reported incidents just kept coming, so five years later Op Honour is now the Path Towards Dignity and Respect.

Most tellingly, the new directive states outright that this latest campaign “will have no end date and will remain as an enduring mission for the CAF.”

The target will no longer be to react to incidents of sexual misconduct after they occur, but to instead aim to change the very ‘culture’ of the CAF in which members feel such behaviour to be acceptable.

Architects of this new pathway to change believe that the key to success will be through education.

I believe that one of the first things they should teach on these courses is just how far the military ‘culture’ has already changed in just a few short decades.

Between 1950-1971 women were allowed to enlist in the military but the number was capped at a maximum of 1500. The reason for this was the CAF did not want to overly ‘feminize’ the institution.

That cap was lifted after 1971 but women were mainly employed in non-combat roles such as medical, communications and administration.

Admission of women into combat arms trades began in 1987 and by 2001 the last male-only bastion was breached and females were allowed to serve aboard submarines.

What this means is that there are practically no service-members still in uniform that will be able to recall those ‘male only’ days of old. Virtually every serving soldier and senior officer has spent their entire career working within a mixed gender environment.

Those who served in Afghanistan witnessed male and female soldiers fighting and dying alongside each other.

One has to hope that the forging of such trusts and bonds will soon replace what remains of the former highly masculine, sexualized culture that Justice Deschamps revealed in her report.

I, for one, want to believe that the CAF is already further down their projected new path than the numbers would indicate.

ON TARGET: Military’s ‘Weaponized’ Public Affairs Plan Backfires

The CAF Public Affairs plan for the COVID-19 Crisis included vehicles mounted with loudspeakers to patrol Canadian streets.

By Scott Taylor

These days it would seem that the Public Affairs Branch of the Canadian Armed Forces are their own worst enemy. First it was the revelation in the media that as part of their new policy of ‘weaponizing’ public affairs, DND has spent over $1 million on behavioural modification training. This may sound harmless but this “dynamics methodology” promises to help military clients to analyze and profile groups in order to find the best strategy to effectively influence a target audiences behaviour.

People questioning just how and why the Canadian military would attempt to manipulate the public did not have to wait long. Almost coincidental with the story about DND’s behaviour modification training program came the bizarre news story about the military’s attempted wolf scare in Nova Scotia.

Apparently some keen reservists with the Halifax Rifles wanted to put their propaganda skills to the test, with the unlucky targets being members of the Canadian public. The reservists carefully forged letters complete with the letterhead of the Nova Scotia provincial wildlife division, warning residents of the Annapolis Valley that wolves had recently been released back into the wild.

To torque the local’s fear even higher, these military schemers planned to broadcast wolf noises from a loudspeaker.

When news of the letters was made public, DND had no choice but to shamefacedly admit to the plot. To date no one has been able to explain just what the hell these jokers were thinking.

In a similar vein it was also recently reported that as part of the CAF’s COVID-19 response, the public affairs branch planned to use vehicle mounted loudspeakers to control and advise the public.

One has to suspect that this particular plan was drafted back during the Second World War before people had cell phones and computers.

Perhaps more ominous was the fact that the military also established a Precision Information Team (PIT) to collect data from the social media accounts of Canadian civilians. The findings of the PIT allowed the Canadian Armed Forces to report to Ontario Premier Doug Ford that the public did not think he had done a good enough job in protecting senior residences from COVID-19.

One would have thought the staggering death toll from those facilities would have made that abundantly clear to Ford without having a military team sift through Facebook postings of ordinary citizens.

Then came word that in their effort to manage the issue of white supremacists within the ranks of the CAF, the good old public affairs branch created dossiers on those journalists who would be likely to report on such incidents. That list included Lee Berthiaume of Canadian Press, Gloria Galloway of the Globe and Mail and Murray Brewster of the CBC.

Of those three it was Brewster’s dossier that got the majority of DND’s attention. “He’s familiar with the defence system, and his reporting, while factual, often emphasizes the mistakes and shortcomings of DND and the CAF.” Since these dossiers were specifically regarding the issue of racism and white supremacists in the military, and they admit Brewster’s stories are factual, how in the hell could such revelations not be seen as negative. There is no good side to neo-Nazi’s in uniform.

In the end the plan to use friendly academics and retired military commanders to try to spin future media coverage of white supremacists in the ranks was overtaken by events. Namely a constant stream of news stories revealing - you guessed it - white supremacists in the ranks. That is however a separate issue and it is not a problem with communications.

What is an equally troubling issue is a military public affairs branch that has weaponized itself into self-destruction.

The Canadian public does not want their military to; modify their behaviour, fabricate phony ‘wolf’ threats, spy on the public’s social media or keep files on individual journalists. By doing so the public affairs branch has only undermined the trust that the public has in the Canadian Armed Forces.

ON TARGET: Military Cries “Wolf” in Nova Scotia

By Scott Taylor

Last week there was a bizarre little story in the Ottawa Citizen that at first glance appeared to be so ridiculous that it had to be satire.

Reporter David Pugliese revealed that a letter from the Nova Scotia government sent out to residents in Annapolis Valley to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province was forged by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission that went off the rails.

Information warfare specialists with the Halifax Rifles – a reserve unit - had craftily drafted the letter, which informed recipients that wolves had recently been re-introduced to the region by the provincial government.

To make the letters more convincing the military schemers forged the letterhead of the Nova Scotia Wildlife Division. Lest someone still doubted the authenticity of these wolf warnings the plotters included an information phone number that connected to an Environment Canada employee who also appeared to be linked to the Canadian military.

To really scare the bejeezus out of everybody, the diabolical plot also included the planned use of a loud speaker to generate wolf sounds.

After receiving phone calls and emails from concerned residents, the Nova Scotia government quickly responded on social media that someone was sending out fake news. Once the media began probing the issue, the Canadian military had no choice but to sheepishly confess their role in this affair.

To date, no one from the Canadian Armed Forces has been able to offer any credible explanation about what happened. An investigation is now underway.

It would be easy to laugh this incident off by comparing it to a bad plotline in a Scooby Doo cartoon, but this has raised allegations about the Canadian military attempting to manipulate Canadian citizens on Canadian soil. That’s no joke.

It is also not an isolated incident but rather part of a much broader strategy of the CAF “weaponizing” Public Affairs as well as significantly increasing its propaganda warfare skills.

The concept of weaponizing the military’s public affairs branch was first proposed in 2015 by General Jonathan Vance shortly after he was promoted to Chief of the Defence Staff. However the real driving force behind the “weaponization” program is Brigadier-General Jay Janzen, the Director General of military strategic communications.

It was recently revealed that Janzen authorized the expenditure of over $1 million on behaviour modification training for several dozen of his Public Affairs Officers.

The training provided was similar to the behaviour modification training that had been offered by the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. Keen eyed readers may recall that Cambridge Analytica was embroiled in a scandal involving the harvesting of personal Facebook data for use by U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign.

In response to the revelation that DND was investing in behaviour modification training, the official line is that this will help the military to plan strategic communication campaigns.

The question begs, when did it become the military’s responsibility to monitor and manipulate the Canadian public?

This past summer, at the height of the pandemic, the military created a thing called the Precision Information Team (PIT). This five person unit scoured social media accounts of private citizens in order to provide an in depth report to the Ontario government.

According to the PIT analysis the public were not very satisfied with the Doug Ford government’s care for the elderly during COVID-19.

Does one think Premier Ford really needed an official military report to tell him that?

There was also another plan for the CAF to ward off any pandemic driven civil disobedience with a propaganda campaign that called for “shaping” and “exploiting” information and using vehicle mounted loudspeakers patrolling Canadian streets. One has to wonder if they intended to scare would-be rioters off the streets with wolf noises?

The bottom line in all of this is that the Canadian military has no business targeting Canadian civilians with propaganda. That is what our political parties are for.

ON TARGET: Education Needed to Prevent Politicization of Pandemic

By Scott Tayor

In last week’s vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah Mike Pence made a rather outlandish reference to the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009.

In defence of President Trump’s current handling of the COVID-19 crisis Pence claimed that the Democrats had done a worse job of handling the Swine Flu. “When Joe Biden was Vice-President of the United States, 60 million Americans contracted the swine flu. If the swine flu had been as lethal as the Coronavirus … we would have lost 2 million American lives.” claimed Pence.

While that might be an alarming statistic, the swine flu was never considered to be anywhere near as lethal as COVID-19. During 12 months of the 2009 outbreak there were only 12,500 deaths despite the fact that 61 million tested positive for the swine flu virus.

To date COVID-19 has killed over 210,000 Americans of the 7.5 million who have tested positive, with U.S. epidemiologists predicting that death toll will double by Christmas.

Back in August it was Trump himself who made an even more unhinged comparison between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu of 1918. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like this [COVID-19 pandemic].” Trump said at a press briefing. “The closest thing was in 1917 they say right? The Great Pandemic – and it certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50-100 million people. It probably ended the Second World War. All the soldiers were sick. It was a terrible situation.”

Despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly claimed himself to be “the most militaristic person ever” his displayed knowledge of martial history is way off the mark on this one.

The Spanish Flu pandemic ran from 1918-19 and it did not end World War I, let alone WWII, which did not start until two decades later. For the record, no war in history ended when all the soldiers called in sick.

However, Trump was correct in stating this pandemic was devastating. His figures are correct on a death toll of between 50-100 million people dying worldwide. In fact over 500 million were infected with the virus which at the time represented one third of the entire population on earth. To apply those percentage rates to the population of 2020 would mean 2.6 billion people infected with up to 550 million deaths.

Which brings us to the question of why is so little taught about this viral pandemic that wiped out more people than both World Wars combined?

For my generation it was mentioned in history class as a brief footnote between weeks of studying the First World War followed by weeks of in class study learning about the Second World War.

In Canada it is believed that the deadly Spanish Flu came home with those veterans returning from the battlefields in Europe. As such the disease was soon spread to every nook and cranny of the country.

It claimed the lives of 50,000 Canadians and one can presume that of that number many were soldiers who had survived the horrors of the trenches only to fall victim to a deadly virus upon return to Canada.

Even though this pandemic affected every corner of our nation and killed more people than were lost in the Second World War, to my knowledge there is not a single monument to acknowledge Canada’s collective suffering.

Almost every city and town in Canada has some form of war memorial complete with a list of battle honours earned by our troops on foreign battlefields. Yet there is no markers and no annual day of mourning for the 50,000 who perished here on Canadian soil.

While some will argue that the war monuments salute those who voluntarily made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of Canada, we also erect such tributes to the victims of tragedies such as the sinking of the Titanic or the downing of Swiss Air Flight 111.

I have to believe that if we were better informed on pervious pandemics we would be better equipped to prepare ourselves for future ones. It would also prevent gaslighting politicians from trying to bamboozle the electorate with apple to orange comparisons.

ON TARGET: Trump's Proud Boys: The Canadian Connection

By Scott Taylor

At the Sept. 29 U.S. Presidential election debate, Donald Trump propelled the hate group the Proud Boys into the international spotlight. When asked by the moderator to denounce white supremacists, Trump balked and asked for the name of a specific group. Vice President Joe Biden suggested the Proud Boys to which Trump stated, “Proud Boys … stand back and stand by.”

Within minutes, members of the Proud Boys took to those social media platforms, which they can still access, to assure Trump they are indeed ‘standing by’ for the President.

By the following morning the alt-right hate group had begun merchandising clothing adorned with the Proud Boys logo and Trump’s phrase “stand back, stand by” which is now their adopted slogan.

In the days following the debate Trump tried to assert that he did not know anything about the Proud Boys and their beliefs prior to his public shout out to the hate group on all national TV networks. This claim of ignorance – like many things Trump has said to date – seems unlikely to be true.

The previous week the Proud Boys staged a protest rally in Portland forcing the Oregon governor to declare a State of emergency. Several hundred Proud Boys, decked out in body armour and helmets with many brandishing assault rifles, assembled to counter the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests that have gripped Portland’s streets for weeks on end.

Almost as prominent as U.S. flags among the Proud Boys were Trump election banners.

While the Proud Boys’ leadership denies they are white supremacists the F.B.I considers them to be an “extremist group” that has “ties to white nationalism.” They are a male only organization of self-proclaimed chauvinists who are preserving what they call ‘western culture’ and they refuse to accept any guilt for the current state of the modern world.

While they do allow non-white membership, their basic mantra is to hate Muslims, Jews and Trans-people. On the flip side, they love Donald Trump and they love to fight.

One of the initiation rituals for the Proud Boys is to have several members punch the candidate while he recites the names of five breakfast cereals. I could not make this stuff up. The reasoning behind this cereal-pummelling stunt is that a Proud Boy must be able to keep a clear head in a fistfight.

Which brings us to the next level of initiation rite, which is to actually fight with members of the ‘radical left.’ The Proud Boys have therefore figured prominently in the heated clashes that have occurred this past summer across numerous U.S. cities.

Last year two Proud Boys were convicted of assaulting left wing protestors and sentenced to four years in jail in the U.S.

The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, a self-styled provocateur with dual British and Canadian citizenship. McInnes has subsequently distanced himself from his creation, but the Proud Boys movement now has chapters across the U.S, U.K, Australia and Canada.

In 2017, the Proud Boys maritime chapter confronted a Canada Day Mi’kmaw ceremony in downtown Halifax. There was no violence but once it was discovered that the five participants in Proud Boys black and yellow polo shirts were members of the Canadian Armed Forces it became national headline news.

After a brief suspension and some counselling four of the five service-members returned to active duty while the fifth had already been in the process of obtaining his release at the time of the incident.

When it was announced that the CAF was fully re-instating these personnel, Proud Boys Canada chapters celebrated on social media. “We win, our brothers the Halifax 5 are returning to active military duty with no charges, let the [social justice warriors] tears pour. Proud of our boys.”

One has to wonder if the Proud Boys membership has increased throughout the CAF since the 2017 incident. If so, are they too ‘standing by’ for whatever it is that Trump intends to use the Proud Boys?”

ON TARGET: Putting War Crimes in Perspective

By Scott Taylor

Last week British parliament was in a flap over the fact that during a heated debate, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace stated the UK had previously been involved in “Illegal wars’. Wallace was obviously referring to the war in Iraq, and his Labour Party counterparts took offence. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office had to later issue a statement that Wallace’s views were his personal opinion.

However a 2017 survey revealed that nearly one third of British citizens also believe that the Iraq war was indeed ‘illegal' and that former Prime Minister Tony Blair should stand trial for war crimes.

The survey was taken after a former Chief of the Iraqi Army brought a private prosecution against Blair for his role in supporting the U.S. led 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

The British High Court subsequently blocked the Iraqi officer’s bid to bring Blair to justice.

It is refreshing to know that one third of the survey respondents believed “Mr. Blair knowingly misled parliament and the public and should be tried as a war criminal.”

What is disappointing and perhaps revealing of an inherent sense of first world privilege is the fact that two thirds of those surveyed did not think Blair’s actions were punishable as a war crime.

Iraqi General Abdulwaheed al-Rabat, the plaintiff in this case was not acting on some sort of a whim. 

All the evidence of Blair’s manipulative actions were already revealed and detailed through a thorough British parliamentary investigation known as the Chilcot Inquiry. 

When the Chilcot inquiry results were made public in 2016 they painted a chilling picture of not only Blair’s actions but also those of his former foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

The inquiry concluded; “Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to the UK, intelligence reporting about [Iraqi] weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that the war was unnecessary and that the UK undermined the authority of the U.N Security Council.”

Had the Iraq invasion gone smoothly and the U.S. – UK coalition had established a post-Saddam democratic Utopia, one could argue that Blair’s lies were for the greater good. But that is not the case, given that to this day - more than seventeen years later - the bloodletting and violent anarchy still grips war-ravaged Iraq. 

In fact, the magnitude of the crime which Blair co-committed – we cannot exclude former U.S. President George W. Bush’s regime from this equation – is that the human cost to Iraqis remains incalculable as it remains ongoing.

In other words Blair and Bush are indeed war criminals but until the killing which they unleashed is stopped in Iraq, we cannot assess the full magnitude of their crimes.

However, before my fellow Canadians puff out their chests and take pride in the fact that Prime Minister Jean Chretien opted out of joining in on Blair and Bush’s war crimes in Iraq, let me just state one word – Libya.

Back in the spring of 2011 it was Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, that took the lead international role in helping Libyan rebels to oust President Moammar Gadhaffi. 

After some initial success the Libyan rebels had suffered setbacks at the hands of Gadhaffi security forces. When it was alleged that Gadhaffi was about to use his air force to bomb his own citizens in retribution, the U.N authorized NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Libyan soil. 

The U.N never authorized NATO to drop bombs and engage in combat yet that is exactly what they began doing immediately. The NATO allied task force was commanded by Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard. On the diplomatic front the international effort to oust Gadhaffi was spearheaded by Canada’s foreign minister John Baird.

Despite deploying the most sophisticated aerial arsenal ever seen, NATO’s Libyan rebel allies still took nearly 10 months to defeat the Gadhaffi loyalists. It was NATO airstrikes that allowed the Libyan rebels to capture Gadhaffi and brutally murder him on the streets of Sirte on October 20, 2011.

Canada celebrated this war ‘triumph’ with a victory parade on Parliament Hill, the only NATO ally to do so.

Reality was quick to unravel into violent anarchy across the post-Gadhaffi Libyan landscape, resulting in thousands of deaths, lawlessness and terror for the Libyan people, which nearly a decade later persists unabated.

We were so focused on removing an autocrat that no one groomed Gadhaffi’s successor. As a result the Libyan people were plunged from the proverbial frying pan straight into the fire of anarchy. 

The U.K at least had the courage to examine their moral failings in Iraq with the commission of the Chilcot Inquiry. Perhaps it is time for Canada to do the same with our role in the Libyan intervention of 2011. 

It was unnecessary and undermined the U.N authority. It too has an incalculable magnitude in terms of criminal liability as the killing and chaos continues to this day.

ON TARGET: There Is No Place For Right Wing Extremists In CAF

By Scott Taylor

Last week Army Commander, Lieutenant General Wayne Eyre presided over the annual Army council meeting. Although the sessions were held in Ottawa the majority of the attendees participated virtually due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Reaching out directly to 450 top to mid-level army officers, Eyre outlined to his chain-of-command a new set of explicit directions that will expedite the removal from the ranks of right-wing extremists or racists.

Eyre’s message was clear “If you have those types of beliefs – get out. We don’t want you.”

Most Canadians would find it startling that our Army would have any such alt-right fascists in the ranks, let alone enough to warrant such strong a statement from the commander.

However, in recent months there have been a number of separate high profile cases reported in the media wherein members of the Canadian Armed Forces were not only affiliated with right-wing extremists, but also involved in committing alleged illegal activities.

Former Combat Engineer Patrik Mathews generated headlines when it was revealed that he was recruiting for a white Supremacist group while still serving in the Canadian Armed Forces.

When the story broke Mathews bolted across the border and now faces weapons and other charges in the U.S.

On July 2, Corey Hurren made international news when he drove his pickup truck onto the grounds at Rideau Hall in Ottawa. Hurren was armed at the time and he had threatened to harm Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

What was even more startling was the fact that Hurren is still a serving member of 4 Ranger group in the CAF. Hurren also promoted right-wing ideology on his social media platforms. He now faces multiple criminal charges.

Hurren’s incident prompted a CBC investigation into 4 Ranger group wherein reporter Murray Brewster was quick to uncover another right-wing sympathizer.

Erik Myggland had been flagged by Canadian military counter-intelligence and interviewed about his membership in two separate right-wing organizations back in 2016. Despite his affiliation with these groups, Myggland was allowed to continue serving.

When that story broke Eyre had stated that Myggland was allowed to remain in uniform because he was a reservist and he had only pursued his right-wing interests during his own time. According to Eyre, when he was in civilian mode Myggland was not subject to military discipline.

It was also pointed out that the legal administrative process to remove undesirable members from the payroll is a lengthy one.

This latest “explicit direction” issued by Eyre is to be commended and I hope that it is echoed across all the other service branches.

However one still has to wonder what would compel individuals with right-wing extremist views to enlist in a military that prides itself in having defeated Hitler’s Nazi regime?

Perhaps the answer to that question lies in the results of a recent poll out of the U.S. that revealed nearly two-thirds of young adults had no idea that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. Nearly a quarter of the survey respondents thought that the Holocaust was a myth while nearly one-in-ten actually believed that the Jews perpetrated the Holocaust.

While one would like to presume that Canadian schools do a better job of teaching about this horrific chapter in mankind’s history, the reality is that we need to do better ourselves.

Such widespread ignorance of the Holocaust creates the vacuum into which the right-wing anti-Semites are able to re-write history. One would think that Canadian military units would be best situated to teach their members about the Holocaust, because it was those units’ forefathers that helped destroy Hitler’s murderous regime.

Knowing what the Nazi’s did should help soldiers to drive out any of their comrades who share such right-wing ideology: With or without ‘explicit direction’ from the Army commander.

ON TARGET: Social Injustice Still a Challenge for CAF

By Scott Taylor

On 2 July there was a bizarre incident at Rideau Hall when an armed intruder drove a pickup truck onto the premises and subsequently stalked the grounds on foot. Police were able to defuse the situation peacefully. After this arrest it was discovered that the alleged perpetrator – Corey Hurren, 46 – was in fact a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Hurren has since been charged with multiple crimes, not the least of which stems from him threatening the life of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Neither the Trudeau family nor Governor General Julie Payette were at Rideau Hall at the time of Hurren’s intrusion, but the disgruntled service-member had detailed his intentions to his Ranger detachment commander prior to driving to Ottawa from his home in Bowsman, Manitoba.

While this incident is now awaiting trial, it did serve to launch a CBC investigation into Hurren’s military unit, the 4th Ranger Group. It did not take reporter Murray Brewster long to discover a rather disturbing story involving another member of this same Ranger group.

It turns out that Erik Myggland – a serving member of the reserves – had openly supported two far-right groups on social media, and had called Trudeau a “treasonous bastard” on his Facebook account.

What was most disturbing about Brewster’s findings was that the military counter-intelligence unit had already flagged the fact that Myggland promoted the far right Three-Percenter ideology and was a member of the notorious Sons of Odin. Three-Percenters promote themselves as embodying the values of the supposed 3% of colonists who took up arms against Britain during the Revolution, while Son’s of Odin began in Finland as an anti-immigrant movement.

However, after interviewing Myggland, the counter-intelligence gumshoes (aka detectives) allowed him to continue serving in uniform.

After this story broke, the Canadian Army has launched a summary investigation into why Myggland was not disciplined or discharged earlier.

Last week, Army Commander Lieutenant-General Wayne Eyre admitted to CBC that Myggland could not be disciplined because his transgressions had taken place during his own time – not while he was on duty. “A reservist is only subject to the code of service discipline while undertaking duty” explained Eyre, adding “But to be very clear on this, we expect our individuals, whether they be full timers or part timers to embrace the values of our organization.” Eyre also said he expects Myggland will be formally discharged from the ranks within a matter of weeks.

While that is a step in the right direction one has to wonder whether none of this would have come to light had Hurren not driven his pickup truck through the gates of Rideau Hall and set the media investigation in motion.

I do not believe that the CAF is rife with white supremacists and far-right sympathizers but as evidenced by the Myggland case such individuals do wear the uniform. For counter-intelligence to spot such activity and to allow the member to keep serving totally sends the wrong message.

As much as we Canadians like to think that we are removed from the Black Lives Matter movement for social justice south of our border, the truth is that Canada – and in particular our Armed Forces have a tarnished history of institutional racism.

During the First World War the enlistment of black recruits was vehemently opposed by Canada’s top soldier.  In April 1916 at the height of the Great War recruiting crisis, General W.G. Gwatkin, Chief of the General Staff issued a memo which stated, “The civilized negro is vain and imitative; in Canada he is not impelled to enlist by a high sense of duty; in the trenches he is not likely to make a good fighter.”

Just over a century later such a racist statement by a senior general is unthinkable.

While this contrast in attitudes shows how far the CAF has come in terms of improving social justice, things like allowing Myggland to continue serving despite knowledge of his abhorrent beliefs, only illustrates how far we still have to go.

ON TARGET: Most Militaristic Person Ever?

By Scott Taylor

During his 2015 campaign for the Republican Party leadership, Donald J. Trump claimed that he was “the most militaristic person ever.” No sooner had Trump made that boastful claim than the press pilloried him for his demonstrable absence of any actual military service. The New York Post dubbed him “G.I. Joke” and commentators pointed out that Trump had obtained five separate medical deferments for bone spurs to keep from being drafted during the Vietnam War.

Doubling down on his claims of martial prowess Trump pilloried the war record of Republican rival John McCain. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump told reporters. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

At the time it all seemed to be an amusing distraction for Canadians because no one thought for a minute that Trump would actually win the Republican leadership, let alone the Presidency.

That all changed in November 2016 when Trump became the Commander-In-Chief of the world’s greatest military superpower.

During his presidency Trump has often reminded Americans of the importance of understanding their history and culture and then proceeded to promptly illustrate his own glaring ignorance of the same subjects.

In one memorable off script aside Trump praised George Washington and his revolutionary fighters for “seizing the airports” more than 125 years before the airplane was invented.

More recently and perhaps more alarmingly was Trump’s historical reference regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic. Explaining the U.S. government’s initial lack of preparedness, Trump said that was because this viral disease was unprecedented. “The closest was in 1917 … the great pandemic [which] cost 50 to 100 million lives,” said Trump. “It probably ended the Second World War … All the soldiers were sick.”

If you are going to reference historical events when addressing the impact of an ongoing pandemic - that has now claimed more U.S. lives than the first World War, Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan - combined - then you would think the ‘most militaristic person ever’ might have his facts in the ballpark at least. But no.

The Spanish flu of 1918 did not end the First World War, let alone the Second World War which concluded in 1945 with Germany’s surrender and Japan’s capitulation following the dropping of two atomic bombs. No war in history ever ended when “all the soldiers got sick.”

Again, for us in Canada Trump’s comical distortions of history could be viewed as harmlessly amusing. However as Trump is now in full campaign mode he is portraying himself as the “Law and Order!” President. In fact he tweets out that exact phrase every few hours complete with exclamation point just in case you weren’t sure.

What is frightening for all of us who share the North American land mass is that for Trump to portray himself as America’s firefighter there needs to be a fire. During the wave of chaos that has engulfed U.S. cities centered on the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump has been quick to offer state governors the use of federal law enforcement to control the civilian crowds.

In early June Trump brought in federal law enforcement officers and military police to clear protestors from Lafayette Square adjacent to the White House. At the time this use of force drew a stern rebuke from James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, the retired Marine general and former Secretary of Defence. In an opinion piece for the Atlantic, Mattis wrote: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking the same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

My fear is that what Mattis could not have dreamed of will soon become a full on nightmare in the run up to the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3.

ON TARGET: U.S. Crapping on Canada’s Afghan War Contribution Nothing New

By Scott Taylor

Last week there was a brief but intense media feeding frenzy over Canada’s long since discontinued contribution to the war in Afghanistan. The genesis for this controversy was previously taped comments from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro. The recordings were made to White House press reporter Jim Sciutto as part of the research for his new book The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the world.

The context of Navarro’s comments were related to trade negotiations and whether or not Canada had been able to curry favour at the bargaining table by sending our troops to fight in Afghanistan. 

Navarro said “Were they doing us a favour or were they brought into the idea they needed to do that as part of the global effort against terrorists?”

Answering his own question, Navarro continued “I mean, if they were just doing us a favour, maybe their government should have been thrown out of office. I mean every time a Canadian shows up in uniform, it’s doing us a favour? How’s that work?”

The knee jerk reaction to Navarro’s callous dismissal of Canada’s sacrifice in that war was bitter anger. Former Chief of Defence Staff General (ret’d) Rick Hillier was beside himself with rage. Hillier had been one of the leading architects in shaping Canada’s combat role in Kandahar back in 2005, and he seemed to take the slight from Navarro personally. In numerous subsequent media interviews Hillier referred to Navarro as an “idiot” and questioned why a trade advisor was discussing military affairs in the first place.

While it was good to see Hillier's blunt and emotional defence of Canada’s “son’s and daughter’s” on the airwaves and while Navarro may have been misguided in telling a reporter those thoughts, he was simply telling the truth. 

If anyone in high political office in Canada thought that our soldiers’ sacrifice in a U.S.-led unwinnable war would earn us a bargaining chip at trade talks then they do deserve to be turfed from power.

That is not how capitalism works under a protectionist U.S. administration. 

In 2001, when the Twin Towers were attacked in New York and the so-called Global War on Terrorism began, Canada enjoyed a total annual trade volume with the U.S. of $380 billion, of which $52 billion was a trade surplus in Canada’s favour. 

Over the subsequent two decades Canada has sent tens of thousands of soldiers to both Afghanistan. (2001 - 2014) and Iraq (2014-present). Of that total 159 soldiers were killed and at least another two thousand were wounded, injured or continue to suffer from the invisible scars of PTSD. The Afghanistan mission alone is estimated to cost Canada in excess of $22 billion once long term care costs for veterans is factored into the equation.

Despite this ‘investment’ of blood and gold, the 2019 figures show that our total annual trade value with the U.S. has risen to $600 billion but of that increased number our surplus dropped to $26 billion. 

By comparison, Mexico sent not a single soldier to Iraq or Afghanistan and saw a huge increase in trade with the U.S. In 2001 their total trade value was $232 billion of which $30 billion was surplus in Mexico’s favour. Last year Mexico's total trade value with America had grown over those two decades to eclipse Canada at $613 billion, of which $100 billion was a Mexican surplus.

While Navarro’s remarks are insensitive they are accurate. While we were allegedly trying to curry favour by participating in US-led foreign military misadventures, the Mexicans have been quietly eating our lunch at the trade table!

What I found far more insulting to Canadian martial pride dates back to a January 2008 article published in the New York Times. It quoted then U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates claiming “NATO forces in southern Afghanistan do not know how to combat a guerrilla insurgency and that could be contributing to rising violence in that country.”

That’s right folks, even as our sons and daughters were fighting and dying in Kandahar, the top U.S. defence official was publicly blaming us (and our NATO partners) for losing the war.

Now that is ingratitude.

Note to editors: Dollar figures used are in US Dollars and are from the US Federal Census Bureau.

ON TARGET: Putin Is No Big Boy When It Comes To Executions

By Scott Taylor

I must admit that up until last week I had never heard of Alexei Navalny. Now we are being told that Navalny is a very vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has been organizing opposition support in Russia and plotting mayhem in the streets of neighbouring Belarus. The reason we know this is because Navalny is presently (at time of writing) in a coma in hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk.

Western intelligence sources have already claimed that Navalny’s condition is the result of an attempted assassination by Russian Intelligence operatives. Of course Putin himself is the logical suspect for ordering this ‘hit’ on his political nemesis.

The plotline conjured up by those western intelligence reports is that Navalny ingested the poison when he drank a cup of tea at the airport in Tomsk. He was waiting for a flight to Moscow. However once airborne, Navalny began exhibiting symptoms and the pilot quickly rerouted to make an emergency landing at Omsk.

Since western intelligence reports are unquestionably reliable the question begs what the hell is wrong with the Russian GRU secret service? Why are they so fascinated with the use of poison and elaborate James Bond style, over elaborate execution plots?

If they wanted Navalny dead without garnering international attention why not just shoot him, take his wallet and have the Tomsk police chief rule it as a robbery gone bad. Case closed.

Instead these GRU clowns plant an agent in the Tomsk airport to slip the poison into his takeout cup of tea. The poison must be very slow acting as Navalny is able to board the plane before submitting to it. The midflight reaction guarantees there are multiple witnesses to his distress which in turn leads to an emergency landing by the pilot. All kinds of attention, and once again the GRU’s intended target doesn’t die.

Did these GRU agents learn nothing from their high profile failed assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal? According to western intelligence narrative, in March 2018, two GRU agents entered the U.K armed with the deadly nerve-agent Novichok. They were intent on killing Skripal – a convicted double agent who had been released from a Russian jail in a 2010 spy swap with the U.K. 

Skripal had settled down in the sleepy country town of Salisbury with his daughter Yulia. The GRU assassins thought the best means of eliminating Skripal was to smear the super deadly Novichok agent on the door handle of the Skripal residence.

The two Skripals – Sergei and Yulia – were both found in distress in a nearby park on March 4, 2018. The pair were hospitalized in critical condition. The U.K announced that Novichok was the substance and that meant the GRU and, by extraction, Putin was to blame. In a show of solidarity allied nations including Canada expelled Russian diplomats from embassies all around the world to protest this outrage.

Again one has to ask why the GRU would not have simply shot Skripal, taken his wallet and have this incident swept under the carpet as a common robbery? Instead they created an international backlash against Russia and in the end both Skripals fully recovered within a few weeks.

Putin and the GRU should take lessons in extra-judicial executions from the U.S. When Donald Trump wanted Iranian General Qasem Soleimani killed, the CIA did not have an agent lace his tea cup with poison at a civilian airport.

Nor did any U.S. spies wipe a nerve agent on his family doorknob.

Hell no. On Jan. 3, 2020 a predator drone operator at the U.S. base in Doha, Qatar simply pushed a button and fired a missile into Soleimani’s entourage at the Baghdad airport.

Unlike Putin and the cowardly GRU, there was no phony denials of Soleimani’s execution on the part of the U.S.

President Trump gleefully hailed Soleimani’s death and took full credit. That’s how the big boys take care of their nemesis.

ON TARGET: Kandahar Cenotaph Should be Located at Beechwood Cemetery

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Kandahar Cenotaph was back in the news as it was reported that the Memorial Hall built to house it had suffered severe weather damage during the winter.

While the Department of National Defence states that the contents of the Cenotaph were unaffected, the estimated cost of the repairs to the Memorial Hall is $500,000.

The building has been closed since February and the repairs are not expected to be complete before December.

The origins of this cenotaph date back to 2006 when Canadian troops based at the Kandahar airfield assembled a collection of commemorative plaques dedicated to each soldier killed in Afghanistan up to that date.

As the unwinnable war dragged on the cenotaph continued to grow with each new death. By the time Canada concluded the combat phase of the Afghanistan mission and withdrew from Kandahar the memorial site included a total of 161 plaques.

Of this total 158 were fallen soldiers plus diplomat Glyn Berry, Calgary Herald Journalist Michelle Lang and a civilian under DND contract Marc Cyr.

It was a unique and authentic memorial collection, made in the field by soldiers honouring their own comrades. As such the decision was made to pack and crate the cenotaph and bring it home to Canadian soil. That part was simple but once it was back in Ottawa the military faced a real head-scratcher as to what to do with it.

Finding a suitable location in the national capital was particularly challenging as all such zoning decisions involve multiple levels of government bureaucracy.

It also represents the sacrifice made in Canada’s first military defeat. It is a visual reminder that NATO, the world’s most sophisticated and powerful military alliance, failed to subdue the primitive but fanatical Afghan insurgents.

Canada cut its losses completely when we withdrew from the training mission to Afghanistan in 2014, and that occasion was marked with a ‘Day of Honour’ on Parliament Hill rather than a ‘Victory Parade’.

That said, it is important to remember our soldiers’ sacrifice even if it was in vain. Those men and women died in the service of Canada.

To kickstart the stalled relocation process, the decision was eventually taken to cut through the Gordian’s knot of red tape involving outside departments and simply place the Kandahar Cenotaph inside the DND Headquarters building known as the Carling Campus.

Construction on the new memorial hall started in 2017 in a project valued at $3 million. The hall was ready in 2019.

To mark the occasion a dedication ceremony involving a handful of military brass and DND personnel was held at the Carling Campus site. A few days later DND Public Affairs posted announcements and photos of the dedication.

Within hours the feces was hitting the fan right across the country as the families of the fallen realized they had not been invited to honour their loved ones.

The backlash forced a hasty retreat, promises to find the culprits responsible for the oversight and pledges to set things right. To their credit, DND did organize a blockbuster event in August 2019 to ‘re-dedicate’ the Kandahar Cenotaph and this time it included up to six family members of each of the fallen.

However, as this latest story of weather damage serves to remind us, this tribute to Canadian sacrifice in Afghanistan remains in a non-public space. The Carling Campus is a functioning military headquarters, which by its very nature requires a high level of security rather than open accessibility.

At present, when it eventually re-opens, the policy is that visitors can make appointments to view the cenotaph at this rather remote location in western Ottawa.

This is an unworkable half-measure which can easily be rectified. Rather than spend the $500,000 in repairs to the memorial hall, the Cenotaph should be relocated to Beechwood Cemetery.

It is after all the National Memorial Center. Beechwood is just outside the downtown core and it is publicly accessible.

There were even discussions on getting a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) as a centrepiece for what could be a truly fitting tribute to those who paid the ultimate price in the service of Canada.

ON TARGET: It's Bucking Broncos Time At NDHQ

By Scott Taylor

There was a series of stories last week by Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese which clearly illustrates the culture of defiance and invincibility that exists within National Defence Headquarters’ upper echelons.

The genesis of this current saga has its roots dating back to some extraordinary testimony at a December 2018 pre-trial hearing in the Vice Admiral Mark Norman case.

Norman had been suspended from his duties as the Vice Chief of Defence Staff and was subsequently charged with Breach of Trust. It was alleged by the prosecution that Norman had communicated cabinet confidence information to a Quebec based shipyard.

Norman’s legal team had been struggling to get information from the government that was needed in his defence and had used the federal Access to Information law to request such documents. Others had also requested similar records under the access law.

However at the pre-trial hearing a Canadian Armed Forces major testified that the requested documentation had been deliberately hidden. According to the witness, who had been tasked with collecting the Norman files, a brigadier-general had boastfully claimed that when the documents were created, Norman’s name was deliberately not used. There would also be later testimony that the military had used code names like ‘Kraken’ a phonetic play on Norman’s former title as Commander, Royal Canadian Navy (CRNC).

This all meant that any search for records about ‘Mark Norman’ would come back as ‘nil’. According to the witness the unnamed brigadier-general made it sound like such deliberate thwarting of the Access to Information law was commonplace. “This is not our first rodeo” was the brigadier-general’s alleged reaction to the conscientious major’s incredulity.

Needless to say, this testimony set off alarm bell’s within the legal community. Federal information Commissioner Caroline Maynard – who’s job is to oversee the implementation of the ATI process - immediately began an investigation into DND and the CAF. Within two months Maynard’s office concluded that what had transpired in the Norman case was a possible “commission of an offence” under the Access Act.

As Maynard does not have the authority to investigate such offences, her office notified the Attorney General. In turn the Attorney General’s office alerted the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. This would be the same public prosecutors who were handling the charge against Norman.

Nevertheless the prosecution service notified the RCMP about Maynard’s concerns.

Realizing that because they were the agency that had conducted the original investigation, which resulted in the charge against Norman, the RCMP felt they could be in conflict of interest. Therefore, they handed the case over to the Ontario Provincial Police. At least that was the story.

Maynard’s concerns and actions regarding the Norman case were released in a report tabled Wednesday 29 July. This prompted keen eyed reporter Pugliese to ask about the status and results of the OPP investigation.

Pugliese’s inquiry prompted the revelation that nothing was ever done. Due to an “administrative error” the RCMP never got around to contacting the OPP.

That has now been remedied. Following Pugliese’s query, the OPP have now belatedly opened an investigation. We wish them Godspeed on a very cold trail.

Of course the bombshell revelation’s in the major’s testimony also alarmed officials at DND. As such Deputy Minister Jody Thomas detailed the Canadian Force’s National Investigative Service (CFNIS) to leave no stone unturned in their investigation to find the culprit(s).

Alas, the case proved too difficult for the military gumshoes to crack. The case was closed as their sleuthing efforts “did not reveal sufficient evidence to pursue criminal or service offence charges in the matter.”

No documentation of the CFNIS investigation was released to Pugliese, who was told he could only obtain them with an Access to Information request. Which of course brings us full circle to where this all began. This was not DND’s first rodeo and it won’t be their last.

For the record, the case against Norman collapsed before trial in May 2019. The Vice-Admiral retired and received a financial settlement from the Crown.

ON TARGET: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV... Germany?

By Scott Taylor

Whoah! I remembered it again! Last Wednesday U.S. Secretary of Defence Mark Esper announced plans for the withdrawal of 12,000 American military personnel from their current bases in Germany. On July 29th, true to form, top cognitive genius tweeted.

Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for Energy, and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia. What’s that all about? Also, Germany is very delinquent in their 2% fee to NATO. We are therefore moving some troops out of Germany!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020

For a man who has repeatedly claimed to be “the most militaristic person ever” Trump seems to have little real grasp on how this defence stuff actually works.

First of all, the U.S. presently has roughly 38,600 military personnel stationed on German sovereign soil.

Over the past decade the German taxpayers have spent over $1.1 billion U.S. (approximately $100 million annually) to accommodate these U.S. soldiers.

From the U.S. airbase at Ramstein the Americans conducted airstrikes during their 2003 invasion of Iraq, a war which Germany opposed. To this day Ramstein is used as a control center for deadly extra-judicial U.S drone strikes in Yemen and elsewhere.

Also troubling to many German citizens is the fact that the U.S. uses the German air force base at Buchel to house an estimated 20 American nuclear warheads.

The huge U.S. hospital facility at Landstuhl has also been the treatment center for U.S. and allied (including Canadians) wounded during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So Trump’s assertion that the U.S. military presence in Germany is solely to protect Germans from Russian aggression is patently false. Even after this current planned reduction, there will still be over 26,000 U.S. personnel on the ground. Ramstein will continue to coordinate drone strikes, Landstuhl will still treat battlefield casualties and the nuclear warheads will remain on German soil.

Of the 12,000 being withdrawn, the bulk of these troops will be re-positioned to other European countries such as Italy, Poland and the Baltic States. In other worlds, they will still be between the German citizenry and any hostile Russian aggressors.

As for the fact that Germany buys much of its oil and gas from Russia, how can that really bother Trump the capitalist when the U.S. imports most of its energy from Saudi Arabia? Enough said.

Which brings us to Trump’s other point that Germany is being “very delinquent in their 2% fee to NATO.”

For those who are not familiar with the structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is a 28-country military alliance. It is not a golf and country club with annual membership “fees”.

What Trump is referring to stems from a NATO summit held in Wales in 2014. At that meeting member states agreed to set a goal of spending 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence.

In this regard Canada is also ‘delinquent’ in the eyes of Trump as just prior to the pandemic we spent slightly over 1.3% of our GDP on defence. This is an equivalent percentage to that spent by the recently ‘punished’ Germany pre-COVID19 crisis.

Many have argued that the arbitrary figure of 2% is meaningless as the GDP’s of the various members differ so greatly. For instance in 2019 Bulgaria, which has a relatively puny GDP, bought a total of eight F-16 fighter jets at a one time cost of $1.5 billion and this pushed their defence budget up to 3.25 percent of its economic output.

Only the U.S. spent a higher percentage at 3.4% GDP on defence, but that amount equals more than all other NATO members combined. For the record, Canada’s annual expenditure in actual dollars ranks us number six in spending within the alliance.

However, for those Canadian defence analysts that for the past five years have dutifully parroted the “2% GDP on Defence” party line – your wish might soon be granted.

In April alone Canada’s GDP shrunk by over 11% which means our defence budget climbed above the 1.5% mark. If our economy continues to tank, Trump will get his wish and Canada will soon be spending more than 2% GDP on defence.

Hell, it could be 3% by Christmas. If so, I can think of a few defence cheerleaders in Canada who can shut down their think tanks and leave a ‘mission-accomplished’ sign on the door.

ON TARGET: Vance to Retire: Who will be Canada’s Next CDS?

By Scott Taylor

It was announced last Thursday that Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance will be stepping down from his post as Canada’s top soldier. There was no ‘effective immediately’ caveat, so it is presumed that Vance will continue to lead the Canadian Armed Forces until such time as the Trudeau Liberal government has selected his successor.

One can probably assume that with the current distractions such as the ME-to-WE conflict of interest allegations, the COVID pandemic and resultant collapse of the Canadian economy, Trudeau will be in no rush to sit and sift through the CV’s of his senior generals. As a result, insiders expect that Vance will keep his job through this fall and possibly even into early 2021.

However the sweepstakes have begun and pundits are already laying odds on who will be Canada’s next CDS.

There is no clear-cut frontrunner from the pack of Canada’s senior officers.

While in theory the CDS post is to be rotated through the three service branches – Navy, Army and Air force – for the past thirty years this has not been the case in practice. Army generals have been the incumbent six times, Air force generals thrice and a Navy Admiral only once (and that was only an aborted 11 month term).

During the scandal plagued era of the mid-nineties the Liberal government of the day actually left the CDS position vacant for more than a year.

One of the contributing factors as to why General Vance has no heir apparent stems from the Vice Admiral Mark Norman affair. In 2017 the RCMP alleged that Norman – then the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff – had leaked government information to a shipyard.

General Vance suspended Norman while the case was played out in the courts. As a result the VCDS position became a revolving door with Norman’s responsibilities being handed off in quick succession to VAdm Ron Lloyd, LGen Paul Wynnyk, LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier and as of just a few days ago LGen Mike Rouleau.

The legal case against Norman collapsed, but the admiral chose a settlement and retirement over returning to his old job. Lloyd, Wynnyk and Lanthier have also all since retired.

Although the ink is still wet on his new VCDS business cards, many consider that Rouleau is a top contender to replace Vance. Prior to his current post Rouleau commanded the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) and more recently he presided over Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC).

Rouleau’s replacement at CJOC, LGen Chris Coates is also in the running for Vance’s office as he was until recently the Deputy Commander of NORAD.

Then there are the three current service branch heads – LGen Wayne Eyre the Army Commander LGen Al Meinzinger the RCAF commander and Vice Admiral Art McDonald head of the RCN.

Of those three, Meinzinger has the most experience as a three-star general with Eyre and McDonald only recently having been promoted to their present rank.

Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson is currently the Chief of Military Personnel and could very easily be the dark horse in this race if the RCN are finally to get their turn at the top job.

There has also been some speculation that the Trudeau Liberals will want to be the first to appoint a female general to command the CAF.

To make that happen there are two possible options. The first would be to convince LGen Christine Whitecross to cancel her imminent retirement and accept a post which she has previously said she is not interested in attaining.

The second would be to promote once again the very recently promoted LGen Frances Allen. Regardless of how capable and qualified Allen may be, such an accelerated promotion over the heads of the more experience male three-star generals would undoubtedly be viewed as blatant tokenism on the part of the Trudeau government.

The race is on and it will be interesting to watch. As for General Vance, I wish to take this opportunity to thank him for his service. I have often criticized his actions or inactions in this column, but never without personal respect for the uniform he has chosen to wear for the past 39 years.

ON TARGET: How Is It a Hate Crime To Hate Nazis?

Photo courtesy US Holocaust Memorial Museum

By Scott Taylor

In the wake of the high profile Black Lives Matter movement there has been a lot of soul searching into a North American history riddled with racism and the institutional glorification of colonialism. In the U.S. we have seen protestors topple statues of Confederate generals and Christopher Columbus.

Closer to home, around June 21 a monument was vandalized at a cemetery in Oakville, Ontario. When first reported it was stated that the Halton-Regional Police Service was treating this as a “hate motivated offense due to the nature of the graffiti.” At the time, police said they would not release images of the graffiti so as not to spread the suspect’s message. So far, so good.

However, social media has a habit of leaping firewalls and it did not take long for those missing details to come to light. It turns out that the defaced monument is actually a tribute to the 14 SS Division (Galizien) and the offending message spray painted on it read “Nazi war monument.”

That’s right folks, as hard as it is to fathom there is actually a monument on Canadian soil that pays tribute to Hitler’s SS troops. For the suspect to have labelled this a Nazi war monument may constitute vandalism but it is an accurate statement. Which therefore begs the question as to why the Halton-Regional police would be treating this as a hate crime? How can hating Nazis be a crime, let alone a hate crime?

My colleague David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen posed that question to the Halton-Regional police and their spokesman Const. Steve Elms replied by email. “This incident occurred to a monument and the graffiti appeared to target an identifiable group.”

That ‘identifiable group’ would be the members of the 14th SS Division (Galizien) all of whom took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and who were commanded by Heinrich Himmler, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

For those of you still in disbelief that a monument to these Nazi’s would exist in Canada let me provide some historical context.

The 14 SS Division (Galizien) was initially comprised of Ukrainian volunteers. It was established in 1943 when the fortunes of war had begun to turn against Hitler and the German war machine needed to increase its manpower to counter that of the Allies. The 14 SS Division fought against the Soviet Union on the eastern front but surrendered to the U.S. forces in Austria in 1945. After being interned at camps in Italy, eventually many of these SS troops immigrated to Canada. Hence the subsequent erection of a memorial to their fallen comrades in the St. Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church cemetery in Oakville.

Apologists for the Ukrainian SS claim they were in fact heroes who were striving to establish an independent state. Others make the weak excuse that many of these SS troopers were forcibly and illegally conscripted by the Germans.

While I’m sure there were such conscripts, I’m equally sure that if they were forced against their will to fight for a cause they did not believe in, they would not erect a glorious monument to the unit in which they were forced to serve.

One would presume that as their commander, SS leader Himmler would understand the nature of the Ukrainian SS members. In a speech to this division in May 1944 Himmler told the assembled 14th Division SS members, “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiatives, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews, I know if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.” Himmler’s comments were reportedly greeted with cheers.

For the record it must be remembered that some 40,000 ethnic Ukrainian-Canadians fought against the Nazis in the Second World War wearing a Canadian uniform.

Which makes the Halton-Regional Police comment about the message on the monument targeting an identifiable group even more puzzling as it is clearly aimed specifically at Nazis.

This was vandalism of private property – not a hate crime against Nazi’s.

ON TARGET: Armed Intrusion at Rideau Hall Could Have Ended Far Differently

Corey Hurren (centre) in a photo from his company's Instagram account during an outing for Canadian Armed Forces reservists this past winter.

By Scott Taylor

In the early hours of Thursday 2 July, there was a bizarre incident in the nation’s capital. A pickup truck smashed through the security gates at Rideau Hall. The impact disabled the vehicle and the driver continued his intrusion on foot. The RCMP confronted the man and after a ninety-minute negotiation 46-year-old Corey Hurren was arrested and taken into custody.

Rideau Hall is the official residence of Governor General Julie Payette and since 2015 Rideau cottage located on the same grounds have been home to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family.

Neither Payette nor the Trudeau family were at home at the time of the incident.

However we now know that Hurren was well armed with several weapons and that he intended to send a ‘wake-up call’ to Canadians. Hurren had detailed his troubled thoughts in a two-page letter, the contents of which have subsequently been shared with the media.

In addition to personal financial issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Hurren felt that Canada was becoming a “communist dictatorship.”

In the letter Hurren also apologized to his family and friends in advance for the actions he was about to take and noted that he did not want to go on living with the pain. In other words, his letter reads like the final words of a man intent on committing suicide-by-cop.

One can only bet that had either the Governor General or Prime Minister been on the premises and endangered by the armed Hurren, such would have been the outcome.

What makes Hurren’s actions so bizarre is that he is not some run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory whack job, he is in fact a serving member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Documents show that from April 1997 until October 2000 Hurren was a reservist with the 10th Field Artillery Regiment based in Regina, Sask. He had been released with the rank of Corporal. Last year Hurren re-enlisted as a member of the 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group. As part of the CAF effort to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic Hurren was placed on active duty.

In addition to his service as a Ranger Hurren ran a sausage business in his hometown of Bowsman, Manitoba. It was this business which Hurren felt would not recover from the economic impact of the Pandemic.

While none of the weapons or ammunition found on Hurren’s possession at the time of his arrest were CAF property, he did make a point of sending a copy of his two-page letter to his Ranger supervisor prior to the intrusion at Rideau Hall.

That supervisor had the presence of mind to call 911 and was therefore able to assist the RCMP during their prolonged negotiations with Hurren prior to his arrest.

As a serving member of the CAF, Hurren would have taken an oath of loyalty to the Queen of Canada, and therefore it seems incredible that he would have pursued this desperate course of action.

It would also appear that his connection to the Canadian military and respect for the institution were in no way diminished or sullied. Arriving in Ottawa on Canada Day after a 28 hour drive from Bowsman, Hurren’s first order of business was to pay a visit to the Canadian War Museum. Unfortunately for the luckless Hurren the COVID-19 pandemic dealt him yet another blow as the CWM has been locked down since mid-March.

While this particular incident was resolved in an anti-climatic manner, it could have ended much differently. A serving soldier on active duty assembles a small arsenal of loaded weapons and drives halfway across Canada to deliver a ‘wake-up’ call with an attack on Rideau Hall. That is serious stuff far beyond a simple ‘mental health’ episode.

The RCMP officers involved are to be commended on their poise and patience. I cannot imagine a similar peaceful surrender if someone crashed the gates of the White House intent on sending a ‘wake-up call’ to Donald Trump.

ON TARGET: You Don’t Need to Pay Afghan Extremists a Bounty to Kill Foreign Occupiers

Afghan extremists have been happily killing would be foreign occupiers for centuries.

By Scott Taylor

With COVID-19 pandemic resurgent throughout the U.S. and the Black Lives Matter movement still garnering headlines there is now a third bombshell story competing for the American media’s attention.

Last week the New York Times broke the story that U.S. intelligence sources allege that Russian intelligence operatives have been paying a bounty to Afghan insurgents who target and kill U.S. soldiers.

The allegations -although unproven and based solely on unnamed intelligence sources - were quickly accepted as fact. Overnight the story angle became ‘when was Donald Trump made aware of these reports?’ and ‘why has Trump not taken action against the Russians?’

For the hard core Colonel Blimp Brigade – including the usual war-mongers here in Canada – this allegation was a Eureka moment: We didn’t lose the war in Afghanistan ourselves it was Russian interference that prevented our victory!

This conclusion defies all logic and would only be embraced by the wilfully blind.

Let me be clear that if there is any shred of truth that Russian intelligence paid Afghans to kill Americans it would amount to a heinous crime deserving of sanction. However it would be foolhardy to believe that such blood payments altered in any way the failed course of the American-led war in Afghanistan.

Even to accept the New York Times expose as gospel truth, they claim that the Russian bounty on U.S. soldiers was only ‘implemented in recent years.’

For those keeping track, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and initially Russia was a key supporter of that effort with a shared enemy in al-Qaeda extremists.

Relations between Russia and the U.S. did not sour until the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, so that would mean that the American-led occupation of Afghanistan was combating a fanatical resistance for a decade and a half before the Russians began paying out these alleged kill rewards.

As a reporter who covered the war in Afghanistan, I was privy to a lot of claims made by international officials as to NATO’s inability to suppress the insurgency.

Many believed that foreign fighters seeking an international holy war were the problem, and a standard refrain was that this was all Pakistan’s fault. Were it not for those outsides forces they believed that the grateful Afghans would treat our soldiers as ‘liberators’.

Never once did I hear any suggestion that Russia was the destabilizing force through their bribing of Afghans with ‘up to $100,000’ for each American soldier killed.

Such a notion of the Taliban warrior as a greedy mercenary also defies any understanding of their fanatical mindset. The reason that the Taliban have been so resilient in their defiance is that they are more than willing to die for their cause.

The collective failure of the NATO trained and equipped Afghan security forces when fighting the Taliban is that the Afghan Army soldiers want to live to cash their comparatively lucrative paycheques.

In other words, if the Russian’s have indeed been paying out six figure bounties, they have been wasting their money. As thousands of years of history clearly demonstrated, the Afghans don’t need a reward to kill foreign invaders, and one would think the Russians of all people would have learned that lesson during their decade long occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989).

Another thing to keep in mind is that just six months ago a dossier dubbed the Afghanistan Papers was made public by the Washington Post. In this 2000-page document compiled by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) it was concluded that the U.S. public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable war.

The report was based on hundreds of interviews with those key figures directing the Afghanistan conflict. The two main themes concluded by SIGAR were that U.S. officials manipulated statistics to portray to the American public non-existent progress and that successive U.S. administrations had failed to clamp down on the widespread corruption.

Not once in the report did anyone blame the lost war on Russian bounties.