ON TARGET: Time for Canada to Quit Iraq War

By Scott Taylor

On Sunday October 10, Iraqi citizens went to the polls to elect a new parliament. Given that this coincided with Thanksgiving, it is no surprise that this story garnered barely a mention in the Canadian media.

This was unfortunate as this election result should concern Canadian citizens for the simple reason that the military is authorized to have up to 850 personnel deployed in the region on a mission known as Operation Impact.

As well as supporting security operations in Lebanon and Jordan, the Liberal government’s objective for Op Impact states that it is “in support of the Global Coalition and NATO [to] improve Iraqi security forces’ capabilities.” These efforts help Iraq to achieve long term success in keeping its territory and people secure.”

That sounds like a noble gesture, but the long and the short of it is that we are training Iraqi troops to prop up the government therefore we Canadians should probably pay attention to who is leading that government.

To date, Iraq’s attempt to establish a functioning democracy after the U.S invaded and toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, cannot be described as a resounding success.

There have been five parliamentary elections staged since the American occupation in 2003. The 2018 election was a garbled farce. When the Iraqi officials could not determine a verifiable result, a full recount was ordered. But before that could happen the central warehouse containing the ballots was burned to the ground.

The result has been an inefficient Iraqi government in the interim, rife with corruption and unable to deliver basic utilities to an ever more impatient populace. In the months leading up to the latest parliamentary election, there have been a number of violent demonstrations across Iraq calling for an end to the corruption.

With the early result tabulated, it appears that the big winner of the election – taking 73 of 329 seats – is a chap named Muqtada al-Sadr.

If that name sounds vaguely familiar it is because during the U.S. occupation he was listed as America’s “public enemy number one.”

He is a Shiite fundamentalist cleric who doubled as an anti-American warlord. When his fanatical followers rose up against the U.S. forces in 2004 al-Sadr taunted the Americans with billboards adorned with his giant portrait and the slogan – in English – “All men belong to me.”

So he is just a little crazy.

His militia are known as Sadrists and they were mobilized in 2014 when Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) burst into Iraq from Syria and the U.S. trained Iraqi government army simply melted away.

As part of that Global coalition deployed to counter Daesh, Canadian troops were in fact in a loose alliance with these Sadrists.

Following the successful defeat of Daesh in the City of Mosul in 2017. Shiite militiamen, including Sadrists were accused of war crimes. Canadian military trainers were subsequently shown videos of these crimes being committed.

In an official DND document it was noted that “these acts included violence pertaining to rape, torture and execution.” The report further detailed that the videos included “raping a woman to death; the torture and execution of a line of bound prisoners whereby they were beaten to death by what appeared to be a rebar steel bar; and the execution of a man by hanging him from the barrel of a [main battle tank]”

The Canadian instructors raised this issue with their superiors in theatre because the men committing these crimes were the very Iraqi recruits whom they were training. The immediate response from the Canadian chain of command was to carry on with the training and to stop watching the videos.

Now that it appears Muqtada al-Sadr will form the next coalition to rule Iraq. It would seem that, like Afghanistan, the U.S. effort in Iraq has produced a far from desirable result.

As a fierce nationalist, Sadr has repeatedly stated that he wants foreign troops off Iraqi soil.

Rather than keep flogging a dead horse and maintaining Operation Impact to its next parliament-approved deadline of March 2022, Canada should get our troops out of there now. It was a mission that never had a clear objective once Daesh was defeated in 2018. Like Afghanistan, there will be no victory parade when the war in Iraq finally peters out.

We did our bit. Now bring our troops home. The Sadrists can prop up their own leader without our assistance.

ON TARGET: Another DND Self Inflicted PR Wound

By Scott Taylor

Last week Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese broke the story that Maj.-Gen. Peter Dawe had been quietly assigned a new post and brought back to work. Dawe had earlier fallen from grace when it was revealed earlier this year that in 2017 he had written a positive character reference for a fellow officer after that individual had been found guilty on various criminal charges, not the least of which being sexual assault.
The victim of the sexual assault was the wife of a fellow officer in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. She was also a former soldier herself.

Partly on the strength of Dawe's letter and a separate character reference from the PPCLI association, the judge in the case placed the convicted perpetrator – Maj. Jon Hamilton on probation rather than issuing him a jail sentence.
Unfortunately for Hamilton he was later convicted of another, unrelated sexual assault, and the judge in that trial put him behind bars on a three-year sentence.
The story that Dawe had written a letter of support for a sex offender was made worse by the fact that he had not expressed empathy for the victim and he had ignored the expressed wish of her husband to not support Hamilton in this instance.

Recently Dawe was quietly returned to a job at National Defence headquarters. His new position was not to be just any old job, but rather he was to work in a role involving responses to the various reviews looking into sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as well as the much maligned military justice system.

There was no fanfare of official announcement for Dawe's new assignment, but obviously his selection for this job did not sit well with fellow officers. Hence one (or more) informed Pugliese who was subsequently able to confirm the details. Again, the news of this sparked a backlash from sexual misconduct survivor groups, political opposition parties and anyone who understands common sense and bad optics.
The backlash was so swift and severe that Acting Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre almost immediately rescinded the post. It would have been Eyre who approved Dawe of being back and given him that job, but it was Vice Chief of Defence Staff, Lt.-Gen. Frances Allen who made the formal announcement that Dawe would not be immediately going into that new position. Perhaps the military felt that putting a female face on the change of Dawe's appointment would make it look like they are finally "getting it".

Unfortunately, the underhanded way in which they tried to quietly resurrected Dawe in this new role appears to prove Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be correct in his assessment. "It is obvious that despite the work the military has done, despite the work that we have done, the military still doesn't get that survivors need to be at the centre, and the unique priority of everything in regards to sexual misconduct and harassment in the military," said Trudeau to reporters, adding "this shows they simply still don’t get it."

Regrettably, Trudeau blanket statement should have been more targeted at the very senior command level of the CAF.

The fact that the news of Dawe's appointment generated enough internal reaction that it was subsequently leaked to the Ottawa Citizen, means that many of the rank and file do in fact "get it".

Gen. Eyre and the senior command must have known there was potential for such a backlash as the entire Canadian military has been engulfed in a steady stream of sexual misconduct scandals for the past eight months. That was why they kept it on the down low. For his part, Maj.-Gen. Dawe - who is by all accounts an outstanding combat soldier - should have known better than to accept a job involving the review of military sexual misconduct. This was yet another entirely avoidable black eye for the CAF senior command.

ON TARGET: DND Information Wars: A Lack of Accountability

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Canadian Armed Forces were pummeled with yet another self-inflicted wound to their public trust. The Ottawa Citizen reported the stunning news that certain military leaders viewed the COVID-19 pandemic as a welcome opportunity to employ propaganda techniques against the Canadian public.

To be clear, this initiative was not directed by the Liberal government, and when the country’s top general got wind of the scheme he shut it down post haste.

In fact, not only did then Chief of Defence staff, General Jonathan Vance terminate the operation, he also later brought in retired Maj.-Gen. Daniel Gosselin to investigate just how this plan was hatched in the first place.

It was the findings in Gosselin’s report which provided the genesis for the latest Citizen story.

This fittingly brings us full circle as it was Citizen reporter David Pugliese who first broke the story in the spring of 2020.

As it gets a bit confusing and involves a number of separate yet related issues, I will do my best to recap the sequence of events.

In April 2020, almost as soon as it was being implemented, Pugliese reported that the military’s Canadian Joint Operation’s Command (CJOC) planned to employ propaganda techniques on the Canadian public as part of Operation Laser, the CAF’s response to the pandemic.

It was also reported that a separate initiative, this one involving officers working under the direction of military intelligence, was put in place to cull information from social media accounts in Ontario. This initiative also included military personnel compiling data about Black Lives Matter leaders and their gatherings.

The Citizen stories sparked public outrage and General Vance ordered the CJOC scheme shut down. The data mining initiative was allowed to continue. For his part, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan promised his fellow parliamentarians that these highly questionable activities by Canada’s military had been cancelled.

The CBC later reported that in fact some of those activities had continued unabated until Vance sent out written orders.

That prompted the review by Gosselin, which although completed in December 2020, is only now being released under the Access to Information Act.

What Gosselin’s findings now reveal is that this was not simply the wayward ideology of a rogue military propaganda specialist. It is clear from his report that Gosselin was convinced this represented the collective mindset of the CJOC senior commanders who viewed the pandemic as a “unique opportunity” to test out their theories.

Around the same time that the Citizen first began reporting these anomalies it was also revealed that the Canadian military had already spent more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behavior modification techniques similar to those used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytics, a company which was implicated in 2016 data – mining scandal aimed at boosting Donald Trump’s U.S. Presidential campaign.

That training initiative was the brainchild of Brig.-Gen. Jay Janzen, who was at the time the senior officer in the Public Affairs Branch.

The military leadership also formally shut down another one of Janzen’s initiatives, this one a controversial plan which news reports pointed out would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviors of Canadians as well as collect and analyze information from the public’s social media accounts.

When the news of Canada’s military using military psyops on their own citizens became public, it did not take long to realize how badly that plan backfired.

A story in Vice World News last week reported that “The Canadian Armed Forces attempt to combat misinformation only ended up giving conspiracy theorists another way to spread it.”

Apparently QAnon forums, Covid-conspiracy Telegram groups and something called 4chan are claiming that the CAF’s plan to modify behavior among the population is further damning proof of the government’s great COVID-19 conspiracy.

Despite the fact that Canada’s senior brass shut these initiatives down and ordered investigations into their origins, no one has been sanctioned for these actions.

Even now that it is increasingly clear how this has eroded public trust in the military institution, not one officer has been held to account.

For his part, Janzen has since retired and taken a senior civilian position in communications with NATO.

Just wait until the conspiracy theorists dig their teeth into the fact that Janzen is now in a position to influence the communications strategy for all 30 nation states within the alliance.

That cannot be very reassuring.

ON TARGET: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation: Time for Personal Reflection

By Scott Taylor

The current sense of national shame began on May 28 with the media reports of some 200 unmarked graves discovered on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The majority of those bodies are believed to be those of Indigenous students attending the facility. 

Then in rapid succession came the reported findings of more unmarked graves at four other former residential schools; Brandon, Manitoba, Marieval, Saskatchewan, Cranbrook, BC and Kuper Island, BC. The largest single discovery was at Marieval with an estimated 751 graves, putting the collective total at just under 1400. There are presently 21 investigations underway in search of additional unmarked graves at former residential schools. It is estimated the number could climb to 4100 bodies. 

The implementation of the residential school system dates back to its authorization by then Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald on July 1, 1883.

Macdonald's stated goal was to isolate Indigenous children from their families and to cut all ties they had to their culture. In hindsight this practice has been widely denounced as a form of cultural genocide. These graveyard discoveries suddenly put an entirely new spin on things, and Canadians were shocked to discover this sad chapter in our nation’s history. 

The public outpouring of emotion was immediate with demonstrators wearing orange and carrying signs proclaiming ‘All lives matter’. In many towns and cities across Canada, statues of Macdonald were either vandalized or toppled. As early as June, the Trudeau Liberals ordered flags to be flown at half-mast in recognition of this historical tragedy. To date they remain there as no one quite knows what would be a suitable marker signifying that we have paid proper respect to the victims. Some have suggested that the new September 30, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation federal statutory holiday would be that occasion. 

For me these revelations of systemic Indigenous abuse actually caused me for the first time to further research my own familial roots. Growing up in Toronto I knew that my maternal grandmother Pauline was a Mohawk born on the Six Nation of the Grand Reserve near Brantford, Ontario.

Our family also knew that Pauline had left the reserve in 1930 at the age of 16, soon after married my grandfather –a Scotsman, and by doing so she cut all ties with her Mohawk roots. By marrying a ’non-Indian’ she legally lost her status as an ‘Indian’.

Given the current attention on this subject, I now know that under the terms of the 1885 Indian Act it would have been mandatory for Pauline to attend the Mohawk Residential Institute at Brantford until the age of 16.

This particular school was notorious for its abuse of students. The food quality was substandard and the school was nicknamed the ‘Mush Hole’ by attendees. Students who ‘escaped’ were placed in a purpose-built prison in the school’s basement. Described as essentially a dark closet, students would kept in there for days at a time. Shock treatment for the infraction of bed wetting and the close cropped hair for males and females led to the students being referred to as ‘Mush Hole baldies’. 

In 1985 under Canada’s new Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the previous law was changed, allowing those Indigenous women married to ‘non-Indians’ to reclaim their status. However by that juncture Pauline was 71 years old and had been cut off from the reserve for 55 years. As a result, not only myself, but my sister and our cousins were never connected to our Indigenous relatives. That is going to change. Through my maternal aunts and uncles I am starting to assemble the genesis of a family tree and I plan to reach out to Pauline’s extended family on this first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation holiday.

ON TARGET: Is the new AUKUS Alliance a Snub to Canada?

By Scott Taylor

At the United Nation’s general assembly in New York, U.S. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and U.K Prime Minister Boris Johnson used the occasion to announce a new security pact between the three countries.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the U.S. and U.K will agree to furnish Australia with advanced nuclear propulsion technology for their proposed submarine fleet.

In announcing the deal, Biden made the claim that “The United States has no closer or more reliable ally than Australia.”

The fact that even in making that statement Biden could not remember Morrison’s name, would seem to take the gravitas out of this ‘best buddy’ moniker.

Nevertheless, a single quip of hollow praise was enough to set off squeals of protests by Canadian defence cheerleaders.

With their logic it is somehow proof of the Trudeau Liberal’s neglect of our military that we are being left out of this exclusive new military alliance.

One of talking points used by Biden, Morrison and Johnson was that this new agreement would allow Australia to bolster the collective counter balance to China’s growing military threat in the Pacific.

Not mentioned by these three amigos was the fact that Australia already had a contract with France to supply them with nuclear propelled submarines, valued at an estimated $66 billion.

This little item was not lost on the French government-owned shipbuilder the Naval Group, who have already demanded massive cancellation costs from the Australians.

This was not an alliance formed to thwart China. It was simply a creation of convenience aimed at cutting France’s grass on a major military procurement project.

As Trudeau pointed out to reporters who questioned him regarding our exclusion from this new club, Canada is not in the process of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

As for ramping up our collective defence forces to counter China’s burgeoning military muscle, Canada is in fact already keeping pace.

China and Canada both spend approximately 1.3% of their respective GDP’s on defence spending.

As such both countries would be considered ‘laggards’ by former U.S. President Donald Trump for failing to meet the NATO objective of 2% GDP on defence.

Speaking of NATO, if the U.S. and U.K can undermine NATO ally France and create their own mini-alliance with Australia, maybe it is time for Canada to rethink our own membership in NATO?

Canada was an original member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was formed in 1949 to counter the post WW2 threat of Soviet Union expansion in Europe.

In response to the threat of NATO, the Soviet Union formed its own alliance called the Warsaw Pact.

Throughout the Cold War the threated seemed real, and I’m proud to wear my NATO medal for my military service in West Germany during the 1980’s.

However, by 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved and the former Warsaw Pact members began clamoring for admission into NATO.

At the end of the Cold War there were 16 members of NATO. Since the collapse of the entity they were collectively bound to defend against, that alliance now sits at 30 members.

On the flip side, what was once a combined 15 Soviet Socialist Republics and seven Warsaw Pact members, is now the solitary Russian Federation.

Of course, without the threat of a Soviet invasion, NATO has adopted a far more aggressive mandate than a simple pledge of collective defence by member states.

In 1999, NATO waged a 78-day air war against Yugoslavia, took over the occupation of Afghanistan in 2002, bombed Libya for 10 months in 2011 and entered Iraq to combat Daesh in 2014.

Of those four at bats, NATO has yet to squarely hit the ball out of the park.

Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, but remains unrecognized by European union and the U.N. It remains a failed state in the center of Europe.

Afghanistan just recently fell to the Taliban after NATO’s 20-year failed occupation. Libya has been gripped by violent anarchy since the NATO bombing toppled President Gadhafi in October 2011.

As for Iraq, I’ll predict right now that ain’t gonna end well either.

I think it’s safe to say that NATO is fully capable of losing foreign adventures without Canada’s ‘laggard’ contribution. 

ON TARGET: Canada Is as Bad at Winning Wars as we are at Losing Wars

By Scott Taylor

With the Taliban firmly back in control in Afghanistan, many Canadian veterans of that war are conflicted in their emotions. They question the sacrifice of those 158 comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice, the two thousand fellow veterans who bear the scars of battle injuries and the untold legion of those soldiers suffering from the invisible wounds of PTSD.

The embarrassing withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Kabul, and the complete evaporation of the U.S. armed and equipped Afghan security forces has eliminated any doubt about the war’s outcome.

The U.S. led NATO intervention which lasted twenty years and costing over $2 trillion has ended in bitter defeat.

The world’s most sophisticated and technologically advanced military alliance was bested by a largely illiterate rabble of poorly armed zealots. One of the most difficult pills for our veterans to swallow is the fact that the Taliban and other Afghan insurgents never won a single set piece battle against NATO troops.

It was instead just a relentless series of ambushes, suicide attacks and improvised explosive devices that eroded NATO’s will to extend their occupation in perpetuity.

Canada can infact take some solace in the fact that our government ‘cut and ran’ from this conflict long before its humbling conclusion.

Canada’s training mission in Afghanistan was wrapped up in the early spring of 2014, but the main combat mission in Kandahar was aborted in late 2011.

There were a number of hawkish pundits and Colonel Blimp tub-thumpers who chastised the Harper Conservatives for bringing the troops home early.

However, none of those soldiers who served in theatre held the notion that there would one day be a glorious victory parade after peace spontaneously broke out across Afghanistan.

When the last of our soldiers were safely back on Canadian soil, the military staged a “day of Honour” on Parliament Hill to commemorate those who had served in Afghanistan. The war we had walked away from was still raging and everyone knew we didn’t win anything.

At that juncture the die hard war mongers claimed that it was too soon for us to assess whether or not our expenditure of blood and treasure was worth the investment.

Now that the Taliban have clearly won the war, that answer is a resounding ‘no’.

What is interesting is that while we are still hand wringing and lamenting Canada’s contribution to a lost cause which we quit 10 years ago, almost no one mentions the war that we won that same year.

From March to October 2011, the Canadian military spearheaded a NATO led allied intervention in Libya. Canadian Lt-Gen Charlie Bouchard was the commander of the overall NATO mission, the RCN deployed HMCS Charlottetown, the RCAF flew bombing missions as well as psychological warfare operations and the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) assisted the Libyan rebels.

After the NATO assisted Libyan rebels toppled and executed President Moammar Gadhaffi the Harper government proudly staged a patriotic victory parade, complete with an RCAF flypast on Parliament Hill on November 24 2011.

It should be noted that of the seventeen allied countries that contributed military muscle to Bouchard’s NATO effort in Libya, only Canada trumpeted Gadhaffi’s defeated with a martial parade.

There is a good reason why the Libya war registers barely a footnote in Canada’s military history. As a feat of arms, NATO defeating Libya was like a prize fighter crushing a toddler.

Secondly, despite the fact that Canada declared ‘victory’ the civil war in Libya never ended. With the death of Gadhaffi, Libya descended into anarchy with hundreds of warlords carrying out personal fiefdoms. To this day, Libya remains gripped in a multi-factional, bloody internal conflict.

So to revisit the war that Canada ‘won’ would mean examining the aftermath of our involvement in a foreign war.

It turns out we were just as bad at winning in Libya as we were at losing in Afghanistan.

ON TARGET: Taliban Not Living Up to Their Terrifying Hype

By Scott Taylor

Last week, the former Hamid Karzai International Airport was back in business under the new moniker of Kabul International Airport (aka KIA). The first flight to lift off from KIA was a Qatar Airlines charter carrying an estimated 200 foreign nationals including a number of Canadians.

Apparently the airport is being managed by the same Afghanistan Civil Aviation authority which operated the facility prior to the Taliban seizing power last month. Two Afghan airlines – Kam Air and Ariana Afghan Airlines have announced plans to resume flying regular routes out of Kabul in the coming days.

This anti-climatic, virtually bloodless return to near normalcy is almost as shocking as the Taliban’s lightning overthrow of President Ashraf Ghani’s regime.

When the Taliban-of-old captured Kabul in 1996, they hanged former opponents from traffic control towers in the central square.

Fear of such bloody reprisals led to those scenes of desperation during the U.S. led allied airlift out of Kabul prior to Aug. 31.

Most analysts believed that when the last U.S. plane lifted off the runway that the revenge bloodletting would begin.

For Canadian veterans of the war in Afghanistan, the fear was that those Afghans who had supported our mission such as translators and support staff would be at risk of Taliban vengeance.

Throughout the summer appeals by veteran’s groups rose to a crescendo as the Taliban rapidly captured town after town in quick succession.

Admittedly, this was not the Canadian government’s finest moment. Global Affairs Canada agreed to restart an earlier program to evacuate Afghans and their families who would be at risk.

However, with the Taliban advancing on the Afghan capital virtually unopposed throughout July, Canada’s ambassador returned to Canada on stress leave.

With the Taliban at the gates of Kabul, the decision was made to repatriate the rest of the embassy staff, and the Canadian authorities were subsequently hard pressed to screen applicants from the safety of Ottawa.

The poor handling of this affair has led to an almost rabid response from many veterans’ groups and media pundits.

I’m not going to defend the Liberal government’s actions in this instance.  However it would be unfair not to offer up a little context.

First of all, Canada concluded it’s military training mission in Afghanistan in the spring of 2014. Our major combat mission was concluded in 2011.

At those junctures, the war mongering military pundits chastised the Conservative government of Stephen Harper for ‘cutting and running’ from a challenging war.

Their line of reasoning was that our troops would miss out on the eventual victory parade. No one, other than Afghans predicted this would end in a Taliban triumph.

My library includes over thirty book titles written by Canadians about the war in Afghanistan.

The list of authors includes generals, soldiers, doctors, historians and journalists. While they all include elements of the challenges posed by the Afghan insurgency, not one of them foretells an outcome wherein the Taliban emerge victorious.

One book, published in 2018 and authored by Afghan war veteran Major General, (ret’d) David Fraser is misleadingly entitled Operation Medusa: The furious battle that saved Afghanistan from the Taliban.

Given that the public narrative from these well placed individuals with personal Afghanistan experience all projected a sense that if not already achieved, than an ultimate victory was nigh, why would any Canadian government have made it a priority to evacuate our former Afghan employees?

No one was predicting that individuals who had last supported our combat mission more than a decade ago would be imperiled by an enemy that our top military commanders had proclaimed defeated.

By the time this crisis erupted with lightning speed, the Canadian resources necessary to handle this mess were long since withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Those veterans who have stepped up by volunteering their time and money to evacuate former interpreters are to be commended for their noble efforts.

The blame for the Canadian government’s failing to handle this crisis in a timely manner, partly rests on the shoulders of those who circulated the false notion of allied success.

We can only pray that this new incarnation of the Taliban remains a kinder, gentler version of itself and that airlifts to safety replaces vengeful bloodletting.

ON TARGET: Afghanistan: The Writing Was On The Wall

By Scott Taylor

Now that the last U.S. air force plane has departed the Hamid Karzai International airport in Kabul, western analysts and pundits remain shell shocked at the Taliban’s lightning overthrow of the Afghan regime.

More accurately, military experts are wondering how the Afghan security force, with a payroll strength of 350,000 U.S.-trained personnel, and equipped with an arsenal valued at over $100 billion could simply dissolve without a fight.

U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. intelligence community had all banked on the Afghan government forces holding back the Taliban for six months to one year after the American troop withdrawal.

This window would have allowed the U.S. to get their people out of Afghanistan, but more importantly it would have dimmed the western media spotlight.

With western media out of the country and no U.S. soldiers involved, the ultimate fall of President Ashraf Ghani’s government would have garnered but a couple of paragraphs on page 17 of the world news section of Canadian newspapers.

Instead, Ghani and his not so loyal security forces easily read the American playbook. Knowing there was no long term future possible, Ghani did not attempt to rally his troops for one final face-saving last stand in Kabul.

Instead, Ghani proved himself to be a corrupt thief to the bitter end. He grabbed a reported $160 million and fled to the United Arab Emirates.

With Ghani gone, the Afghan security forces had no reason to continue showing up for work.

They also know the value of weapons, ammunition and armoured vehicles. They would have been foolish in the extreme to employ their vast arsenal against the Taliban in order to simply delay the inevitable.

They were never going to keep fighting and dying for an American installed corrupt puppet who fled into exile, to simply spare their former U.S. masters the embarrassment of being routed by the Taliban.

Ironically, the intact arsenal which the Taliban now find themselves in possession, is too enormous for them to absorb. There are news reports that much of the hardware the Taliban captured is being sold to Iran.

That has got to irk the brass hats at the Pentagon.

Anyone familiar with the history of Afghanistan would realize that once the last foreign soldiers has been driven from their soil, the various Afghan factions will resort to fighting each other.

This has already begun with the son of the revered former Tajik warlord Shah Massoud proclaiming to lead the anti-Taliban resistance from his stronghold in the Panjshir valley.

Bolstering Ahmad Massoud’s claim to legitimacy was the presence of Afghanistan’s self-proclaimed acting President, Amrullah Saleh. Following the last Presidential election Saleh was named Afghanistan’s first Vice-President. With Ghani in exile, Saleh professes that constitutionally that means the presidency is now in his hands.

Nevertheless, it might have been wiser for Saleh to resist the Taliban at the head of the former Afghan Army which still had the U.S. air force in support rather than organizing a handful of fighters in a remote valley.

Allying themselves with Massoud’s resistance movement are two former notorious warlords, Atta Noor and Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Noor is an ethnic Tajik, while Dostum is an Uzbek. For decades they have ruled over Mazar-i-Sharif and Sheberghan respectively, first as warlords and then under the moniker of governor as part of the U.S. installed Kabul regime.

Neither Noor or Dostum’s private militia’s resisted the Taliban in support of Ghani’s government forces.

In typical Afghan fashion, they cut a deal not to interfere until after Ghani was removed. They are now hoping to use their military muscle to negotiate with the Taliban for a share in the spoils.

For those looking to understand just how the Canadian government could have been so wrong about our involvement in Afghanistan, we need to look at the self-delusion of the key players.

In 2007, I met with Canadian Ambassador Chris Alexander in Kabul. At that juncture he chastised me for having interviewed Dostum at his stronghold in Shebirghan.

According to Alexander, I was wrong to give Dostum any sort of publicity because he was a remnant of the old warlord regime – a thing of the past.

Dostum went on to serve as Vice President in the Ghani regime, and is now back on the board as a key player in this new Taliban era.

Alexander’s inaccurate view that Dostum was a remnant of Afghanistan’s past revealed just how little the youthful ambassador grasped the complexity of the Afghan political landscape.  Alexander saw only what he wanted to see.

Unfortunately far too many Canadians put their faith in his flawed judgment. The writing was always on the wall but our senior leadership did not know how to read it.

ON TARGET: Reminder: There Are Worse Elements in Afghanistan Than the Taliban

By Scott Taylor

The deadly terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul last Thursday was yet another serious blow to American martial pride as they struggle desperately to extricate themselves from a disastrous 20-year long occupation of Afghanistan.

A combination of suicide bombers and pre-placed gunmen with automatic weapons delivered an extremely lethal blow. A total of 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed and a further 15 were wounded, marking one of the highest single day casualty tallies during the entire conflict.

For the would-be Afghan asylum seekers crowded against the airport perimeter awaiting a possible flight to safety, the toll was even higher. Some estimates put the number of dead civilians as high as 90 with another 150 suffering injuries.

As devastating as this was to the increasingly frantic U.S. airlift effort, the attack was also a blow to the fledgling Taliban regime.

Within hours of the terror attack, DAESH-K was claiming responsibility for the killing spree.

For those who are perhaps not completely familiar with all the insurgent groups in Afghanistan, DAESH-K is also known as ISIS-K and ISKP. These evil doers are an off-shoot of the DAESH aka ISIS that we first encountered in Syria and Iraq. The letter “K” stands for Khorasan Province, which actually constitutes vast swaths of Central Asia, wherein they intend to establish an Islamic caliphate.

They first appeared on the scene in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces in 2014-15 and their initial recruits were from Pakistan-based Taliban who did not think the original Taliban were extreme enough.

Their attack on the Kabul airport not only sorely undermines the Taliban’s claim to be able to control the country, it also served as a reminder that as bad as they are, there are even worse elements to deal with in Afghanistan besides the Taliban.

Ironically the U.S. intelligence community now finds itself engaging in limited cooperation with the Taliban to not only prevent further DAESH-K attacks against their withdrawal efforts, but also to facilitate any hope of enforcing punishment upon the perpetrators of last Thursday’s attack.

In the immediate aftermath of the terror strike, a visibly enraged President Joe Biden vowed to the American people that justice would be served. “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this. We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command,” stated Biden in a public address.

Those are tough words, but as the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan now consists of nothing more than a desperate rear-guard securing the soon to be renamed Hamid Karzai International Airport, Biden’s only hope of punishing the culprits will require the Taliban’s cooperation.

Most western analysts disbelieve the claims by the Taliban leadership that this new and improved regime will be a kinder and gentler version of its former self.

Many fear that despite promises of amnesty the Taliban will soon resort to revenge killings of those who had facilitated the foreign occupation.

This eventually may in fact play out in the days to come, but it is somewhat ripe for the U.S. State Department to be preaching against revenge killings.

In 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan with a small number of special forces troops and heavy air support allied with anti-Taliban Warlords. The most notorious of these was Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Hollywood glorified Dostum and his American advisors in the 2018 film 12 Strong. What that movie did not reveal was that after his victory, Dostum executed approximately 2,000 of his Taliban prisoners. While that is horrific in itself, it was the fact that he killed them by simply locking them into crowded sea containers. They literally died through suffocation or starvation.

This was not an immediate death for the Taliban fighters, and the atrocity was well known among the rules-based international-order abiding U.S. military command.

Dostum was never charged with war crimes, and went on to serve pre-eminently within the Hamid Karzai regime. From September 2014 – February 2020, he was Afghanistan’s Vice President.

So yes, there are worse entities in Afghanistan than the Taliban and for the past twenty-years we helped keep them in power there.

ON TARGET: The U.S. Embarrassing Exit From Afghanistan Was Predicted By The Afghans

By Scott Taylor

It has been just over a week since the Taliban shocked the world with their blitzkrieg speed overthrow of the Afghan regime. The first major shock was the fact that the Taliban accomplished their victory without having to fight any battles.

The 350,000 strong Afghan security forces, simply disappeared. No western military analyst predicted such a complete and instant collapse of a fighting force, into which the U.S. and NATO had invested two decades of training and equipping. The U.S. supplied Afghan military arsenal was valued at nearly $100 billion and included armoured vehicles, artillery and even combat aircraft. That impressive collection of weaponry and munitions is now in the hands of the Taliban.

While U.S. President Joe Biden was quick to scapegoat the Afghan army for their lack of will to fight, in all honesty no one can blame them for this defeat.

No one can ever question the courage of the average Afghan fighter. Afghanistan has shed a lot of blood over the centuries to earn itself the moniker the graveyard of empires. Courage was not the problem.

As for professionalism and combat proficiency, the Afghan army has twenty years of top-level international instruction, including that of many Canadian soldiers. Compared to their Taliban counterparts the Afghan army were by far better trained, and certainly far better equipped with modern weapons. Firepower was not the problem.

In terms of opposing numbers, estimates of the Taliban’s current strength vary greatly but they are thought to have between 30,000 to 60,000 fighters. That means that at the start of the Taliban offensive on August 5th, the Afghan army outnumbered them – on paper – by at least a six to one margin.

Owing to the widespread corruption in the ranks of the Afghan army and police, the actual number of government security forces may have been as low as 100,000 at the start of the Taliban campaign.

The reason for the discrepancy is the phenom of what he became known as the employment of ‘Ghost soldiers.’

This was not a legion of spectral warriors, but rather a term applied to the artificial inflation of the strength of Afghan military units. When soldiers died or deserted, they were kept active on the duty roster so that commanders could continue drawing pay and rations for non-existent ‘Ghost soldiers’.

This brings us to the real reason why the Afghan army proved to be so absolutely useless in the face of the Taliban.

They had no will to fight and they certainly had no will to die for the corrupt puppet government which the U.S. had established in Kabul.

With the abrupt withdrawal of the last of the U.S. combat forces on July 2, the Afghan military knew the plug had been pulled on the regime of President Ashraf Ghani.

During the peace negotiations in Doha, Qatar, the U.S. military leaders had met with the Taliban to ostensibly broker a power-sharing agreement with the Ghani government.

The problem with that scenario was that there were no representatives from the Ghani regime at those talks.

For his part, Ghani understood that he’d been cut from the team and as such his 11th hour departure to safety is understandable. Loyalty is a two-way street. In the end, he owed the U.S. nothing, ditto for the Afghan army.

Sure, they could have put up a fight and delayed the Taliban advance. Their American trainers probably thought that they would resist based purely out of martial pride and esprit de corps.

Unfortunately it is not enough to simply fight against something – in this case the Taliban, if you cannot believe in the cause you are fighting for.

For the two decades the Americans spent occupying Afghanistan they did not realize that the Afghans never considered the presence of foreign troops on their soil as a liberation.

Had we focused on developing a progressive, functioning central government, instead of arming and training a military force to prop up the most corrupt regime on earth, the tragic ending may have been different.

The crazy part is that Afghans always knew this and they predicted exactly how the American withdrawal would play out. In 2008, I interviewed tribal leader Akbar Bey and he forecast “If the U.S and NATO troops leave Afghanistan at 4:00pm, by 6:00pm the [Afghan] government will collapse. They will not last two hours.”

His prediction was bang on.

ON TARGET: Warlords Will Not Save Afghanistan From Taliban

By Scott Taylor

At the time of writing, Afghan government security forces had completely collapsed without a fight and Taliban forces in Afghanistan were in control of Kabul. 

Amidst all the chaos it was announced that both the U.S. and U.K are redeploying thousands of combat troops into the Afghan capital.  

These soldiers are not the vanguard of yet another NATO surge to attempt to re-install President Ashraf Ghani to power.  On Sunday President Ghani realized the game was up and he fled to safety in Tajikistan 

No, these British and American troops are being sent in to provide a secure corridor by which to extricate the remaining international diplomatic community. 

The once nearly 400,000 strong Afghan National Security Forces have proven woefully incapable of holding back the Taliban fighters in the wake of the U.S. withdrawing the last of their major combat forces on July 2.

The U.S. was still providing air support, but such strikes were meaningless if the Afghan ground forces had no will to fight back against their fellow countrymen.

For keen eyed observers of the Afghanistan conflict one of the most surprising developments was the success which the Taliban have enjoyed in capturing towns in the north of the country.

The predominantly Pashtun Taliban have never fared well north of the Hindu Kush mountain range wherein the majority of the population are Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen.

Abandoned without any serious resistance from the demoralized Afghan army, the Taliban have seized the cities of Sheberghan, Konduz and Mazar-i-Sharif. 

In response to that dire situation, Thompson Reuters reported that prior to his defection, President Ghani had made a last ditch appeal to call on the support of “regional strongmen” to help repulse the Taliban advances. In particular Ghani was appealing to “regional strongman” Atta Muhammad Noor to help prevent the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Another “regional strongman” is Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum who has in recent days flown back into Afghanistan after receiving medical treatment in Turkey. It was hoped that with his presence on the ground, the infamous Dostum could still rally his Uzbek fighters to retake their former stronghold of Sheberghan.

The crazy part of Ghani’s plan was this belated attempt to rebrand Noor and Dostum with the new, kinder, gentler moniker of regional strongmen. 

Since the Soviet invasion in 1979, Noor and Dostum have been called warlords. They fought against and for the Soviets respectively. 

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Dostum had continued to prop up the communist regime of President Najibullah in Kabul. In 1992, Dostum did what he does best and changed his loyalty to the Mujahadeen.  Najibullah was finished, but Dostum lived to fight another day. 

The ongoing clashes between Dostum and his rivals such as Atta Noor, became known as the warlord era.

The perpetual violence and virtual anarchy of the warlord-era helped the Taliban movement to gain popularity with those Afghans who were prepared to sacrifice personal freedoms in exchange for the stability that the Taliban could provide them.

In 2001 Dostum and Noor both fought for the U.S. in what was dubbed the Northern Alliance, when they collectively collapsed the Taliban regime.

Hollywood aficionados will recall that Dostum’s fighters were lionized in the 2018 war movie ‘Twelve Strong’. 

After garnering more than one million votes in the 2004 presidential election, Dostum held a variety of high level posts in the Afghan regime, including that of Vice President. 

Atta Noor was named the governor of Mazar-i-Sharif until Ashraf Ghani fired him from that post in 2018 as a result of corruption allegations. 

Throughout the entire two decades of U.S. led occupation, both Noor and Dostum maintained their own private militias. It is those forces which ex-President Ghani and his western backers had hoped would turn back the Taliban tide.

Calling them regional strongmen does not change the fact that these two Afghan warlords already have had their era. They were so violent and corrupt that Afghans turned to the Taliban. 

For Ghani’s last roll of the dice to have stood any chance of success would have required the average Afghan forgetting about the bloody violence which the warlords had inflicted upon them. The surging success of the Taliban in recent days would appear to prove that Afghan memories are not that short.

ON TARGET: History will be the judge of NATO’s Occupation of Afghanistan

Photo by: FRAIDOON POOYAA, AP

By Scott Taylor

The mad scramble has begun in an effort to extricate those Afghans who will be at risk when the Taliban wrest control of Afghanistan from the rapidly collapsing government forces.

Sparked by demands from Canadian veterans of that war, the Liberal government has been hurriedly arranging flights and visas for Afghan civilians who were formerly employed as interpreters by our combat forces.

Canada is also arranging to bring out the extended families of those Afghans who had previously assisted the NATO led effort. It is estimated that the current initiative to save these Afghans from Taliban revenge will result in several thousand refugees arriving in Canada.

In previous efforts, Canada has brought over roughly 800 Afghan interpreters and their families.

Admirably, Canadian veterans under the organizational umbrella of the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) are volunteering to assist this new wave of Afghan refugees to settle into their new homeland.

The U.S. has initiated a similar program to rescue those Afghans who assisted the American forces during their twenty year occupation of Afghanistan. Other NATO countries are also pitching in to save their former employees, while Turkish troops have been tasked with defending the Kabul airport long enough to get these refugees safely outside the borders of Afghanistan.

The defeat of NATO is as humiliating as it is complete. As we exit the country we are bringing out all those personnel who were ever associated with the foreign occupying forces.

The truly sad part of this enormous waste of lives and money is that none of it was necessary.

How is it possible that our senior leadership learned nothing from the Soviet Union’s disastrous ten-year attempt to militarily subdue Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989?

We condemned the Soviet actions as morally reprehensible. The narrative of the West was that the evil Soviets were trying to forcibly educate the Afghans and thereby destroy their ancient culture and customs.

The best example of this propaganda would have to be the 1988 Hollywood blockbuster action film Rambo III.

The plot line has American super soldier John Rambo entering Afghanistan to rescue his former commanding officer who has been captured by the Soviet evil doers.

The Afghan resistance fighters assist Rambo in his quest and because this is Hollywood, the good guys win. The original dedication of the movie was to “the brave mujahedeen of Afghanistan.”

That sentiment was stood on its head in the wake of the events of 9-11 in 2001.

Islamic extremists – mujahedeen – had been responsible for the terror attacks on the U.S. that day and the Taliban were accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.

In advance of justifying the U.S. invasion, western media began demonizing the Taliban for those same cultural practices for which we not only hailed them for defending against Soviet influences, but we actually provided them with the sophisticated weaponry which allowed them to do so.

We lied to ourselves when we proclaimed to have brought democracy to this impoverished war ravaged country. The U.S. hand-picked Hamid Karzai to be the president, and the Afghan electorate had little choice but to cast votes for the warlords and chieftains that already ruled them.

The last two attempts at a presidential election were so farcical that they could not produce a verifiable result. When Abdullah Abdullah refused to accept the fact that Ashraf Ghani had received more votes than him, the Americans simply created a new position called Chief Executive of Afghanistan, with equal powers to the president.

I’m not sure that would be possible in a developed nation with a strong economy and it sure as hell did not work in impoverished Afghanistan.

As we rush to rescue those Afghans who helped facilitate the NATO occupation, one has to also ponder the moral legacy of our military alliance having imprisoned tens of thousands of Afghan fighters whose only crime was resisting our armed presence on their soil.

ON TARGET: Time For Canada to Cut & Run From Iraq Mission

Canadian Armed Forces members deployed as part of Operation IMPACT conduct small arms training at Camp Taji, Iraq on September 26, 2019.

Photo: Corporal Ryan Moulton, OP IMPACT JTF-I Image Tech
KW11-2019-0061-27

By Scott Taylor

The recent withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan has caused angst and consternation among the thousands of Canadian soldiers who served in that war.

No one has any doubt that the resurgent Taliban will easily defeat the Afghan government’s security forces, which are now devoid of American combat support.

To offset the emotional pain of realizing that Canada’s sacrifice of blood and gold was truly in vain, many of our veterans are embarking on a humanitarian crusade to extricate the Afghan civilians who worked alongside our soldiers and who are now, as a result, facing the revenge of the Taliban.

That, to me, is a noble cause. Our military presence in Afghanistan gave these individuals the false hope that the international community was fully committed to effecting lasting change in their country.

After 20 years and the expenditure of over a trillion dollars, the U.S. is now deciding to cut its losses.

It is a bitter pill to swallow that NATO, the most powerful and technically advanced military alliance in history, could not defeat an illiterate horde of fanatical Afghans armed with assault rifles and homemade explosive devices.

To give credit where it is due, Canada’s political leadership cut bait well in advance of the U.S. finally admitting the obvious.

Canada ended combat operations in Afghanistan in 2011, and we wrapped up our military training initiative in the spring of 2014.

Thus, while Canadian officials scramble to locate and arrange safe passage for former Afghan interpreters and locally engaged staff, our soldiers will be spared the embarrassment of having to bug out of our base in Afghanistan as our American allies just experienced when they vacated Bagram in the dead of night on July 2nd.

Canada should pull the plug on our mission in Iraq.

Almost lost with all the media attention focused on Afghanistan’s crisis, U.S. President Joe Biden quietly met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on Monday, July 26th.

The main announcement resulting from that meeting was that the U.S. plans to conclude its combat mission in Iraq before the end of 2021.

Few Canadians are likely aware that this past March parliament quietly extended Canada’s own military commitment to Iraq, known as Operation Impact, until March 2022.

This directive allows Canada to deploy up to 850 military personnel to the region which includes the NATO mission in Iraq, and secondary capacity-building missions in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan.

The origin of Canada’s Operation Impact mission in Iraq dates back to September 2014 when we deployed fighter jets and special forces personnel to assist the U.S.-led international coalition to defeat Daesh (aka ISIS, IS or ISIL).

When the Trudeau Liberals were elected in 2015, the fighter jets were brought home, but in their stead, Canada increased the number of personnel deployed on the ground in Iraq.

The alliance deployed against Daesh included not only Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia, but also members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Having a common enemy meant that Canadians were also loosely allied with the Syrian forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian military allies.

Canadian special forces personnel were advising and assisting Iraqi Kurdish militia whose ultimate objective was not only to defeat Daesh, but to establish an independent Kurdistan.

Canadian government policy ran counter to the Kurds’ goal, as we support a unified Iraq under a central Baghdad government.

All that to say that it was a very complex alliance with the only common bond being that of a collective desire to defeat the Daesh evildoers.

Once that was achieved, with Daesh being effectively eliminated as a military threat in December 2017, Canada should have withdrawn our troops.

With Daesh gone, Canada no longer has a dog in this fight, and it would be foolish to think that a paltry commitment of a handful of military trainers will effect the ultimate desired outcome in Iraq.

Biden’s announcement indicates the U.S. is about to jump ship. If they are giving up in yet another unwinnable war, let’s beat them to the exit once again. And let’s bring the translators with us this time.

ON TARGET: Better to Tell The ‘Whole’ Story of Afghanistan War As It Unfolded

By Scott Taylor

The situation on the ground in Afghanistan continues to worsen for Afghan government troops attempting to contain a resurgent Taliban. Since the U.S. pulled out the bulk of their remaining combat forces from Bagram airfield on July 2, the Taliban have captured vast swaths of territory.

There seems to be very little fight in the U.S. trained and equipped Afghan government forces. They may have volunteered to collect their relatively lucrative U.S. funded pay cheques, but they want to remain alive in order to cash those cheques. None of these Afghan soldiers seriously wants to sacrifice their lives to prop up the regime of President Ashraf Ghani, which is without doubt, one of the most corrupt administrations on the planet.

On the flip side, the Taliban volunteers have proven repeatedly that they are prepared to die for the cause they believe in.

Given these dynamics, without U.S. air power or Special Forces support, the Afghan government forces are doomed. The Afghan soldiers know this all too well and desertions are occurring at an alarming rate.

Optimistic western analysts had hoped that with continued U.S. funding of the Afghan army’s payroll and ongoing logistics support, the government forces could at least retain control of the major provincial capitals and Kabul itself.

Now the fear is that the Taliban will win a complete victory before December and that the Afghan forces will not even be able to secure the Kabul airport to allow for a safe exodus of would-be refugees.

These dire straits have generated a panicked grass roots campaign across Canada among veterans who fought in Afghanistan during our country’s thirteen-year commitment to the war effort.

The fear among our vets is that the Taliban will exact a violent revenge upon those Afghans who worked for the Canadian military as interpreters or cultural advisors. In addition to petitioning the government to expedite the visa process for an estimated 125 Afghans and their families who are considered to be at risk, the veterans are also seeking volunteers to help re-settle these refuges on Canadian soil.

Last week, the Conference of Defence Associations, also known as CDA, announced they would spearhead the initiative to connect Canadian veteran volunteers with these Afghan refugee families.

“We don’t know exactly what the needs are going to be at,” said Lieutenant-General (ret’d) Guy Thibault, the president of the CDA and chairman of its sister group, Conference of Defence Associations Institute or CDAI. “We’re just really trying to get ahead of it with a group of volunteers who have a connection to the whole story of Afghanistan.”

I will state that I honestly believe those Afghan interpreters who worked with Canadians will be at risk of retribution.

To the Taliban these individuals are the traitors who worked for the foreign occupation forces. In victory, the Taliban are not likely to be magnanimous with those Afghans who spent the past two decades aiding and abetting the hated foreign infidels.

I also applaud the fact that the CDA is now lending its weight to this effort to save those who served alongside Canadians in Afghanistan.

However, it must be remembered that the officials and members of the CDA and the CDAI were not known for telling the “whole story of Afghanistan” while the war was in progress.

Consisting of mainly retired senior officers, the CDA and CDAI were among the primary cheerleaders of Canada’s Afghan military mission. During its various conferences and meetings in Ottawa between 2002 and 2014, the tone of their collective message was that to question the mission was to question the troops themselves.

When Canada announced it would be terminating the combat mission in 2011 and our training mission in 2014, those associated with the CDA squealed like stuck pigs.

Their argument was that Canada should not cut and run from a tough fight. Just look at history they argued, pointing out that we didn’t stop fighting Hitler just because of the disastrous raid on Dieppe, France in August 1942.

Now the end in Afghanistan is nigh, and there will never be a victory parade in the streets of Kabul for NATO troops.

We lost the war, and even CDA and CDAI knows we must do what we can to save our surviving Afghan allies.

It must not be forgotten that for more than 13 years, many of those associated with the CDA and CDAI were instrumental in pushing a narrative of success in what was clearly an unwinnable war from the outset.

ON TARGET: When Did Canadian Leaders Realize Afghanistan Was Always Unwinnable?

Soldiers at Kandahar Air Field take part in a Ramp Ceremony to pay respects to their fallen comrades on 22 March 2009. Canadian Army/Pintrest: Canadian Armed Forces

By Scott Tayor

The news out of Afghanistan has gone from bad to worse since the American military virtually fled their main base at Bagram in the dead of night on July 2. With the withdrawal of these last major U.S. combat forces, the Taliban have been emboldened in their attacks against Afghan government security forces.

At time of writing, the Taliban were estimated to control roughly 85 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory. While not yet in control of provincial capitals, they are threatening to overrun the northern city of Kunduz.

The Taliban have also recently seized key Afghan border checkpoints including Spin Boldak, which is one of two major trade routes into Pakistan.

To stoke fear in the ranks of the Afghan National Army, the Taliban recently released video footage depicting the execution of 22 American trained elite Afghan Commandos. As they shot each of the captive Commandos in the head, the Taliban executioners shouted “Allahu Akhbar!” (God is Great). 

The intended message is that if these elite special forces troops cannot resist the Taliban, the average line unit of the Afghan National Army does not stand a chance.

The propaganda has obviously been effective as thousands of Afghan soldiers have since deserted and sought asylum in neighbouring Tajikistan.

The end is definitely nigh, and the outcome is no longer in doubt. After more than two decades of U.S. led International occupation of Afghanistan, the Taliban will emerge victorious.

This news, while not unexpected has caused many Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan war to question the sacrifice made by them and their comrades.

The emotional impact on our serving soldiers was so acute, that acting Chief of Defence Staff, Lt-Gen Wayne Eyre – himself a veteran of Afghanistan – felt compelled to issue a Forces-wide message on July 13. “Many of us have been watching the reports coming out of Afghanistan with dismay. The fall of Panjwai, reported last week, has hit many of us particularly hard, and as we question our legacy, it serves as a harbinger for all Canadians who served in the country regardless of when and where,” wrote Eyre.

He pointed out that following previous wars in Europe and Korea, our veterans could return to those lands with a sense of satisfaction for having made a difference.

However, wrote Eyre “At this moment in time it is difficult to envision having similar sentiments for our war.” The message ended with advice for any soldiers who are struggling with their experience to seek help.

With the Taliban poised to claim victory, many fear that will result in a wave of bloody revenge against those Afghans who cooperated with the foreign occupiers.

That angst has prompted a grass-roots campaign petitioning the Canadian government to bring home any of those Afghans who were once employed by the Canadian military as interpreters and their families.

Organizers of this quest estimated there are still approximately 125 such individuals remaining at risk in Afghanistan.

As Canada’s combat mission ended in 2011 and our military training mission concluded in 2014, these interpreters have not been employed by Canadians for some time.

However it was Canada, along with the U.S. and our NATO allies that fed these willing Afghans the false hope that we would actually make a difference in their country.

The most upsetting part about this current crisis is that the senior leadership in the U.S.A knew almost from the outset that this was an unwinnable war.

In December 2019, the Washington Post published a story entitled “At war with the Truth.” It was based on a treasure trove of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

These assessments were generated by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and they compelling illustrated that high ranking officials were of the opinion that the war was already lost, but that truth was to be hidden from the public.

Regrettably, when the Post published these documents now known as the Afghanistan Papers, there was no outcry of disbelief or outrage from either Canadian or NATO officials.

Maybe Canada needs to establish a Parliamentary probe into when it was first known by Canadian military leaders and politicians that our soldiers were being sent to fight a war they knew we could not win?

ON TARGET: Canadian Generals Quick to Change Their Tune on Afghanistan

Maj-Gen David Fraser (above left) & Maj-Gen Dean Milner (above right)

By Scott Taylor

Over the past few weeks the news out of Afghanistan has not been very re-assuring. In keeping with U.S. President Joe Biden’s election campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan, American troop withdrawals have begun in earnest.

On July 2, in one of the most dramatic and farcical moves to date, the U.S. military literally bugged out of the sprawling base at Bagram in the dead of night.

Reportedly the last American flight lifted off around 4 am, and it was not until three hours later that those Afghan security forces remaining in Bagram were advised of the departure.

The Afghans did have a suspicion that something was afoot as the Americans had shut down the base generators before leaving. In other words they literally adhered to the old adage “last one out turns off the lights.”

By the time the Afghan security forces were aware that they were now in sole control of the base, locals had already breached the perimeter and spent over two hours looting the American provisions left behind.

The American military scale down has emboldened the Taliban, who have been resurgent on the battlefield all across Afghanistan.

The NATO trained Afghan security forces, tasked with propping up the corrupt regime of President Ashraf Ghani are showing little stomach for the fight with the Taliban. Without U.S. air support and American special forces backing, it has been reported that thousands of Afghan soldiers are illegally crossing the border to seek asylum in neighboring Tajikistan.

Earlier this month it was announced that the Taliban had taken control of the Panjiway district in the southern province of Kandahar. This news struck a resonant chord among Canadian veterans, many of whom fought to defend Panjiway from insurgents between 2005 and 2011.

Almost on cue, the tone deaf Liberal government issued a statement on Wednesday July 7, wherein Minister of Veteran Affairs, Lawrence MacAulay and Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan jointly marked “the 10th anniversary of the end of Canada’s combat mission in Afghanistan.”

Almost exactly one decade after Canada withdrew, the Taliban officially rendered our soldiers’ sacrifice meaningless by retaking the ground which we had temporarily held.

Observers are no longer speculating as to whether the Taliban will defeat the Afghan security forces. They are now simply trying to pinpoint when that victory will occur.

This has led to a grass roots campaign among our veterans urging the Canadian government to fast track the immigration process for those Afghans who served as translators for the Canadian military.

I fully support this initiative, as there is no doubt that these individuals and their families will be at risk of Taliban retribution.

Canada has already brought nearly 800 interpreters and their relatives out of Afghanistan for asylum prior to 2011, but it is estimated that several hundred remain at risk.

What was interesting to note was that three Canadian retired generals – all Afghanistan Task Force Commanders – have written a joint letter urging the government to fast track the rescue of these former interpreters.

Ironically it was two of these three generals who were among the most vocal in reassuring Canadians that the war was all but won.

When I interviewed Maj.-Gen. Dean Milner in Kabul in 2013 he was in command of the NATO training mission for the Afghan National Army. At that juncture he stated “They [the ANA] have come a long way, I’ll tell you. Look at the force now, the Afghan National Army some 190,000 strong. I’m very confident in them. We have built that force to these numbers with the professional capability to beat the Taliban.”

Fellow letter-writer, Maj.-Gen. David Fraser went one better when he released his book in May 2018 titled Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle that saved Afghanistan from the Taliban.

Is it in any way the Canadian government’s fault for not prioritizing the evacuation of these Afghan interpreters sooner? One general was telling them confidently that the Taliban would soon be beat and the other general wrote a book just three years ago claiming Afghanistan was already saved.

Now they are begging the government to forget their past analysis and get these Afghan interpreters out of harm’s way.

Given this level of incompetence in judging the situation on the ground, is it any wonder that we lost the war?

ON TARGET: Unanswered Questions Remain about Cyclone Crash

Clockwise from top left: Capt. Kevin Hagen, Sub-Lt. Abbigail Cowbrough, Capt. Brenden Ian MacDonald, Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins, Sub-Lt. Matthew Pyke, Capt. Maxime Miron-Morin. (Department of National Defence)

By Scott Taylor

On June 25, the Royal Canadian Air Force released their final report on the April 29, 2020 CH-148 Cyclone helicopter crash which claimed the lives of six service members.

The investigators concluded that the auto-pilot system had engaged while the pilot was making a tight turn, causing the helicopter to plunge straight into the Ionian Sea. The report notes that neither the pilot’s training nor the cockpit indicators would have given any warning that the auto-pilot was about to over-ride the flight controls. It was also noted that during the certification testing of the Cyclone this potentially dangerous hazard was not uncovered, as no testing was conducted to ascertain what would happen if the pilot chose to over-ride the auto-pilot more than just ‘momentarily’. 

In this instance the auto-pilot unexpectedly engaged in the middle of a complex manoeuvre known as ‘return-to-target’ turn. As the Cyclone was at a relatively low altitude the pilot had no time to regain control prior to the aircraft’s impact with the waves. While this incident report provides clinical details of just what went wrong mechanically that fateful day, it does nothing to lessen the tragic loss of captains Brenden MacDonald, Kevin Hagen, Maxime Miron-Morin, sub-lieutenants Abbigail Cowbrough and Matthew Pyke, and Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins.

What also remains unexplained was the inexplicable manner in which DND conveyed the news of this tragedy to the Canadian public. Within hours of the crash, Greek news outlets were reporting the downing of the Sea King helicopter in the Ionian Sea. This, in turn, was almost immediately circulated on Canadian social media platforms. However mainstream defence reporters were skeptical of the story as being potential ‘disinformation’ as the Canadian Forces was no longer flying the Sea King. 

On April 30, 2020, more than 30 hours after the incident occurred the DND issued a formal statement advising the media that “One member of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) was killed…and five others remain missing following an accident involving a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) CH-148 Cyclone helicopter.

We were also informed that “HMCS Fredericton and NATO allies continue to search for the other 5 members of the helicopter crew”. Details on the cause of the crash were unknown and the official story was that the crew of HMCS Fredericton “had lost contact with the helicopter” prior to the crash. The scenario DND painted was that of a mysterious crash sparking a major search-and-rescue operation by the entire NATO squadron.

Pundits took to the airwaves to discuss the challenges of mounting such a search for survivors in the vastness of the Ionian sea. As the hours dragged on experts commented on the effectiveness of survival suits. Some of the usual alarmists noted that a Russian submarine was known to be in the vicinity and that might somehow explain the downing of the Cyclone. Within the Canadian military community social media posts expressed grief and sorrow for Sub-Lt Cowbrough who had been pronounced dead, whilst they all offered prayers and hope for the family, friends and comrades of the five missing crew members. Initial statements by both Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Chief of Defence Staff General Jon Vance implied that the helicopter had crashed some distance from HMCS Fredericton.

Finally, on May 1, more than 48 hours after the incident occurred, the DND issued an update announcing this was now a search-and-recover mission with all crew members presumed dead. It was around this timeframe that the CBC was informed of the actual details of the Cyclone crash. It turns out that the helicopter was doing a low level pass right beside HMCS Fredericton when the aircraft suddenly nosedived into the waves. A number of the crew aboard the warship watched the crash in real time. The impact into the sea was so close to the ship that rescue craft from Fredericton were able to reach the crash site quick enough to recover the black box and the body of Cowbrough. When confronted with this alternate version of events, the DND admitted the fact that there would be eyewitness testimony included in the accident report. No one has ever explained where the false narrative was inserted or why DND allowed the media (myself included) to push out false details until a whistleblower contacted CBC with the truth.

There would be no reason for HMCS Fredericton’s crew to report anything other than the truth back to NDHQ. In this era where we are constantly warned to be wary of malignant foreign actors spreading disinformation, it is all the more imperative that we can trust and rely upon the information we receive from official sources such as DND. Especially when it pertains to the lives of our service members. Once again I offer my sincere condolences to the families, friends and comrades of those who perished in this tragic crash.

ON TARGET: CAF: Weaponization Of Public Affairs Backfires

By Scott Taylor

It is now official. Last week the Department of National Defence released the results of four separate internal investigations into the Canadian military’s recent forays on using propaganda and influence activities on fellow Canadians.

The conclusion of one investigation was that military commanders had violated various rules and acted outside of their authority when they employed intelligence teams to collect information on the public. Another report concluded the military public affairs branch was out of line in its decision to move forward with new policies that would allow the use of propaganda techniques against Canadian citizens.

The not so funny part of this story is that pretty much every concerned Canadian knew that it was wrong for the Canadian military to spy on, and attempt to deceive the public, when the Ottawa Citizen first broke the news of these initiatives last year.

It was also clear that some senior military and political leaders understood immediately when the Citizen stories broke, that it was just plain wrong that the Canadian Armed Forces had created teams to harvest data from the social media accounts of private citizens.

Then Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, the man who first coined the phrase “the weaponization of Public Affairs”, quickly realized that his new ‘weapon’ had resulted in a very serious self-inflicted wound in terms of public trust. As such, Vance ordered an immediate halt to these operations.

For his part, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan promised his fellow parliamentarians that these questionable activities by the military had been terminated shortly after they began.

However, a new report obtained by the CBC revealed that after Vance publicly ordered one of the initiatives halted in April 2020, portions of a military campaign meant to influence the Canadian public during the COVID-19 pandemic continued to operate for another six months.

It was only after Vance issued a written command in November 2020 that these influence activities were finally terminated.

Around the same time, the Citizen reported on other military schemes to begin using influence tactics on Canadians. It revealed that the Canadian Forces had already spent more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behavior modification techniques similar to those used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytics, a company which was implicated in a 2016 data-mining scandal aimed at boosting Donald Trumps U.S. presidential campaign.

That initiative was the brain child of Brig-Gen Jay Janzen, who was at the time the senior officer in the Public Affairs Branch.

Vance also formally shut down another Janzen’s initiatives, this one a controversial plan that news reports pointed out would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as collect and analyze information from the public’s social media accounts.

In reacting to this embarrassing public cancellation of his pet project, Janzen posted a message to his public affairs subordinates advising them “these efforts were on the leading edge, and we were exploring unchartered territory, innovation is something prone, to being misunderstood.” Poor Janzen – “Just a soul whose intentions were good, oh lord please don’t let [him] be misunderstood” – to paraphrase the old Animals hit.

That, however, was not how the military brass viewed it. The most recent review released by acting CDS Lt-Gen Wayne Eyre and Deputy Minister Jody Thomas concluded that the initiative was “incompatible with the Government of Canada Communications Policy (and the) mission and principles of Public Affairs.”

For anyone to think this mandate would be enhanced by widening that mandate to include psychological and information operations against Canadian civilians is simply mondo bonkers.

Instead of building trust with the media and the public, this plan harmed  the reputation of not only the public affairs branch, but by extension the reputation of the Canadian Forces as an institution.

Canadians want their military to defend Canadian interests and uphold Canadian values at home and abroad. We do not want them spying on us, deceiving us or trying to modify our behavior.

For the record, no one involved in these plans, either in the public affairs branch or intelligence branch, have ever been sanctioned by the military leadership.

ON TARGET: Military Police Should Call In RCMP To Dispel Perception Of Lack Of Independence

By Scott Taylor

It was on Sunday Feb. 2 that the current military sexual misconduct scandal first emerged.

Global National reporter Mercedes Stephenson broke the story that recently stepped down Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance was accused of two counts of sexual misconduct.

What made these allegations newsworthy was the fact that during his entire five-year tenure as CDS, Vance had been the driving force behind his own Operation Honour, an initiative intended to stamp out sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces.

Vance was no longer the CDS but he was still a serving general. His successor, Admiral Art McDonald announced that in addition to a military police investigation into the allegations against Vance, there would be a separate, independent investigation into the former CDS’s actions.

In an attempt to bolster morale and restore confidence in the senior leadership, McDonald put out a message to the rank and file on Feb. 24.

In his memo McDonald encouraged any other potential victims of sexual misconduct to come forward. That very same day word was leaked to the media that McDonald was himself under military police investigation for an alleged case of sexual misconduct dating back to 2010.

By nightfall it was announced that McDonald would step aside as CDS until the police investigation had run its course.

Losing two top generals in three weeks proved to be just the tip of the iceberg.

The next revelation was that Lt-Gen Chris Coates had an extramarital affair while serving at NORAD headquarters. This incident prevented his posting to NATO Headquarters in Naples, and Coates has since retired from the CAF.

Far more startling was the allegations of rape against Vice Admiral Haydn Edmundson. That incident allegedly occurred aboard a RCN warship in 1991. Edmundson has since stepped down from his post as Chief of Military Personnel. The rape investigation remains ongoing.

One of Canada’s most noted generals is Major-General Dany Fortin who was seconded to the Public Health Agency of Canada to oversee the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines. Fortin’s telegenic appearances on nightly newscasts had become a reassuring fixture for Canadians eagerly anticipating an end to the pandemic.

Then on May 14, DND issued a brief three line press release announcing that Fortin was relieved of his Public Health post because he too, was under investigation. News reports pointed to allegations of past sexual misconduct. In Fortin’s case the complaint dates back to 1989 when he was a cadet at the College Militaire Royale in St. Jean, Quebec.

Also turfed from his secondment at the Public Health Agency was Brig-Gen Simon Bernard for allegedly uttering a racial slur while on duty.

For writing a letter to a judge in support of a convicted perpetrator of sexual assault, Major-Gen Pete Dawe was relieved as Commander of Canada’s elite Special Operations Force Command (CANSOFCOM). Dawe’s character reference was for an officer convicted of sexually assaulting a fellow officer’s wife.

The most recent purge of the senior ranks involves the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, Lt-Gen Mike Rouleau and Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy Vice Admiral Craig Baines.

News outlets reported on June 12 that Baines and Rouleau had played a game of golf on June 2 with former CDS General Vance.

The optics of  them associating with one of the accused was grounds for Rouleau to resign as VCDS. For his part, Baines has apologized and has taken personal leave.

Critics of Rouleau’s casual outing with Vance were quick to point out that as VCDS, the military police are technically under his control. Add this to the fact that Major Kellie Brennan, one of Vance’s accusers, testified before a parliamentary committee that  the former CDS bragged to her that he was ‘untouchable’ and that he had the CFNIS [Canadian National Investigation Service] “under control.”

Within this scenario, the CFNIS are now in a no-win situation. If they investigate and uncover no grounds for criminal charges against Vance, the public will presume the investigation was thwarted from within.

My advice to Provost Marshal Brigadier General Simon Trudeau is to pre-empt such a predicament by announcing that Rouleau’s actions and Brennan’s allegations have already tainted any possible CFNIS conclusion.

Admit the obvious and call in the RCMP to conduct an independent investigation.

The truth will set you free.

ON TARGET: Clueless in Iraq: The Sequel

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Canadian Press reported on a memo which they had obtained from the Department of National Defence under the Access-to-Information law.

The memo was dated January 16, 2020 and was written by Lt-Gen Mike Rouleau who was the commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command at that time. The recipient of the memo was then Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance.

The gist of Rouleau’s message to Vance was that the ‘identifying and vetting’ of Iraqi recruits to participate in the Canadian-led NATO training mission in Iraq “lacked the sufficient depth required.”

Taken in isolation this warning from Rouleau may seem at first glance to be rather innocuous. However, it is important to note the timeline here.

Earlier this month, David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen broke the story of Canadian military trainers in Iraq having witnessed video evidence of war crimes committed by the very Iraqi soldiers whom they were sent to train.

That incident occurred back in September 2018 and according to the internal report, the Canadian trainers immediately informed their superiors of these war crimes and requested guidance on how to proceed.

At least seven Canadian non-commissioned officers had viewed the videos. As professional soldiers they realized that the acts committed by their Iraqi recruits violated article 50 of the Geneva Convention which prohibits acts of “willful killing, torture, or inhuman treatment” of prisoners.

Included in the eagerly offered video evidence was footage of Iraqis “raping a woman to death; torture and execution of a line of bound prisoners whereby they were beaten to death with what appeared to be rebar steel bars; the execution of prisoners by shooting; and the execution of a man by hanging him from the barrel of a [Main Battle Tank],” according to a Canadian Forces briefing note.

Understandably the Canadian NCO’s had some serious qualms about teaching such sadistic killers in order to provide them with enhanced military skills.

Faced with this dilemma, the senior leadership in-theatre assured the NCO’s that this matter would be dealt with, but in the meantime, training of these war criminals was to continue unabated.

The Canadian trainers were also told that in the future, they should abstain from watching such videos, and for god’s sake, not to take possession of any such evidence.

When the mission concluded without the Canadian trainers having seen any action taken against the Iraqi perpetrators, the NCO’s continued to ask questions to their senior leadership after their return to CFB Petawawa, ON.

One of the Canadian witnesses wrote to his superior “we remain uncertain whether this appropriate action was effectively taken. I am an ethical man and I believe in our moral doctrine and the [Law of Armed Conflict]. I am bothered by the fact that my assigned duties allowed me to train and enable people who in my mind were criminals.”

More than three years later, and after the Ottawa Citizen broke the story citing 2018 DND briefing notes, we are told that the military police are conducting an investigation into the CAF’s leadership’s handling of this incident. Note that no one seems willing to pursue the original Iraqi war criminals.

Also important to the timeline of events are the statements made in August 2018 by Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin. He had just been appointed to command the overall Canadian led NATO training mission in Iraq.

When asked by journalists how Canadians could properly vet the Iraqi recruits, Fortin confidently replied, “I think we have a pretty good vetting process in place to screen out those potential [Iraqi] instructors to ensure we have quality people, that they the Iraqi government feel confident with.”

One month later our trainers on the ground in Iraq viewed the video evidence of war crimes and reported it up their chain-of-command. From this latest memo released to the Canadian Press news service we now know that more than one year after the top brass knew that our troops were training war criminals, they still lacked the ability to properly screen any incoming Iraqi recruits.

On September 4, 2018 I wrote a column about the then impending training mission entitled “Clueless in Iraq.” I included a side note to Maj.-Gen. Fortin, which read: “I cannot wish you success in your mission because you are embarked on a fool’s errand. Training more Iraqis to kill in the name of a corrupt regime is insane.”

Little did I know that our soldiers would be knowingly training war criminals how to better kill in the name of a corrupt regime.

Fool’s errand indeed.