Posted on 06/08/2003 10:05:36 AM PDT by Clive
Ever since he was anointed PM some 10 years ago, Jean Chretien has been sandbagging the military - yet using it to get out of embarrassing corners.
Ironies of ironies, his denigration of the military has resulted in our military - or rather lack of it - determining Canada's foreign policy, instead of the other way around.
It now looks as if Canada will join the U.S. missile defence plan that would protect North America from a missile attack from outside. Unlikely, but that's the scenario.
This is something Chretien has always opposed, even in opposition. Hell, he even opposed cruise missile testing over our north, which the Americans ignored and the previous Mulroney government okayed. Thank goodness.
Now we have Chretien softening and waffling on the missile defence system. Both Defence Minister John McCallum and Foreign Minister Bill Graham seem to support Canadian involvement. How come? The obvious answer is that Canada is so desperate to get back into the good graces of President George Bush's administration, that going along with missile defence is convenient to appease the Americans. This is necessary because Canada betrayed America in the war against Saddam Hussein.
It wasn't our refusal to send troops to Iraq that upset the Americans - they know we haven't the military wherewithal to actually fight - but our siding with France and wanting Saddam Hussein to remain in power.
Rhetorical support for America's war to eliminate a tyrant would have sufficed - a tyrant whose crimes against his people were worse than the crimes Slobodan Milosevic was supposedly committing in Kosovo that we joined the war to stop.
We didn't even wish America, Britain and Australia luck in this war. Instead, we talked of "principles" of not participating, as if the Chretien government functioned on any principles except expediency and opportunism.
The depleted state of our military prevented Canada from anything but token participation in four wars since 1990: the Gulf war, Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Our only battle casualties were four Canadians killed and eight wounded by "friendly fire" from a U.S. bomb in Afghanistan.
Old equipment
Our regular army is pathetically small, with equipment that's older than most soldiers. There were more fans at last weekend's Blue Jays games than there are soldiers in the army - only 20% of whom are combat soldiers.
Yet the PM keeps committing Canadian troops to impossible tasks. He once sent the head of the army, Lt.-Gen. Maurice Baril, to Rwanda to look for a country that would take us as peacekeepers, but couldn't find one. Baril returned home and said there was no problem.
Chretien unnecessarily ordered the disbanding of the Airborne Regiment, which would have been ideal for Afghanistan or Iraq.
In an offhand way he pledged Canadian peacekeepers for East Timor, which we couldn't do properly, even after we managed to get our aircraft off the ground in a logistics role.
After much hemming and hawing, Chretien sent 800 troops to Afghanistan for six months after the fighting was mostly over and mopping up was required.
The Princess Pats did well, won accolades from U.S. troops - and then came home, to be replaced by Romanian soldiers.
Canada explained we were stretched too thin to continue. In the war against Saddam Hussein, Canada said no on "principle." We wouldn't fight unless the UN approved. We sided with France and Germany.
Instead, Chretien okayed sending 1,800 troops to Kabul for constabulary duties. The 25 advance troops would be unarmed and defended by Germans! Good Lord, what has our army been reduced to? In other words, we can't replace 800 infantry in Afghanistan, but can send 1,800 to Kabul! Make sense? Of course not. That's three infantry battalions, which we don't have.
Now that Chretien hungers to get back into America's good books, he's offering more soldiers we don't have for duty in the Middle East. Our new army commander, Lt.-Gen. Rick Hillier, has bluntly said we don't have the resources to comply.
Sniping at Bush
Through it all, Chretien insists on sniping at the Bush administration, insisting he's handling the Canadian economy better than Bush is handling the U.S. economy, and implying the U.S. is too greedy, arrogant and bullying for its own good.
After 9/11, Chretien initially denied there were any terrorists in Canada, and consistently ignored the warnings of CSIS and others that terrorists were active here.
All things considered, Chretien's buffoonery toward the U.S. is not only misguided, but will hurt Canada if it ever responds in kind, considering that some 70% of our trade is with the U.S.
The PM seems to have lost it. It all stems from emasculating the military to the point where he has to call names and make boasts to compensate for our inability to pull our weight internationally.
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