Micro-managing the Military

by John Thompson

February 4, 2002

More an embarrassment than an asset? Our government often pays little attention to what our Armed Forces are doing abroad unless there is a whiff of scandal which might affect a government minister.

Militaries love acronyms, just ask that PPCLI RSM standing over by the LAV-25 about his time with UNPROFOR. Ask impolitely, and you might receive a SSSS — a short, sharp shower of excrement. Most people in the military have encountered this phenomenon, and know that it mostly flows downhill from the deserving to the undeserving. In the modern Canadian military, the flow is especially rapid and fierce when it begins from the lofty summits of political life.

A proper military is not a liberal institution and, though it must reflect the society from which it is drawn, the mirror image is distorted by a military’s unique ethos. People in uniform must be prepared to give and receive violence, and their institutions and customs have to reflect this. Also, as Kipling wrote over a century ago "An’ if our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints // Why, single men in barracks don’t grow into plaster saints."

In recent years, our military has been subjected to alternating bouts of neglect and micromanagement. Our troops on peacekeeping missions might have had to endure violence and appalling living conditions without exciting Ottawa’s attention — but heaven forbid that they have a drink or sleep with local women (things their forefathers did with gusto in both World Wars). Nowadays, behavior of this sort often brings promising careers to a crashing halt.

Over the last decade, our service personnel have noticed the incongruity of political outrage. They can die in 42-year old-helicopters or find that getting benefits for injuries sustained by snipers and mines can be an uphill battle, and there will be no mob of reporters chasing the Defence Minister around. Put on a porn video or negotiate passage of a roadblock with a Balkan bandito over brandy and all hell breaks loose.

Ottawa, in the eternal political game of "protect the minister" reacts accordingly; and issues that have resulted in ferocious exchanges and media scrums on Parliament Hill result in strict supervision. Some results have been ludicrous — including one scene where hardened old sergeant majors (who generally know much more about human nature than most people ever will) had to release campy balloons with messages about their feelings at a mandatory New-Age sensitivity seminar.

Currently, the Opposition has scored some Parliamentary points while using the Minister of Defence as a punching bag, Admittedly he deserved it for his own conduct about passing information to the Prime Minister. However, Cabinet ministers usually come coated in Teflon and excrement will plummet from the heights when the Minister is embarrassed. One result is safe to predict.

What sparked the issue was ludicrous assertion that Al-Qaeda prisoners are entitled to "Prisoner of War" status under the Geneva Conventions — even a cursory reading of the Convention shows that these ideological hard-cases don’t come under its aegis at all. Still the issue surfaced and our government hastily took a position that ensured the capture of any prisoners by our troops in Afghanistan was bound to become controversial.

Political micromanagement of a military in the field is always a mistake. Most skilled commanders know the best way to get any job done is to give their subordinates a relatively free hand. Generals who keep tight reins on their men invariably have a bad track record; political leaders who do this (like Hitler did in the latter half of WW-II or Johnson did in Vietnam) sentence their troops to futility and failure.

If our Government’s reaction to the capture of Al Qaeda terrorists by our JTF-2 Commandos is to insist upon close scrutiny of our troops in Afghanistan, the latter will have to cope with more than the expected hazards of combat. Their leaders will rapidly find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation where enforced political instructions clash with life and death realities, and simple tasks can be complicated by absurd demands.

Our troops have seen such situations before — this is what happens when one is at the bottom of the scatological heap -- but they don’t like it, and it can endanger their lives. Whatever happens in Parliament and the media to our Defence Minister, perhaps they should realize that, well, ‘stuff’ happens and passing it down onto others isn’t the best course. Please let our troops in Afghanistan do their jobs, secure from whatever splatters about in Ottawa.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca