Newsletter July, 03

Table of Contents:

[Contemptuous Leadership] [The Mark of Cain] [New Tanks Please] [Voices of Freedom]

Editor’s Remarks

A war brewed in Canada? The Institute’s recent paper Other People’s Wars: A Review of Overseas Terrorism in Canada dwelt much on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and their Canadian fronts. This was largely because one of the motives for writing the study in the first place was a fear of the combination of the LTTE’s audacity and sophistication in raising money and generating political support here. Our fears are turning out to be justified.

The LTTE have managed to evade being placed on the Canadian list of terrorist groups against whom our new laws will be applied -- although legal strictures have been placed on them by most of our allies and have been ordered by the UN Security Council. Our Foreign Minister, Bill Graham, would not attribute this apparent protected status to anything so partisan as the exercise of political influence by LTTE fronts. Instead, he argues that restrictions on the Tigers would harm the peace process in Sri Lanka.

One rule of counter-insurgency is to never let them have a safe sanctuary area; another is to never let them bargain from a position of strength. Canada is the LTTE’s sanctuary area, and having violated two previous cease-fires, it seems they are preparing to do so yet again. They are re-arming and conscripting new child-soldiers in Sri Lanka; and indicators suggest a renewal of their "War Tax" system here began in July 2003. If the war resumes, it may be our fault.

"I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It’s never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting ‘Forward, brave comrades!’ you’ll see he’s the one behind the bloody big rock and wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!"

-- Terry Pratchett Interesting Times

In Dante’s imaginative design for Hell, with its circles and districts designated for particular sins, there was something that even a well-rounded Renaissance man had forgotten. There was a circle for the evil councilors (in the conventional burning pit), while the overly ferocious warriors and criminals were sitting in a lake of boiling blood — which is perhaps as it should be. But imaginative as these punishments were, something was still missing.

In Inferno, an interesting ‘upgrade’ to Hell’s geography written in the 1970s by the science fiction duo Larry Nivens and Jerry Pournelle, Dante’s Wood of the Suicides was fading away, given over to a diabolical industrial park for those without an environmental conscience. There was space reserved elsewhere in the Abyss for future development when new sins (perhaps related to unwarranted genetic manipulation) came along. Yet between the two literary explorations, there was a field of human sin that really deserves its special place in the nether-regions.

What are we to do with the contemptuous ‘heroes’, those leaders of causes who urge others to engage in suicide attacks against the innocent, while remaining safe themselves? They are a growing problem.

One can think of Osama Bin Laden and the command council heading al Qaeda — urging Muslims to hurl themselves on "Crusaders and Jews" in suicidal attacks. Osama let hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban militia die in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in January of 2002, while he moved from deep cave to deep cave, until safe in a secret new sanctuary in Pakistan. He has dispatched dozens of ‘martyrs’ to immolate themselves, but — if martyrdom is such a good thing — he seems curiously unwilling to embrace that honor for himself.

Like Bin Laden, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein have also encouraged ‘martyrdom’ while taking pains to keep their own hides unscratched. Arafat — on those occasions in the last couple of years when the Israelis encircled his compound — would emerge when it was safe with a firearm of some sort to make it look to journalists as if he was a combatant, but…. Arafat’s sole ‘military’ feat before the PLO was created was a daring midnight raid on an unguarded Israeli water pipe.

Saddam has also posed with weaponry too, but is not known to have used any against armed opponents since he was 19, when he took part in a botched assassination attempt. There are numerous suggestions and reports that he has been utterly ferocious in torturing and executing prisoners, and the long time it has taken to run him to earth (still not accomplished as of late July 2003) is a testament to his meticulous attention to his personal security.

In the Second World War, it seems easy to contrast Hitler and Churchill (or the British Monarch). Although a survivor of four years in the trenches in the First World War, Hitler never came close to the front lines between 1939 and 1944. When the front finally came to him in 1945, he was deep within a well-appointed bunker, where he took his own life rather than face the fury of the Russians. But on many occasions before that, Hitler attempted to impose his ‘will’ on military situations by giving impossible orders to his troops — as if his soldiers were unreal tokens in a game to him, rather than flesh and blood.

Hitler (seemingly like Saddam in the recent war) never toured bombed out areas in World War Two. Some wounded and maimed veterans being shipped home from the Russian Front also told a story about how their train was stalled in a siding alongside Hitler’s luxurious rail car — and seeing the curtains being drawn so that der Fuhrer did not have to gaze on his broken warriors.

One can contrast these with the late Queen Mother’s remarks about the bomb hit on Buckingham Palace in 1940 — "Thank goodness, now I can look East Londoners in the eye." Churchill was also seen to have been visibly moved when cheered by bombed out British civilians or veteran troops from Allied armies. Abraham Lincoln, who had visibly aged under the burdens of the American Civil War, was also seen to have emotional moments. Horace Porter, one of General Grant’s staff officers, presented several compelling accounts about Lincoln when visiting the Union Army in the field, including his reaction when riding (unescorted) among a Corps of Black American soldiers.

In another comparison to Hitler, Eisenhower and Montgomery have recorded their disapproval of Churchill’s frequent attempts to see the front lines for himself — which didn’t stop the incorrigible Prime Minister from hearing bullets crack overhead once or twice in 1944 and his following the first wave of assault transports over the Rhine. The great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, as a junior officer in the American Civil War, once berated Lincoln for unnecessarily exposing himself to fire during a Confederate attempt on Washington’s defences.

This willingness to share danger underscores an important point about true leaders and the Hitlers and Bin Ladens of the world: Empathy. Real leaders understand how other people are feeling; they respect and admire courage, compassion or dignity in others. They are troubled when they know that their decisions are putting people in a danger they cannot share; and yet they have the moral courage to send them anyway.

While most leaders, the Bin Ladens and the Churchills alike, have an eye on history, leaders with empathy are less worried about their personal place in it, and more worried about seeing the job of the day done. Saddam Hussein has had his name stamped on every brick lodged in a rebuilt version of the Ziggurat of Ur, so that his name will be known millennia from now. Hitler talked of his ‘Thousand Year Reich’, and Arafat’s lust to be the leader of a real nation state has been one of his primary motivations. One can contrast this with Churchill’s wish to see the world move into the "broad sunlit uplands" of a promising future, while Lincoln talked of healing and reconciliation.

This contrast between a personal lust for glory and the hope of the betterment of all humanity is the most significant indicator of the base selfishness of the totalitarian and terrorist leaders who have savaged the world. The differences between truly heroic leaders, and the sham heroism of the Husseins and Hitlers should be self-evident. Unfortunately, far too many people can’t tell the difference and we are left with the hope that divine justice might be more fitting than ours is.

Stephen Spielberg’s powerful movie "Schindler’s List" about a group of Polish Jews and their German protector in WW II covers much of the enormity of the Holocaust, but it is a highly detailed film that demands close attention from viewers. Some minor scenes, often just in passing, can communicate as much about the human condition as any of the major ones.

One tiny vignette concerns the time in 1944 when the Nazis sent squads of slave laborers to dig up many of the mass graves of their victims in a bid to hide the evidence of their atrocities. In the camera’s eye of the film, this phase is presented all too briefly, with a great heap of unearthed cadavers that have been stacked up like logs and set aflame. Then, for just a second or two, a wild-eyed SS officer lurches across the screen, takes a swig from a mostly drained bottle of vodka, and fires his pistol into the corpses in a deranged drunken fury. Here is a brief but masterly portrait of a man who has gone insane from mass killing; no longer human, he has become a beast beyond all chance of recovery.

Considering all the episodes of mass killing of the helpless in the 20^th Century, we should wonder what happens to the men who do the actual killing. For if such killing is so easy, then we are all condemned by it. But, if performing such murder is too much for many to bear, then — however perversely — there is hope for us all.

When Cain murdered Abel, he was driven into the wilderness and lost to us all, a fate that — if at least in a metaphorical sense — attends most murderers in any sort of civil society.

The mark of Cain can be difficult to bear. We can tolerate those who commit homicide under some circumstances: Killing in self-defence or to protect the innocent is often forgiven, both in our hearts and often even in law. Most of us excuse the homicide committed by soldiers, usually because it is seldom to their personal benefit (but may be undertaken for ours), but also because the soldier assumes a strong degree of mutual personal risk in that there is a good chance he will be killed too. The societal tolerance for a soldier who kills armed opponents in battle fades rapidly if he deliberately slays unarmed and undefended civilians or murders his prisoners.

Other killers are much less welcome among us. Howard Engel’s Lord High Executioner suggests that executioners and hangmen led lonely lives. One Elizabethan hangman successfully petitioned for the right to commit necrophilia, as his pariah status largely prevented his chances for finding a willing bed-partner. In Royal France (and early Quebec), an executioner could choose a bride among the condemned, provided that she consented to marriage to the hangman rather than being executed by him. Frequently there were no takers. Also, when no executioner was available, volunteers for the position would be sought among the backlogged condemned; most of whom again usually preferred death to amnesty paired with a new career and the social isolation that went with it.

Engel also recounts the tale of one Canadian hangman, John Radclive, in the late 19^th Century. His remuneration was an inadequate regular salary; but he was allowed to also bill for his services (and the costs of a new rope and restraints) every time he was called upon. This was not a profitable way to make a living; and he moonlighted as a waiter at a Toronto boat club. One day a visiting Mountie noticed that Canada’s executioner was serving his drinks and raised a fuss — as he felt that gentlemen should not be served by a common hangman. Radclive was fired. It also says much about the job, that both Radclive and Arthur Ellis (his successor) ended their days as alcoholics; a career hazard for all of their international colleagues.

Gilbert and Sullivan aside, Japan never had a "Lord High Executioner". In the days of Shoguns and Samurai, the task of execution of criminals was left to the Eta, the lowest class in society.

Traditionally, in a firing squad, the rifles are loaded separately — and one man has a blank cartridge. This is not so that every member of the squad can believe that he is innocent in performing the execution (any trained soldier knows that the recoil for a blank is much less than it is for a ball cartridge); but so that each member of the firing squad has "plausible deniability" afterwards. It is also noteworthy that execution duty is normally regarded as a punishment detail.

Few soldiers who volunteer for execution details are likely to be trusted by their comrades and officers afterwards. This trait even continued among the Wehrmacht in WW II, where Army officers often sought to rid their units of men who had volunteered to help out at mass executions of Jews and others. It should be noted that German troops were presented with far more opportunities to become involved in firing squads than most troops in WW II, and many considered it their National Socialist duty to participate in them.

Yet even the executors of the Nazi’s cruelest policies had problems with risk-free killing. Himmler, the leader of the SS, had to constantly reassure his men who ran the concentration camps that they were doing a "heroic" duty which was even more difficult than front-line fighting. Indeed, one of the reasons for the creation of the Waffen SS combat units (which did have a formidable battlefield reputation) was to let SS men rotate out of camp duty. As the Waffen SS grew in size, Himmler once reminded its officers that "In many cases it is much easier to go into battle with a company of infantry, than it is to suppress an obstructive population of low cultural level…" One might note the several euphemisms employed here.

To run their camps and execution units, the SS also increasingly turned to recruiting criminals and thugs from throughout Eastern Europe — coarse men for whom the systemic murder of hundreds of thousands of people presented fewer emotional troubles. Martin Gilbert’s stunning history The Holocaust contains a photograph of members of one Einsatzgruppe murder squad posing for the camera — all men who had shot thousands of people, and a close study of their faces suggests they were merciless men whose humanity was fast fading. Einsatzgruppen members (who shot around half a million people in 1941 alone) were a combination of Himmler’s police -- who had been cultivated for ruthlessness -- and disciplinary cases from elsewhere in the SS network, who were carefully psychologically conditioned by weeks of intensive training for their murderous work.

Once the extermination camps opened up in 1942, the SS took pains to automate the process at a safe psychological distance from many of its men. Reading historical accounts about the almost dispassionate nature of the killing machinery can be too numbing to translate to the imagery of the mind’s eye. But some attempts to portray this policy have succeeded. The 2002 film "The Grey Zone" about the October 1944 Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau illustrates many of the details of how the camp was actually run, and the effect that working there had on some SS men. The Sonderkommandos were inmates who were given a few more weeks of life in return for "processing" incoming "shipments" before being executed themselves.

Despite the documentation of the Nazi’s crimes, those done by the Soviets were much more massive. Their Gulag camp system and massacres by their security forces experienced many of the same problems that the Nazis ran into. As Anne Applebaum’s new book Gulag: A History shows, there was a growing reliance on criminals and goons to handle the rough stuff, and camp administrators usually were not selected from the ranks of educated men. Prisoners, particularly criminals, were often pressed into service to help run the Soviet camps.

Like the Nazis, the Soviet security organs were certainly capable of handling mass executions. The excavation of burial sites from mass executions in the Soviet Union show that the Soviet NKVD and other security organs faced stress when shooting large numbers of people. Empty bottles of vodka are found throughout the layers of bodies. However, perhaps this picture is not quite complete as at some sites the top layer of bodies largely consists of the skeletons of unclothed young women.

Eventually, even the Soviet NKVD found it was helpful to split the functions of its jailors and executioners from its intelligence apparatus — splitting into the MVD (the Internal Security Ministry) and the MGB, later known as the KGB, in 1946. The MGB/KGB was more than happy to segregate itself from the brutality associated with running camps and handling prisoners.

Mass murder has certainly continued since the days of the great totalitarian movements of the 1930s and ‘40s. Within the last decade, we have seen the use of criminals, the inadequate and disturbed elements handling the dirty work of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. However, the mass murders in Rwanda and Burundi, and some of the excesses of the Taliban and Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan and Algeria seem to have been done by highly conditioned people — many of whom were initially coerced into participation. Once one becomes a murderer under these circumstances, it does become easier to continue — for a while.

Perhaps the easiest way to manufacture mass killers is to use children. While almost every totalitarian movement in history has sought to condition children to its purposes, the abduction of children in contemporary conflicts (particularly in Africa) has resulted in the creation of totally dispassionate killers. And these children will probably bear the mark of Cain for life.

The history of executioners and agents of massacre needs more exploration for a number of reasons, and the most important questions are a long way from being answered — we still really need to understand how we can allow ourselves to behave this way, and to fully understand the price it exacts.

It is still premature to pronounce the death of the tank, although Canada’s Department of Defence may be eager to do so. Canada has 114 obsolete Leopard 1 tanks which are rapidly reaching the end of their service lives. Most are in storage, except for a squadron of 19 tanks used to keep the skills associated with their use from becoming altogether absent. By adhering to the idea that the day of the tank is gone, we have an excuse not to buy any more. Like the Federal Progressive Conservative Party, rumors of the death of the tank are greatly exaggerated, but both are likely to find themselves restricted to secondary/specialist roles for decades to come.

In 1978, the author was one of the hundreds of Canadian soldiers who saw the last hurrah of the Centurion Tank. These had been in Canadian service for over 20 years, and it was evident that their day was fast ending. A squadron of 19 tanks rumbled out of the hangers where they were maintained to travel about five kilometres to take part in a live fire demonstration; only four made it to their appointed station — where they fired with all the accuracy and speed that Centurions in other armies had demonstrated so many times. Their task completed, the remaining quartet departed but all broke down within a few hundred metres.

It had long been evident that a replacement was badly needed, but even in the mid-1970s, arguments were being raised that the Canadian Army should really be earmarked for ‘peacekeeping’ and for light reaction forces, and didn’t really need new tanks. However, it was eventually decided to replace some 300 Centurions with 114 Leopard 1 Tanks and a number of wheeled ‘tank trainers’ called the Cougar — basically a city bus on steroids with a big gun on top. Typically, too little, almost too late, and the Leopard 1 design we picked was already nearing obsolescence.

The Leopard 1 was a fast and reliable German-designed tank that was popular with many NATO armies. However, it was designed in the late 1950s and began manufacture in 1965. By 1978, it was already clear that it was a second-line tank. The Leopard 1’s speed (it could reach about 65 KPH) was a product of thin armor — about 80mm at its thickest. Even the Sherman tanks the Canadian army used in WW 2 were better protected. Also, the Israeli experience in dealing with mass Soviet-style attacks in the 1973 Yom Kippur War showed that a tank needed to be more robust than this, as many of their Centurions (whose thickest armor was about 150mm) had been knocked out.

When we ordered the Leopard 1s, Germany had already started production of the Leopard 2, a highly advanced tank whose top speed rivaled its predecessor, but whose armor protection was far superior — incorporating spaced layers of high grade steel, ceramic honeycomb, and other materials. The Israelis, drawing on their extensive experience with tank battles in 1967 and 1973, were starting production of their new Merkava tank; slower than the Leopard family, it was designed to destroy many times its numbers in attacking tanks. While the Americans were only starting production of their magnificent Abrams tank, updated versions of the British Chieftain — whose protection and firepower also much exceeded that of the Leopard 1 — were also available.

In any event, if we wanted to order new tanks now, there is a supply of superb designs to choose from. But, do we want them?

Richard Simpkin was one of the greatest military theorists of the 20^th Century (which means that few people outside of some US/NATO staff colleges and the Soviets have heard of him). One of his more thought-provoking books was Race to the Swift (Brassey’s London, 1986), which dwelled on maneuver theory and principles, and their likely evolution into the 21^st Century. Like many other polymaths, Simpkin could casually toss off a couple of asides when pursuing a thought that might be mined for insight by a college of scholars and essayists later.

One of Simpkin’s theories was a wave cycle of the evolutionary progress of key weapons systems. Essentially, a new concept could expect to first appear in small numbers as a revolutionary idea, feel its way forward, reach the acme of its design in 30–50 years during which it comes to dominate its environment, then fade from dominance to increasingly specialist roles as a new family of weapons systems/propulsion methods enters the field.

For example, the triple gun-decked ship of the line first appeared in the 1770s, and became the dominant capital ship of the Napoleonic era. But in the 1820s, the first steam driven warships appeared and soon ended their reign. By 1862, the steam frigates role as the leading capital ship was eclipsed by the ironclad warship; which then found themselves eclipsed by the true dreadnought battleship in 1908.

In 1942, it became all too obvious that the battleship’s dominance was ended — and the lonely quartet still in service 50 years later had spent decades in a specialist role (shore bombardment) with the US Navy. The aircraft carrier’s reign as the dominant capital ship became increasingly threatened by the cruise missile armed nuclear submarine in the 1980s. Currently, the massive US fleet carriers are desperately fighting against their loss of pride of place in the navies of the world (much as battleship admirals resented the upstart carrier commanders in the 1930s).

The tank first emerged as a clumsy prototype in the First World War, and was hardly a decisive instrument of land combat until the Second World War — where it came to dominate the battlefield, provided that it was closely guarded by infantry, supported with plentiful artillery and had field engineers in attendance. In short, the tank didn’t actually dominate the battlefield so much as it became the definitive instrument of operational mobility by being the centerpiece of a formation with armored infantry, self-propelled artillery and other mechanized assets.

Tanks, for those unfamiliar with them, have a number of strengths; firepower, protection, mobility, and shock action — lying under a bush at dawn in a field as 19 fast moving Leopard 1s roared past (two within arms reach) is a terrifying memory of the author that sometimes comes back with special clarity at 3:00 AM. However, tanks make heavy demands on logistics in terms of fuel and ammunition; need a train of repair crews close behind; and their size, weight and noise makes them especially noticeable.

In many actions, in many wars since 1939, tanks have been an irresistible force and mechanized units remain as the most decisive element on the battlefield. US Abrams tanks set a speed record for the rapidity of an offensive advance in their recent drive on Baghdad, and proved the worth of well-designed tanks once more.

Nor is tank use exclusive to the US; China has two new designs on the market, France is producing LeClerc tanks for export, Germany has a new model of the Leopard 2 out, Japan just finished production of a new tank for its defence forces, South Korea is producing a new model, and the Russians are displaying their new Black Eagle design. In the aftermath of the recent Gulf War, China and Russia have been publicly mulling over giant new tanks with a 152mm high velocity gun as the main armament.

Simpkin thought that helicopter formations would overtake mechanized units as the main instrument of operational maneuver and decision, but this hasn’t happened yet. Indeed, the helicopter has been readily conscripted into forming a part of existing armored formations — most US mechanized divisions have a couple of battalions of helicopters in their order of battle.

It is far too soon to announce the death of the tank. Partisans of a Canadian Army stripped down to act only as "peacekeepers" should also bear in mind that tanks and heavy armoured personnel carriers have made significant contributions to many missions in the 1990s. There is nothing like a well-handled tank to inspire caution among those who think that they can otherwise push soldiers with blue berets around. Also, the smoking remains of Iraq’s tanks around Baghdad can illustrate the fate of those who attempt to stop a modern force by using antiquated equipment.

We need new tanks, perhaps just enough so that we have one armored regiment, but we need some. Let’s keep them on the shopping list.

"He masks his desire to kill and destroy behind the curtain of a cause. It is destruction he wants, not creation."

"The deeper we delve in search of these causes [of war — ed.] the more of them we discover, and each single cause or series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself, and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the event."

"Every sea hath been opened by our fleets, and every land hath been penetrated by our armies, which have everywhere left behind them eternal monuments to our enmity and our friendship."

And this is just in from the "George W. Bush Presidency explained" Department.

"That special time caught me up in its wild vortex and — in the absence of leisure to reflect on the matter — compelled me to do what had to be done."

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