Canada's Own MacArthur has a fan club

I've made this MacArthur analogy about Hillier before. Apparently some people like him that way:

"Almost begrudging respect is paid to the intellect and skill of current Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier, who it says, single-handedly bamboozled the best minds in Ottawa into adopting Canada’s International Policy statement. That should come as no surprise, given that Lang was quoted in The Globe and Mail on Aug. 10, 2006, saying: “The problem is, there isn’t anyone who can take him (Hillier) on with a counterworld view. He blows them away.” The problem wasn’t Rick Hillier: the problem was with the Liberals who were supposed to exercise informed oversight over him..."

No one in the military command structure should be "bamboozling" their civilian overseers. The military works for civilians, Hillier needs to understand this. One can only wonder what the Torch gang would say if Hillier made an end run around Harper.

It just boggles my mind that the military essentially selected its own mission in Afghanistan. I'm not sure whether it was Hillier's war-is-a-force-that-gives-us-meaning mentality or Martin's indecisiveness or combination thereof, but it seems as though it was far from inevitable that we got stuck with the worst assignment in Afghanistan.

Our Own MacArthur

Maclean's (hardly some pinko anti-war magazine) has an interesting bit on how Rick Hillier pushed to have us take on the worst assignment in Afghanistan (so it wasn't a result of Liberal dithering that we got this assignment) in order to pursue his personal agenda. A sample:

"He wanted a deployment that would get Canada deeper and deeper into the most troubled part of Afghanistan. It was heavy lifting. And it was an initiative that would impress the Pentagon and even George Bush."

Oh, so we didn't do this out of concern for the Afghans or because we felt some grand moral obligations. We did this so that we could make friends at the Pentagon! Why would we do that?

"A new consensus, led by DND, was rapidly emerging in Ottawa: Canada, and in particular the Canadian Forces, needed to do something significant for Washington -- something that the Pentagon really valued -- to compensate for the refusal to participate in BMD."

In other words the DND felt bad for the Pentagon. The last time I checked we were a sovereign state that does not need to impress the Pentagon. How about just telling the Pentagon that BMD isn't particularly effective? I mean it can shoot down missiles that it's told to shoot down in advance, I still wouldn't bet on it in a real scenario.

But this wasn't the only reason that Hillier put Kandahar out there as our mission:

"Canadians would be justifiably proud of their government and their military for undertaking a difficult and important assignment."

Oh swell, a self-esteem boost. The proudest I have been of our government in the past decade was when Jean Chretien declined to participate in the morass of Iraq. We took a principled stance and went against traditional allies like the US and UK. And we were right. It is one thing to undertake a "difficult" assignment, I fear what we have in Afghanistan is an impossible assignment exacerbated by the US fixation with the opium trade.

Our Own MacArthur?

That's how Michael Byers decribes Canada's top general, Rick Hillier. Hillier seems to see his roll in part as being the trash-talker in chief. He also thinks it's his job to "sell" the war to Canadians. But beyond that, it seems as though Hillier is trying to tell us all what the scope of the mission is:

The Martin government also assumed Canada would contribute to the combat mission for a limited time only. But Hillier changed his tune shortly after Stephen Harper was elected: "From NATO's perspective, they look at this as a 10-year mission, right? Minimum. There's going to be a huge demand for Canada to contribute over the longer period of time."

Hillier promised Martin that the combat mission would not preclude Canadian participation in UN peacekeeping missions elsewhere. He's since broken that promise, ruling out troops for Lebanon and Darfur on the basis that Canada is fully committed in Afghanistan.

Sorry Rick, this is a democracy, the military gets marching orders from its civilian masters, it's not the other way around.