Our soldiers deserve the country's attention
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
I was en route here this week when the CBC's The National devoted much of one newscast to Canadian soldiers and the mission in Afghanistan as part of what the network calls its On the Road series.
That night, I was in that madly affluent, zany, over-the-top Middle East bastion of capitalism called Dubai, where every entrepreneur and shopper on the planet is welcomed — well, except for, as the posh guide book in my acreage of a hotel room reminded me, “those travelling on Israeli passports or with Israeli visas.”
Anyway, I didn't see a lick of the CBC news that night. And I guess, by rights, I shouldn't write about it. But I will anyway, albeit peripherally, just as so many people expound upon Afghanistan without having once set foot in it.
I gather, from what I've read, that the show included Peter Mansbridge anchoring from Edmonton, home to one of the nation's biggest bases; featured interviews with some of the soldiers recently decorated for valour for their service here (these would be the men of the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, who were in Kandahar until late August, when they handed over to the 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment, whose troops are here now) and families of serving soldiers; and that it ate up a good chunk of time.
In an inside-baseball sort of way, it seems the coverage has sparked a bit of a brouhaha.
The show aired Monday; two days later, my Globe colleague John Doyle took the public broadcaster to task for making a heinous link between the festive season and the mission and for what was in his eyes the fawning tone of the show, and the day after that, Mr. Mansbridge replied in the pages of The Globe with a spirited defence of what he considers the network's comprehensive and even-handed coverage.
To this, all I can do is borrow the old U.S. Army acronym — SNAFU, which means, and I use the sanitized family newspaper version, Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.
In other words, as Canadian troops are here doing what they do at the behest of our government (putting their lives on the line), back home the Canadian elite are doing what they do (putting their vocal cords at risk).
This was, after all, the same week in which Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe threatened to bring down the government over the mission to Afghanistan, and Michael Ignatieff cautioned new Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion not to let the issue split the Liberal Party.
Yes, heavens knows, that would be the worst thing that could happen out of Afghanistan, that the Liberals were fractured such that they don't march back to their rightful place in power.
I can think of 44 reasons (that is, the number of Canadian soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002) why all this is the furthest thing from funny, but otherwise, it just might be.
Mr. Doyle's theme was that by doing a special on serving-soldiers in the runup to Christmas, the CBC was taking the usual mawkish festive stuff on the tube at this time of year to a new low and deliberately sentimentalizing the military, or what he called “fetishizing” soldiers and by extension, war.
Because I didn't see the show, I don't know if that's a fair criticism or not (Mr. Mansbridge says it's not.)
But even if it were so, it's not that the public broadcaster hasn't engaged in this shtick before. As one soldier I know said this week, “What? Better that the CBC goes back to fetishizing the Liberal Party and their leadership race?”
And true enough.
The Mother Corp, and the major private networks, too, certainly covered the party convention wall to wall and back again — for days on end, not the better part of one lousy hour — and at least one network (and I can't remember which one as I was flipping among them) carried parts of the obsequious videos of past Liberal leaders that preceded various speeches or big events and which amounted to nothing but soppy propaganda. One network, and again I'm not sure which, even carried interim leader Bill Graham's farewell night, complete with his journalist son Patrick's warm (and really quite lovely) tribute — uncut.
Proper and fitting it is that a son should sing his father's praises among the father's colleagues and peers and fellow believers, but to carry it on national television?
In my bones, I suspect that when some people criticize the Afghanistan mission, what they are actually uneasy about is the military, and soldiers, and particularly, given the combat focus of the Canadian efforts here, soldiers who actually are shot at and shoot.
There's no crime or shame in saying that. People should shout it from the rooftops, but be honest about it.
It is even understandable, since many Canadians (under years of mostly Liberal rule, it should be noted) have grown almost entirely disconnected from their military. Bases closed and disappeared as a presence in cities and towns; there was the nasty business in Somalia; aging Sea Kings fell out of the sky at regular intervals; and in Canadian schools, teachers dutifully helped generations of children address their letters to “Dear Canadian Peacekeeper.”
The cumulative effect was that soldiers were rendered strangers, and that in what passes for the intellectual salons of central Canada, “soldier” came to be synonymous with “joke” or “guy who can't get a real job,” which is pretty rich from those who dwell in university ivory towers, editorial boardrooms and on Parliament Hill.
It is no accident that the single most common observation I have heard first-time reporters, arriving to Kandahar, make after a few days is how bright and articulate the young troops are. It is usually said with considerable surprise. I think it mirrors some of the preconceived notions influential Canadians in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal pointy-head corridor hold about their soldiers.
In the Prairies, in the Maritimes and in the small places that provide so many of Canada's soldiers, they're not afraid of those who wear the green suit, or uncomfortable in their presence. They are their sons and daughters, lovers and friends. They would have regarded the CBC special as a welcome gesture from the network that speaks most often for the heart of Central Canada, and perhaps even deemed it patronizing, because such gestures are so few and far between.
Even if The National gave too much time to soldiers this one night, who more richly deserves the country's attention and air time?
I'd rather watch 100 hours about those who would lay down their lives for their brothers, than see one more minute about those who debate the merits of sacrifice from the hothouses of Ottawa and Toronto.
cblatchford@globeandmail.com
