New book: 'Kandahar Tour'

[dwalter]

A good thing however is that that there is a full bibliography attached so if you feel so inclined you can go and read through all their sources and come to your own conclusions. The fact of the matter is that they are trying to create a certain effect with the book. When reading it you can feel a definite pro-Canada bias to it, and so certain aspects have probably been left out on purpose. That is the nature of history though.

 

[Niteshade]

I picked up a copy last week and I am about a third of the way through. I would say it is written more like a research project. Fifteen Days was a better read IMHO (more riveting), but this book has a nicely analytical point of view. I will be able to judge it better when I am done seeing as it is starting to get interesting now.

Nites

 

[dwalter]

It reads like a research paper because that's what it is. Kandahar tour is an academic book, which is why every fact has a foot note leading to a citation. It is intended as an analytical academic work more than a war story. I suppose it also depends on what you are expecting in a book. It does have a catchy cover and title that might be misleading, but hey, that's where the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover comes in" eh? Even when the cover looks awesome, and the reverse has a cardboard cutout of Don Cherry in the middle of the troops!

 

[catalyst]

Its on my next list of things to "employee borrow". Am in the middle of 15 days right now.

 

[grmpz1]

i jus checked and my local library has it checked in ;D

 

[jeffb]

I'm halfway through it now and so far so good. It does seem to be a little biased towards the mission and the Taliban (so am I) but it would be nice to see the other side as well.

 

[Infanteer]

I was initially interested in picking up this book however have decided to wait. I've been told by a few guys (who were with C Coy, 3 PPCLI on that tour) that certain parts of the book are...lacking with regards to accuracy.

Yeah - to start with, who the hell is "Charles" Company, 3 PPCLI?  I wince when the most basic things are messed up; what does this imply about the complex details?

 

[rovenbird]

Okay, I registered here just to say the following:  This book is junk.  Someone already pointed out the Charles/Charlie Company mistake, but there are a ton of stupid errors.  The composition of TF Orion, for example is wrong.  Number of KIA in one case is wrong.   There is information in it that directly contradicts reported news that was itself based on military breifings.

The book is ridiculously over-the-top positive - so much so that it undermines it's credibility.  Worse, is that the Gregg Centre that this came out of receives DND money so this qualifies as propaganda.

Roto3 may indeed have been a turning point - for the worse.  If you read between the lines what basically happened is that 2RCR moved out the security bubble before fully consolidating in Panjwaii and guess who came back?  All the TB that 1PPCLI and 1RCR chased out all were back in 2008 shooting at 2VP.  Maybe 2RCR should have knuckled down instead of wandering all over the AO looking for their own OP Medusa......

And the best part is that Lee Windsor keeps showing up on the news saying that the quality of the debate is poor and all his footnotes seem to lead to interviews that are hardly the most objective.

This is the sort of book Scott Taylor would write if he had money.

Crap.

 

[dwalter]

Are you saying that the KIA count is incorrect compared to the current count, or to the count from when the research for the book was collected?

 

[rovenbird]

Neither.  The example is that he was describing September 3rd and 4th 2006 - the assault on Pashmul and then the FF by the US A-10.  He writes that the assault on Pashmul on the 3rd garnered 5 KIAs and 8 wounded and then writes that another soldier was killed the next day with the FF.

Except that it was 4 KIA on Sept 3rd (Mellish/Nolan/Cushley/Stachnik) and a fifth the next day (Graham).  It's a minor thing, and the average Canadian won't know the difference, but the actual dates and KIAs are not hard to find so it comes off as really sloppy.

This book was done with the full backing of the CF so it should be iron tight on the details.

 

[muskrat89]

I got this for Christmas, along with Fifteen Days

 

[rovenbird]

Rose-coloured view of Kandahar
Events overtake authors' optimistic view of Canada's Afghan mission
David ********, Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, November 23, 2008
Kandahar Tour: The Turning Point in Canada's Afghan Mission

by Lee Windsor, David Chatters and Brent Wilson; John Wiley and Sons; 256 pages; $36.95

Kandahar Tour is a book that government officials and those in the Canadian Forces will firmly embrace.

With research financed in part by the Defence Department, the book echoes many of the arguments used by politicians and Foreign Affairs officials, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Privy Council Office and DND as they try to promote the Afghan mission to the public.

The authors of Kandahar Tour argue that while the mission is difficult, it has been successful as Afghans are seeing a difference in their daily lives because of the security and aid provided by Canadian troops and government representatives. They argue that Canada's involvement in Afghanistan is a continuation of our nation's traditional role on the world stage.

They also claim that the news media have largely ignored the good work done by Canada's diplomats, aid workers and the military's Provincial Reconstruction Team, among others.

"For many, including those who have served in a series of rotations (though not for the Canadian media) the future looks guardedly promising," authors Lee Windsor, David Chatters and Brent Wilson write about Afghanistan.

All three are on the faculty of the University of New Brunswick's Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society. The Gregg Centre's mission is "to be the Canadian centre for the academic study of war" and "a major contributor to informed public debate." Windsor is its deputy director. Chatters was a co-founder of UNB's Centre for Conflict Studies, the predecessor of the Gregg Centre and has served on the federal government's Advisory Council on National Security. Wilson is executive editor of the Journal of Conflict Studies.

Kandahar Tour bases its optimism almost entirely on a period from February to August 2007 as it follows a Canadian task force on its deployment to Afghanistan.

The book recounts how Canadian military units triumph over the Taliban as superior firepower and skills decimate insurgents in almost every battle. Aid is delivered and Afghans are happier for it. Canadian diplomats are successful in almost every venture they take on in the war-torn country.

During the Canadian task force's time in Afghanistan, the Taliban presence dropped dramatically in size and influence throughout Kandahar, according to the authors. Taliban recruiting failed, reconstruction proceeded comparatively unmolested and Corrections Canada and the RCMP reformed Kandahar's justice system, they say.

The book's message: Canada's contribution in Kandahar is a solid success.

But recent developments in Afghanistan clearly show the drawbacks of basing such a positive viewpoint -- if it was warranted in the first place -- on a tour that happened more than a year ago.

The situation has deteriorated to the point where U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of international forces in Afghanistan, is suggesting that violence in Kandahar and the eastern region of the country will only get worse in the coming months. "In large parts of Afghanistan, we don't see progress," he said in a September interview.

A number of top Afghan officials have been murdered by insurgent hit teams in Kandahar over the past few weeks.

In the summer, the Taliban carried out a spectacular raid on the Kandahar prison, freeing hundreds of their comrades. The Taliban have seized control of some of the main highways leading into Kabul and have established a parallel government in a province just 40 kilometres from the Afghan capital.

"The security situation is bad," Arif Lalani, Canada's former envoy to Afghanistan, said in September. "The Taliban, I think, is stronger this summer than they have been in my recent recollection."

That same month, Nipa Banerjee, who served as Canada's head of aid in Kabul for three years, wrote that the security situation was at its worst since 2001.

"Social and economic advances made from 2001 to 2005 appear to have halted," she wrote. "There is an absence of concrete evidence of aid activities positively impacting on common Afghans' lives."

All this is a departure from the rosy picture portrayed in Kandahar Tour. Although the book is not an official Government of Canada publication, some readers might consider it as such. Lee Windsor is featured in a series of videos and print articles from 2007 on the Government of Canada's website promoting the Afghan mission. His message on that website is similar to that presented in the book.

In addition, Windsor's research for Kandahar Tour was paid for by a Defence Department grant. The book itself was vetted by Canadian Forces Brig.-Gen. Ian Poulter, which the authors say was done to eliminate any breaches of operational security. According to the authors, neither the DND funding nor the vetting affected the final product.

Equally interesting are the authors' claims that the good work being done by Foreign Affairs, CIDA, Corrections Canada, the RCMP and the military's Provincial Reconstruction Team are being largely ignored by the news media. They also suggest the media have ignored the contributions of private aid groups, such as Canadian Drew Gilmour's Development Works, which operates in Kandahar.

However, even a cursory examination of media coverage of the period covered by Kandahar Tour undercuts such claims. The PRT was profiled a number of times on both radio and television. The National Post published a large feature highlighting CIDA's efforts to inoculate children in Afghanistan against polio. Canwest newspapers ran articles with headlines such as "Canadians Work to Improve Afghan Prisons," "Canadians Help Afghan Girls," "Afghan Leader Praises Canadian Efforts to Rebuild District" and "Harper Shines Spotlight on Aid Work."

Other Canadian newspapers featured similar articles. Even Gilmour's Development Works, supposedly ignored by the news media, was the subject of a profile on CTV News during this period. This brief list doesn't include the hundreds of articles or broadcasts detailing Canadian aid projects produced by the media outside the period covered by Kandahar Tour.

Strangely, however, the authors neglect to focus on the one key factor that did limit aid projects from gaining even more favourable media coverage: CIDA and Foreign Affairs officials almost always refused to give interviews to journalists about such projects.

It wasn't until later in 2008, after the Manley report outlined the failure of government officials to communicate the Afghan mission to Canadians, that the situation improved somewhat. But even today, there are government-imposed limits on media interviews about Afghan mission aid programs.

However, the theme that the news media are undercutting the Afghan mission -- as opposed to what some observers say is the failure of international policies and rampant corruption of the Karzai government -- is one that is being increasingly embraced by Canadian military officers, government officials, some defence analysts and those Canadians who are unreservedly behind the mission.

They will definitely enjoy this book, while others will view Kandahar Tour as bordering on federal government propaganda.

David ******** is the Ottawa Citizen's senior writer on military issues

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I will ask my Libary to buy it so i can borrow it. (True Scot, eh?) 

 

[muskrat89]

Like ******** has never demonstrated any bias  : Sorry, but if the 3 gents from UNB are Yin, DP is Yang - I don't hold much faith that his review is any more objective than the book is. I'll read it and decide for myself.

 

[rovenbird]

And you know, that is a totally fair criticism as well.  ******** certainly writes from his own angle, but in this case I think he nailed it dead on.  The whole idea that the coverage of the mission and the debate being sub-par is a new and popular one with the military and government - as if neither of them want to admit that they are the ones responsible for the information being pushed forward or for the fact that the Afghan Media are told one thing by the PSYOPS types, while the international media is being told something altogether by the Command.

Windsor's book does highlight some of the work that CIDA and DFAIT are doing, and that is long overdue, but his basic assertions about the state of the AO are completely undermined by the current security situation.

 

[Neal]

In as much as I respect Rovenwood's comments regarding the innaccuracies of the book I would like to point out that these are primarily in dealing with the minutae and do not really nullify the authors' greater argument even if they might serve to annoy someone who was involved.  As an aside, I was on ROTO 1-07 and I respectfully disagree with the implication that we somehow abandoned Zharey-panjwayi, since we had two coys stationed there and more throughout the entire tour and I personally recall being involved in battle of some degree in Zharey District at least every three days the whole summer.  The implication that we were looking for our own Op MEDUSA is also quite false and I think that this is a fact that Lee brings out quite well in his book.  We fought a very different campaign that was built on the gains made by the previous rotations' sacrifices.  If ground was lost it was not due to any lack of effort I assure you. 

My opinion is that the accounts in this book dealing with events in which I was personally involved were all quite accurate.  There are minor disagreements maybe between the authors' account and my recollections in some instances, but I also know that when I sit down with my peers and fellow soldiers in the mess and talk about some of these same events we all remember things a little differently.  I would like to point out that a lot of what might frustrate insiders about this book is that the authors' have chosen, wisely, not to lay any blame or make any defamatory comments of any kind regarding individual members of the TF.  Althought the descriptions of personalities may seem uniformly positive, it would not have improved the read if they had been critical of individuals and failure to comment negatively on people involved doesn't make the accounting of the events of the tour any less true. 

As for the overly optimistic view that some liberal pansy from the Ottawa Citizen is complaining about... I don't recall seeing any liberal media coming out to report from the front lines and I know for a fact that Lee Windsor was shot at more than once when doing his research for this book.  As I recall those bastards hung around KAF waiting for us to die so they could film us going up a ramp on the final journey. Clearly our failures sold more newspapers than showing any successes we may have had.  If anything it really is the failure of the media - liberal, conservative, and in between - to provide an objective view of both the successes and failures that has led to the Taliban and other insurgent groups' optimism and kept them fighting us so long.  This book achieves a very different perspective by telling the whole story in a very factual and balanced account.  I would ask prospective readers to forgive minor inconsitencies with minute details as they are based on first-hand accounts (I know because Lee was actually running around the AO interviewing people) and enjoy the book for what it is - a very sound summary of the big picture successes and failures of a six-month tour of Canadians fighting a bloody counter-insurgency. 

And no I am not on the payroll of one of the authors. 

 

[rovenbird]

Hey Man, fair enough.  I would submit a couple of things though:

1)  It is generally considered to be impossible to write an accurate account of what happened, while it is happening or shortly after.  Most of the histories of WW2, for example, that were written in the decade after have been widely seen as bad history;

2) The media have almost certainly been on the front lines (admittedly a Roto1 and 2 perspective) fairly regularly from where I was watching, and I certainly read more than a few articles published during Roto3 that had the byline from MSG or PBW. 

3) And to that end the authors have made defamatory  and blame-asssigning statements in that they are questioning the level of debate without really addressing what the debate is and what is actually being put into it.  The mission debate as a whole involves the CF, the media, the government and the public and the media prints pretty much every thing the CF tells them overseas in briefings.  They report the good and the bad and not only is that the best we can hope for as soliders, it is all we are entitled to ask for.  A lot  of people in the CF somehow think that we should be immune from open reporting and that is a dangerous path.  It has not helped the US in Iraq when they tried it and, as well, it flies in the face of what we are fighting for anyway.

4)  As to the ramp ceremonies, I know one troop who put a memo in his file asking for his ramp ceremony, if it came to that, to not be televised.  CEFCOM had a fit.  Turns out that the ramp ceremony was offered up by Ottawa as an ironclad gesture to the media.  Cannot opt out it seems.  And yeah, it is good TV as harsh as that sounds.  1000-2000 troops lined up is always going to be a draw.  A lot of reporters don't particularly like them, but they get told by their desks to go and cover them. Combat Camera could always film them on behalf, but that doesn't fly apparently.  The trick with the media is not to watch it on TV.  Look up the stuff written by Graeme Smith, Les Perreaux, Bill Graveland, Brian Hutchison, Adam Day, Murray Brewster, Terry Pedwell and Matthew Fisher and you will see that while not all of it is good news, at least it is objective news.  Even that cretin Scott Taylor has written one or two bang on reports.

5)  As to success, what success there has been has always been reported.  But we are 2700, 1000 which are sharp end, basically trying to control a multi-brigade AO with all the restrictions you can imagine.  We are fighting an intractable foe who have nothing to lose, an no limits to what they can try doing.  Our success as a whole, is that the whole province has not collapsed - we are fighting to maintain the toehold and that alone is pretty impressive.

All this to say is that it is a rotten fight. You've been there, you know that.  Dr. Windsor's book is a failure not  because of an ignorant public or a dollar drive liberal media, but because it is positing actualities when there are vagaries.  There is always good work being done there, and every day but there has hardly been a turning point, right?  Wattie's book on Orion is a far more shallow work but has done better because it is a run-and-gun narrative, and Blatchford's name sold hers to an extent. 

So Neal, great post btw, and well argued, but Kanadar Tour has not done well (critically or financially) simply because its not that great a book - it's cachet lies in the author's unprecedented access but that is also what has done it in. 

The important thing is that Kandahar Tour has, at the end of the day relatively little to do with Roto3 because six weeks is not a tour, and no amount of interviews can change that.  That is why the best histories are done after when all the differences in stories are ironed out.  If we in uniform pit ourselves against the media we will lose and lose badly.  Not because they have more horsepower or anything like that - it's just the way it is because we fight for their freedom of the press, and our reward, like it or not, is to sit there and take it.

 

[Neal]

Well said,
            I 'll try not to make this post a personal debate about the media since it should be about the book's take on the media.  I will, however agree with you that the written media has certainly had a far better track record of honest reporting than the televised media.  I'm sure there are many great socialogical reasons for this, but the truth is that when I was in PBW and MSG the only reporters that accompanied us on patrol were those from regional or foreign papers with the exception of a sketch artist named Richard doing some column for the National Post. All I wish to convey by that is that it is not a balanced debate in my opinion unless the detractors at least have a representative to provide some insight into the actual outcome of what is being done instead of always complaining about what is not being done. I actually disagree with your 5th point only because most of our successes are being ignored by big media as being too small or irrelavent to the big picture.  If they do make it into a paper they are generally relegated to the back pages.  I realize we can't fight the media and win, but that doesn't necessarily make the authors' comments about the debate being unbalanced incorrect.  Impotent or irrelavent I'd accept as an argument even if I don't agree with the latter.

In any event I think that "Kandahar Tour" easily surpasses any of the national medias in terms of its depth of coverage of the non-combat side of the mission as you yourself acknowledged regarding CIDA and DFAIT.  I also think that it speaks very honestly about the way that we fought and provides details about our discriminate use of force that you won't find in any media source, but which are very accurate. In short, I think the book is worth reading because there a great many good facts that you won't find anywhere else. An objective and linear account of the various entities' actions within the TF was actually very informative to me since much of the PRT and CIDA activity was a complete mystery to me despite being the recipient (and sadly screener) of every single tidbit of information below Top Secret the BG was able to pass on to our coy.  The unfortunate choice to title our ROTO a turning point in the whole mission is really the books only downfall in my opinion.  It is a significant downfall as you point out, but not a death blow to the account. My advise to the prospective reader is that the book is really worth reading for the accurate account regardless of how you feel about the authors' interpretation of the detailed events' significance.  In that regard I humbly submit myself to the very sound critique provided by Rovenbird in point #1 above.  This book will not go down in history as a definitive piece on the campaign, but it is probably a more informative read than any other offerings I have seen to date. 

 

[rovenbird]

Works for me!

 

[Neal]

To finalize my commentary on this book I would like to make one last post.  I am not trying to harp on the same points again, it is just that after having read this string I looked at some reviews of the book on Amazon, Indigo, and in the popular media and I have noticed some things about the majority of this book's detractors which I find frustrating.

1)  Those who argue that it is impossible to make accurate histories so close to the events will often then cite another contemporary observer, or group of observers, whose perspective they prefer.  They will then use this citation to imply that this proves the authors of "Kandahar Tour" don't know what they are talking about or are shamelessly debasing themselves before their military masters.  Frankly, it annoys me to hear people state something so illogical.  Obviously everyone is subject to the same difficulties of objectivity, so you can't state the history is invalid because of the timeframe and then use another contemporary source to further your argument as they are equally invalid.  Incidentally, in the acknowledgements portion of this book the authors clearly acknowledge the difficulty of writing an accurate or complete history so close to the actual events which is more humility than any media commentator on the conflict has offered.

2)  Agreeing with the government's assesment of a situation is not inherently stupid.  Just because the authors of this book offer some hope for Afghanistan they are constantly being called stooges of the government.  Why would you assume that the National Post or the Ottawa Sun are able to make a better assessment of the Afghanistan conflict than the government.  One party is trying to sell newspapers and are basing their reports on the subjective observations of usually one representative on the ground and the other is making decisions based on a desire to further our nation's best interests (whether or not you agree with their methods) and basing their actions on the sum of intelligence generated by literally thousands of countrymen and dozens of alliance nations using a huge staff of anylists.  I realize this does not make the government right and the media commentators wrong, but surely the government has to be right at least once in a while even if its only by sheer circumstance, no?  The authors were not paid by the military to write this book but it comes accross as an official history because the authors had secret clearances and virtually unlimited access to official records.  If that lead them to come to a conclusion in favour of the mission than maybe that should not be spat at out of hand.

3)  Finally, this book is not "ignorantly positive" - implying that the authors show no doubt of the mission's eventual success and have some vision of Kandahar as a future vacation spot for Canadians. I strongly suspect that most detractors who claim that the authors are wearing blinders haven't actually read more than the first two chapters in detail. If you actually read the later chapters and summary of this book you would find that the conclusion is not that we have this one in the bag, but rather that maybe, just maybe, we can pull this off if our country will stand behind its commitment and our soldiers play all the cards right.  This is not blind optimism even if it is a biased opinion (one that the authors actually openly acknowledge again in the acknowledgements section of their book).    The authors are not pushing some diabolical propaganda, they are unapologetically stating a perspective on actual events which are not being covered by the media. 

I probably shouldn't care this much about the popular opinion, but I do.  Sure this book is full of incomplete accounts of events and clearly tends to prefer the positive examples over the negative.  What bugs me is that most attacks on it are smug and condescending, implying that any sort of positive outlook is just stupid rathar than criticizing the veracity off the details or the merit of the writing.  People seem unwilling to accept the possiblity that we did anything worthwhile while at the same patting us on the head like stupidly loyal retrievers and saying "nice soldiers, good effort."  I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.  There is nothing wrong with writing a book that focuses on the actual progress being made in Kandahar instead of just glorifying the shooting match and "supporting the troops" while scoffing at all of our efforts to actually reform a broken country.  I am hugely biased, I know, but I guess I want to believe that there is a reason for what I did there and why I have lost ffellow soldiers and friends in some God forsaken desert halfway across the world.  I want to believe that it is at the very least not a crime to report truthfully on the success we have had, however small it may appear in the big picture.   Yeah I know that this post has gone way past talking about the book, but there you are.  Cheers and good night.