- Reaction score
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- Points
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Hey man, just cause the book is getting widely binned does not mean that your efforts, or the efforts of your friends or mine is in any way diminished.
If reviews of the book are smug, and I checked a few more out and they are to a degree, it is because the books itself is smug. As soon as it said "turning point" on the cover it drew a line in the sand and, between other accounts, claimed that it has measured a progress that others clearly had not. If anything, it has done itself in. If it had called itself "Kandahar Tour: The good work that you might not have read about yet" it would have been far closer to the truth and immune from a lot of criticism.
That being said, Kandahar, and Afghanistan, are not in good shape and even the most passing analysis backs that up given that we just had the worst December ever and that last Spring and Summer troops were dying in direct contact after 2 successive tours were almost 100% of the KIA were due to IEDs. However, these troubling facts does not mean good work is not being done every day, or that progress is being made every day. All it means is that this is a lot more complex than maybe people first thought in 2006. There is a reason the US plans to surge in multiple combat brigades - and it's not because life is easy there and they need a break right?
And the thing is that everything in that book was, and is still, covered by the media. Just cause the reporters didn't get a free ride in Niner Tac does not mean that they are less truthful. There is a creeping trend to blame the media for faulty reporting of the mission, but the thing is, optics aside, they are. What they are not doing in printing the Information Operations agenda that so many have foolishly tried to peddle. Our communciations strategy of pretending that bad is good, and good is self-evident is letting us down badly. And I will throw one more out there. There is an unspoken trend in the CF that seems to indicate that a lot of people think we should somehow be immune from media criticism. When there is bad story, it is media bias. When it is good, it is not good enough. Instead of realizing that we are a small force fighting a huge battle, people like Lee Windsor are claiming that really, things are dandy - when they are not.
The "support the troops" chorus has a lot to answer for as people mouth the words but dig no deeper for the good or the bad. Worse, a lot are just saying it because everyone else is. We in the Army need to see this. We need to acknowledge that, like it or not, the majority of Canada is a pacifist country with a massive anti-American streak and a distrust of military intervention. We have spent a lot of time trying to convince our population that our troops are simple rural folk who just crave Timmies and the thrice-annual visit of the Stanley Cup (or a copy thereof) and all we have done is undermined our own reputations. There are tons of really smart people working in Kandahar, but instead we present ourselves as good old boys, and we wonder why we cannot win the argument of what is actually going on there. Look at Capt Semrau - every talking head assumes that he is guilty. They assume that the 2 month delay was part of a cover up, rather than the length of a responsible investigation. So when people like Lee Windsor weigh in and say that they have the answer, and that you have been overlooking it, it rings false and hollow.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that Dr. Windsor's book is sort of like the mission itself. There is a lot of good in it but it also glosses over the bad.
If reviews of the book are smug, and I checked a few more out and they are to a degree, it is because the books itself is smug. As soon as it said "turning point" on the cover it drew a line in the sand and, between other accounts, claimed that it has measured a progress that others clearly had not. If anything, it has done itself in. If it had called itself "Kandahar Tour: The good work that you might not have read about yet" it would have been far closer to the truth and immune from a lot of criticism.
That being said, Kandahar, and Afghanistan, are not in good shape and even the most passing analysis backs that up given that we just had the worst December ever and that last Spring and Summer troops were dying in direct contact after 2 successive tours were almost 100% of the KIA were due to IEDs. However, these troubling facts does not mean good work is not being done every day, or that progress is being made every day. All it means is that this is a lot more complex than maybe people first thought in 2006. There is a reason the US plans to surge in multiple combat brigades - and it's not because life is easy there and they need a break right?
And the thing is that everything in that book was, and is still, covered by the media. Just cause the reporters didn't get a free ride in Niner Tac does not mean that they are less truthful. There is a creeping trend to blame the media for faulty reporting of the mission, but the thing is, optics aside, they are. What they are not doing in printing the Information Operations agenda that so many have foolishly tried to peddle. Our communciations strategy of pretending that bad is good, and good is self-evident is letting us down badly. And I will throw one more out there. There is an unspoken trend in the CF that seems to indicate that a lot of people think we should somehow be immune from media criticism. When there is bad story, it is media bias. When it is good, it is not good enough. Instead of realizing that we are a small force fighting a huge battle, people like Lee Windsor are claiming that really, things are dandy - when they are not.
The "support the troops" chorus has a lot to answer for as people mouth the words but dig no deeper for the good or the bad. Worse, a lot are just saying it because everyone else is. We in the Army need to see this. We need to acknowledge that, like it or not, the majority of Canada is a pacifist country with a massive anti-American streak and a distrust of military intervention. We have spent a lot of time trying to convince our population that our troops are simple rural folk who just crave Timmies and the thrice-annual visit of the Stanley Cup (or a copy thereof) and all we have done is undermined our own reputations. There are tons of really smart people working in Kandahar, but instead we present ourselves as good old boys, and we wonder why we cannot win the argument of what is actually going on there. Look at Capt Semrau - every talking head assumes that he is guilty. They assume that the 2 month delay was part of a cover up, rather than the length of a responsible investigation. So when people like Lee Windsor weigh in and say that they have the answer, and that you have been overlooking it, it rings false and hollow.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that Dr. Windsor's book is sort of like the mission itself. There is a lot of good in it but it also glosses over the bad.
