Casualties of war
Andrew Cohen
Citizen Special
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The first of hundreds of Canadian soldiers are leaving for Afghan-istan, where they will become part of a "provincial reconstruction team" in the southern city of Kandahar. Although they are well-led, well-trained and well-equipped, they are going to a dangerous neighbourhood. Some will be hurt. Some will be killed. Our military is ready for this.
Are we?
That Canadians are reluctant to have their troops go into harm's way is reflected in the response to the artlessly frank comments of General Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff. He calls the terrorists "detestable murderers and scumbags" and warns that there will be deaths on both sides.
"They want to break our society -- I believe that," he says. "And I believe that therefore we are going to be a target in their sights."
It is an unusual declaration for the top soldier in Canada, where we no longer think of soldiers as professional killers. Over the last generation, we have come to see them less as warriors than as peacekeepers, when it was a "safe" international vocation.
So, when Gen. Hillier talks the truth in clear, compelling English, the tender, weak-kneed souls who find this language offensive call him belligerent, trigger-happy, aggressive, and -- the unkindest cut of all -- American.
For example, Maude Barlow, the chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, hoped that "Canada would play a thoughtful, moderating position in this." Stephen Staples of the Polaris Institute said he found the comments "rather alarming," fearing that Canada is becoming a legion in George Bush's army. In newspapers, critics decried Gen. Hillier "as a street punk looking for a fight on a Saturday night," a tribune in the American "simplistic war on terror" and a "self-serving military opportunist."
All of this reflects an enduring skepticism about the military in Canada. For years, skittish governments have played down the dangers of peacekeeping (as in 1993, when Canadian blue berets were in an intense fire-fight in the Medak Pocket in Croatia. Their courage would go unrecognized until Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson acknowledged them in a ceremony nine years later.)
This great delusion -- soldiers as boy scouts and do-gooders -- has taken root in the Canadian psyche. We have fallen in love with the idea of Canada as peacekeeper. It has become a cherished part of our iconography, celebrated on the $10 bill and in that imposing granite monument on Sussex Drive in Ottawa.
But peacekeeping was always just a part of our international military commitments. Although Canada supplied 10 per cent of troops to the United Nations, more than any other nation, our commitment to NATO in the Cold War was greater.
Yet, so important is peacekeeping to us -- in a 2002 survey, 73 per cent of Canadians said peacekeeping was one of those things that defined them as a people -- that many do not know that we have fought real wars. Or that 100,000 men and women died in Korea and the two world wars.
Now, it seems, we're just nice guys, congenitally incapable of pointing a gun or dropping a bomb. We are mediators and conciliators rather than gladiators or warriors. "No death, please," we say. "We're Canadian."
We have a military, yes, but we do not have a military culture. The military isn't part of the national consciousness as it is in Russia, Israel or Indonesia. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it has made us naive about this unpleasant world and our responsibilities to it. We have become so wary of our soldiers dying, accidentally or otherwise, that when they do, it fosters a ritualistic outpouring of grief from politicians, who issue condolences, lower flags and rush to funerals. However sincere, it makes our soldiers wonder about the determination of their society in the face of sustained casualties in the field.
This kind of ignorance allows us to believe that we have no enemies, that we'd never be a target of terrorists at home and that peacekeeping is really no different today from what it was in the 1960s, when there was actually peace to keep in Cyprus and the Sinai.
That's why Gen. Hillier said what he said; he's warning a complacent people about what lies ahead. His choice of words bothered some of his colleagues, and yes, he might have put things more delicately. But do not mistake the urgency of his message.
Canada is in Kandahar to do the work of nation-building, helping a shattered society rebuild itself. It is honourable work, shared by the Norwegians, the Japanese, the Germans and other high-minded democracies. But there will be a cost. Gen. Hillier understands this. Canadians should too.
Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
E-mail:
andrew_cohen@carleton.ca
© The Ottawa Citizen 2005
