Rob isn't out of the woods with yesterday's verdict, but his career is likely in a fatal stall. What this means is he will likely be consigned to staff work even if the "Disgraceful Conduct" doesn't get him booted out.
I've met Rob, and he's a real soldier who would have no problems in a real war. A "real war" is one where you have a job to do; that job is killing the enemy, AND that enemy doesn't wear your uniform. I have no certain knowledge of this, but I believe that he did finish that shredded Taliban guy off. It wouldn't have caused a blink in WW1, WW2 or Korea, and it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.
I do therefore take exception to this "verdict" from Christie Blatchford:
Yet every soldier I asked about it said pretty much the same thing: The Geneva Conventions, the International Law of Armed Conflict and the Canadian soldier’s bible on such matters, Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada, all are firm that once a soldier is injured and hors de combat, French for “out of the fight,” he is considered a prisoner of war, and deserving of every protection.
...
I wonder if that distinction between Canadian soldiers and every other guy with a gun in Afghanistan now will be more difficult to establish.
Christie and perhaps "every soldier" she asked missed one thing; this was no "soldier" under any of those conventions. He was a franc-tireur, insurgent, what have you, and not protected by those treaties and agreements. Technically there is no obligation to take them prisoner, but in today's environment shooting any kind of "detainee" is a no-go, so why worry about the conventions?
As for Ms Blatchford's "distinction" exit line, give me a break. Even if this was a widespread practice (and it's not) we aren't the ones executing kids for having American money on them, slaughtering anyone who disagrees with us, subjugating all of the females and doing our best to deny an education or any kind of progress to the population. And, oh, yeah, we wear uniforms and don't use the people as human shields. If that isn't enough of a "distinction" between us and the Taliban/drug runners/general bandits over there then I don't know what she expects.
Get a grip Christie; you've been over there, you should know better than to come out with this sort of melodrama.
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.
The Toronto/Huntsville G20/G8 summits are well behind us now, hopefully never to be repeated. I've been waiting a bit to see how this all settles out, but I certainly have opinions of my own and they're not particularly surprising.
I have already addressed the strategic mistakes made in holding these things in a major city ("If You Build It, Will They Come?", AotF 21 June 2010), so I'll move to the tactical execution of the $1B in security for it. In short, the ball was fumbled, dropped, then kicked out of bounds in that order.
The PR battle was in danger from the get-go due to cost, and not helped at all by the "5 metre" rule. It is not unreasonable to expect people approaching or entering a secure area to submit to being searched as a condition to proceed, and that is a standard warning on any military establishment in Canada already. Somehow this turned into a tempest in a civil-rights teapot, another failure of leadership and communications.
The "drop" came on the Saturday when the vandals went to town and the only police presence was the burning police cars. Not only did this this start with no useful police presence, it continued that way. If there was ever a time to send in the riot squad and crack some heads, that was the time, place and the proper recipients. "Epic fail" by the police; I also like the French word for this sort of muddle: echec!
Phase Three, "kick it out of bounds" was on Sunday when the police overcompensated for their passivity the day before and penned people like cattle in various blocks near the event. The final roundup was the real problem, as even 4-5 hours after all of the summit attendees had left the police held milling groups of protesters, passers-by and local residents in a compressing ring in a couple of blocks (can't remember exactly where) and wouldn't let anyone through. So, if you lived there or were just walking through minding your own business you were swept up and held there for no good reason that even I could see, and I was watching it live.
I saw a lot of bad behaviour by the cops, and have read reports of a lot more. This again is a failure of leadership. Leadership is not "covering your ass", it's accomplishing the mission and looking after your people. In this case, if you're organizing security for this, "your people" include the public and business owners.
Acting like a bully has nothing to do with protecting the event or property; it's depressingly close to the fuckers who like to go out and smash stuff up. You're using the event to get your kicks and/or you're being carried away by the group/mob mentality. The job of the police is to separate the chaff from the wheat, not to throw it all in the silo. That bad metaphor aside, I just hope that the right lessons from this are learned in the law enforcement community
I have already addressed the strategic mistakes made in holding these things in a major city ("If You Build It, Will They Come?", AotF 21 June 2010), so I'll move to the tactical execution of the $1B in security for it. In short, the ball was fumbled, dropped, then kicked out of bounds in that order.
The PR battle was in danger from the get-go due to cost, and not helped at all by the "5 metre" rule. It is not unreasonable to expect people approaching or entering a secure area to submit to being searched as a condition to proceed, and that is a standard warning on any military establishment in Canada already. Somehow this turned into a tempest in a civil-rights teapot, another failure of leadership and communications.
The "drop" came on the Saturday when the vandals went to town and the only police presence was the burning police cars. Not only did this this start with no useful police presence, it continued that way. If there was ever a time to send in the riot squad and crack some heads, that was the time, place and the proper recipients. "Epic fail" by the police; I also like the French word for this sort of muddle: echec!
Phase Three, "kick it out of bounds" was on Sunday when the police overcompensated for their passivity the day before and penned people like cattle in various blocks near the event. The final roundup was the real problem, as even 4-5 hours after all of the summit attendees had left the police held milling groups of protesters, passers-by and local residents in a compressing ring in a couple of blocks (can't remember exactly where) and wouldn't let anyone through. So, if you lived there or were just walking through minding your own business you were swept up and held there for no good reason that even I could see, and I was watching it live.
I saw a lot of bad behaviour by the cops, and have read reports of a lot more. This again is a failure of leadership. Leadership is not "covering your ass", it's accomplishing the mission and looking after your people. In this case, if you're organizing security for this, "your people" include the public and business owners.
Acting like a bully has nothing to do with protecting the event or property; it's depressingly close to the fuckers who like to go out and smash stuff up. You're using the event to get your kicks and/or you're being carried away by the group/mob mentality. The job of the police is to separate the chaff from the wheat, not to throw it all in the silo. That bad metaphor aside, I just hope that the right lessons from this are learned in the law enforcement community
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