Flit

July 31, 2008

Who's watching?

I want to note here for posterity that, at first glance I, too, feel the Watchmen trailer is extremely promising, speaking as a fan of the source. We'll see come March. But the Pumpkins theme was an inspired choice, musically, if nothing else. But then director Zack Snyder has already demonstrated the ability to stitch together a must-see trailer (300). Must-see movie, well, I can dream.

UPDATE: Yahtzee falls for the hype, as well, I see.

July 18, 2008

Best. Hockey Song. Ever.

I haven't laughed this hard in weeks. Awesome.

June 14, 2008

Prison break

Well, that's one way to close the Afghan detainee file.

Reports that Canadian law professor Amir Attaran has criticized the Taliban for not filling out the 1,005 copies of prisoner release paperwork correctly are, unfortunately, completely untrue.

June 07, 2008

Alberta fascism

What Levant said. I don't believe the values a lot of Albertans fought and died for in the wars are very evident in that province anymore. In Canada, it seems, the government can tell you what you must think. Well, here's what I'm thinking: fire them all.

June 01, 2008

In the company of intelligence

"There's never been a debate in Canada that I am aware of on running an intelligence company out of the Canadian Forces."

--NDP defence critic Dawn Black.

What Colby said. For the record, last time I looked there were 4 military intelligence companies in the Canadian Forces: 2 (Toronto), 3 (Halifax), 4 (Montreal), and 6 (Western Canada). All 4 have been pushing a steady stream of reservists overseas for the Afghanistan mission, as they did for other missions before.

Perhaps the reason that Ms. Black doesn't recall a debate being held on the establishment of organizations specifically called "intelligence companies" was because that momentous event occurred in 1948. Obviously, of course, there was a Canadian Intelligence Corps long before that, though... as Romeo Sabourin or Frank Pickersgill could have told her, if they had not, unfortunately, been executed in Buchenwald.

March 31, 2008

CHRC: an appalling abuse of authority

I'm with Lorne Gunter. When the government agency taps into an unknowing citizen's wireless network to cover their tracks, they've gone far, far too far. If they had no problem implicating one innocent Canadian in the posting of anti-Semitic remarks, they'd have no problem entrapping any one of us in like fashion. In Canada, "human rights" commissions have now become one of the greatest enemies our human rights now face. Shut them down.

February 05, 2008

No longer a republic

Back when people (like me) were saying the U.S. should follow its Constitution and declare war before invading Iraq, the inevitable response from war backers was that if Congress didn't want the war, it didn't have to fund it.

I see the creeping erosion of American liberty has now reached the point where Congress now can't do that, either.

So, how are those dictatorial primaries coming along?

February 04, 2008

A good start?

Alex Neve and Jason Gratl, in the Globe online today, arguing why Afghanistan's jailers need to be held to Canadian Charter of Rights standards:

"Does this mean that Canada has to take over the justice system in Afghanistan and start... shipping over lawyers? Clearly not."

Pity.

(The whole piece, like Neve, et al's entire argument, is a massive exercise in question-begging. They are not, in fact arguing in court that prisoners of Canadians, while still in Canadian military custody, "cannot be treated in ways that expose them to serious human-rights violations such as torture, arbitrary detention or 'disappearance.'" No Canadian would argue with that. No, they're arguing that Canadian soldiers abroad can only turn over any detainees they have to a system with comparable individual legal protections to Canada's, or face prosecution at home. Which is a case that, if won in court, would basically preclude almost all Canadian peace enforcement missions or peacekeeping, of any kind. You think we had our own jails in Cyprus or Suez? Neve is really arguing that, contra Bono, the world does not, in fact, need more Canada, regardless of whatever future massive human rights violations might seem to warrant Canadian military intervention, because we can't trust the jails of any country that might benefit from that kind of presence. It is an argument for just staying home and clucking instead, even if Neve and Amnesty don't want to cop to it.)

February 03, 2008

Afstan vs East Timor: a comparison

The NDP leader is saying the Afghanistan mission should be more like the UN mission in East Timor. The Torch says much of what needs to be said about that. A couple more things it misses.

I'm sure Layton wasn't actually thinking of the 2005-06 crisis that occurred after the UN pulled out for the second time, apparently prematurely, which has resulted in 1,000 soldiers from New Zealand and Australia being redeployed to the country (for a Timorese population of 900,000, those are roughly equivalent per capita numbers to NATO's in Afghanistan, interestingly enough). No, he was certainly peering back through rose-coloured glasses at the independence movement of the 1990s, and the foreign support for those Timorese freedom fighters.

Only one thing. The UN sort of failed there, too. The UNAMET mission in 1999, set up to oversee a peaceful referendum that everyone expected would result in independence, was driven out of Timor by force by local irredentists after the vote was lost. UNAMET was not a military mission, so no shame in them leaving once the shooting started, but it forced the UN to commission INTERFET (ie, Australia with some help) to go in shooting and stabilize the situation (much like NATO in Afghanistan). Only once the shooting stopped did the UN come back. (Of course, when it left again, the shooting started again, and Australia had to intervene again, which is where we are now, but never mind.)

There's four useful historical lessons from the experience in East Timor, none of which Mr. Layton seems to have grasped. One is that nation-building takes a long time: over eight years so far in East Timor's case, with an armed stabilization force still in country. Two is that the only effective response to an attempt to subvert both the UN's will and a fair election by force is with some force of your own. Three would be that there are some people, like Suharto hatchetman Eurico Guterres, that you simply can't negotiate with. Fourth and finally would be that Mr. Layton's "enormous impact" did very little for the up to 200,000 Timorese who died in the 24 years of Indonesian occupation while the West stayed out of it. If you could ask them, they'd probably have preferred a more forceful response, sooner.

A lot of us in the military and out are old enough to remember the Timor experience. The four lessons we learned, above, the lessons that elude Mr. Layton, have a lot to do with why we're supportive of the Afghanistan mission now.

February 01, 2008

A quiet plea

I feel compelled to use what little weight I might have to say to any American who's reading this: Hey. I'm Canadian. Like all Canadians, Americans are my #1 spectator sport. I find you all hugely entertaining to observe anthropologically, and I know you pretty well by now. That applies doubly to Democrats, who are after all, really just Canadians on the wrong side of the border.

So take some third-person perspective? Hey, I was right around this same time four years ago about Kerry, after all. At this point, I can't see the argument for anyone but Obama. At all. He's what you guys need right now. Clinton, for all the obvious dynastic and war-voting issues, is clearly the second choice to me (still superior to the Republican opponents, of course).

If you nominate Obama, it will be a Democratic blowout, a transformative moment in your history. If you nominate Clinton, it will be much too close for comfort for you. I really can't understand why Democrats wouldn't go for the sure thing here, and if you don't, well then you deserve whatever comes next. That's all I'm saying.

January 30, 2008

Hello, I'm inappropriately supervised

"For too long, the Canadian military has acted outside Canadian borders without appropriate supervision," said Paul Champ, the lawyer representing the rights groups." --Globe and Mail

Like all those renegade Canadian soldiers in Europe in the early 1940s. If only they'd had appropriate legal supervision, maybe they might have done some good.

January 24, 2008

Wherry on Manley

This is a very good post. It reads like a good old-fashioned opinion column, before the opinion writers all became idiots.

UN SecGen on Afstan

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon today:

"Once again, the opportunists are on the rise, seeking anew to make Afghanistan a lawless place — a locus of instability, terrorism and drug trafficking. Their means are desperate: suicide bombs, kidnappings, the killing of government officials and hijacking of aid convoys. Almost more dismaying is the response of some outside Afghanistan, who react by calling for a disengagement or the full withdrawal of international forces. This would be a misjudgment of historic proportions, the repetition of a mistake that has already had terrible consequences..."

His tattoo-worthy closer:

"It is hard work. There is little glory. It requires sacrifices. And that is why we are there."

January 23, 2008

Quick fact: average age of Cdn. fatalities in Afghanistan

Twenty-nine. A fact little noted by Canadians is that we have fairly mature soldiers by historical standards. (stats from icasualties.org).

Manley report: the day after

Okay, so what's going to happen, or should happen, now that the Manley report is out?

Well, the big problem now is time. We're running out of it. The existing parliamentary mandate expires next February, and it would take a year for replacement forces from another nation to start spooling up, realistically. So we owe our allies notice. So Manley's idea of deferring a parliamentary debate until after the April Bucharest summit seems unviable. To present a reasonable ultimatum along the lines he proposes at that time means extending the current mandate by at least several months. The Opposition will not agree to that without other changes to the mission, obviously.

So, back to square one?

Continue reading "Manley report: the day after"