A delightful piece of writing by Paul at Celestial Junk, do read to the end:

The Remaking of the Liberal Party of Canada

Earlier:

PMSH=WLMK?

Mark
Ottawa

Terry Glavin skewers the broad elements on the left who (in my view) hate their own societies more than they care about actually existing people:

The Heart Of The Matter: A Corrosive, Reactionary Parochialism On ‘The Left’.

The headline on Stephen Kinzer’s unintentionally self-incriminating display of the rot that has eaten away at the rich world’s “left” spoke sufficient volumes all by itself last week: “End Human Rights Imperialism Now”.

Apart from being a classic study in deception masquerading as revelation and self-deception masquerading as reflection (and a workshop-worthy specimen of straw-man argument, besides), what was exceptionally useful about the spectacle Kinzer made of himself was the service he provided in presenting a textbook example of the madhouse delusion that will inevitably result from the muddles of moral, epistemic and cultural relativism.

There’s no point in resorting to empirically-derived evidence if you’re trying to talk sense to someone whose very arguments rest on the absence of such universal standards if not their wholesale rejection. The dialectic, as we used to say, is simply not going to move forward. There will be rot in both form and content. Some people are just numpties.

But today, also in the Guardian, in an essay well-titled Beware those who sneer at ‘human rights imperialism’, our friend Sohrab Ahmari does yeoman service in exposing the bankruptcy of the pseudo-left orthodoxy that Kinzer so helpfully distilled. Sohrab does so by simply raising this question:” If the isolationist, provincial left manages to convince us that the blessing of liberty is to be allocated randomly – along geographic lines and according to the accident of birth – will the heart still beat on the left?”

It’s my own view that on the so-called “anti-imperialist” left, the truly progressive heart had already stopped beating at least a decade ago. True enough, the zombies have been stumbling around for much longer than that…

The thing about the contemporary iterations of that decadence that gets at me like fingernails scratching on a blackboard is its cynical disregard for the bravery of hundreds of thousands of Afghans, especially, who every day take greater risks and make greater sacrifices in the struggle for the rule of law, free speech, womens rights and civil liberties than any of the rich-kid “anti-imperialists” have undertaken in their entire lives. It’s the arrogance of it all that I can’t abide. It’s a distinctly “western” kind of arrogance, parodoxically, that would assert that “western” values are what these brave Afghans are fighting for, but to which – owing to their nature, their “race,” their religion, their “identity” or some dang thing – they are somehow disentitled, and we in the west must not stand with them or support them because to do so is to engage in “imperialism.”..

Be not a numptie. Read the whole dang thing.  I think the difference between many of our progressives and 1890 Tories is that those Tories actually liked their own country.

Mark
Ottawa

Unfortunately not Canadian:

A Marine Corps squadron recently returned to the United States after a historic deployment as the first of the service’s F/A-18 Hornets to operate from a ground base in Afghanistan.

With Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 operating out of Kandahar Air Field, the unit’s pilots were much closer to infantry troops than they were during previous deployments when they operated of off naval aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf.

Their proximity to ground fighting during their last deployment allowed them to be more responsive and increased the number of successful combat missions, according to unit leaders.

That “feet dry” presence let pilots flying the squadron’s dozen F/A-18C Hornets and a couple of twin-seat F/A-18Ds work closely with some dozen ground combat units operating around Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province.

Sgt. Deanne Hurla / Marine Corps Cpl. Scott Esker, a plane captain with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, directs Capt. Daniel Tongson, a VMFA-232 pilot, into a parking space at Kandahar Airbase, Afghanistan. The squadron became the service’s first to operate from a land base in the country, rather than from Navy aircraft carriers…

Our government, for its part, has not been willing to employ our CF-18s in Afghanistan to support the CF and allied forces there even though urged to do so by our allies.  Too fearful of political and media reaction if a bomb or missile killed some civilians accidentally, don’t you know.  Yet our Air Force supposedly needs stealthy, initial attack, bomb-truck F-35s while the US Navy, in addition to planning to buy F-35Cs, continues to acquire new Super Hornets.

Update: Latest F-35 scuttlebutt:

U.S. to detail $100 billion in Pentagon savings, cuts: sources
…
The Pentagon’s largest weapons program, the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is facing another restructuring that could extend the program’s development phase by up to two years, said a third source familiar with the plans.

The program was already restructured last year, adding 13 months to the development phase…

If the program is so delayed there is no way Canada will start getting the planes in 2016 as the government has claimed. Nor will they cost in the $70-$80 million range. See this earlier post:

Canadian Government has no idea what the F-35 will cost…

Also recent and relevant:

F-35 Begins Year With Test Objectives Unmet

Upperdate: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

The Jerc has landed:

Canadian pilots will be able to drop cargo to troops on the ground with far greater accuracy now that a new Hercules aircraft has arrived in southern Afghanistan.

The first of Canada’s new Hercules C-130J aircraft arrived at Kandahar Airfield over the weekend, with a second scheduled to arrive later this spring…

The new aircraft look almost identical to the old ones, except that they are slightly longer and can seat up to 125 people instead of 92.

But that’s about where the similarities end. The new Hercules are largely automated and require fewer crew members.

Pilots say it will be easier to drop supplies to soldiers because a computer now calculates wind speed, weather conditions and other variables. The computer can hit a drop point within 30 metres. Before, when it was done manually, supplies could land much farther from the drop point.

“When we’re doing an air drop, the computer’s actually doing the drop and we’re monitoring it. So it tends to be much, much more accurate,” Wintrup said.

Most of the flying to ferry troops and equipment around Afghanistan is done by Canadians.

The Conservative government ordered 17 new Hercules aircraft from Lockheed Martin three years ago at a cost of $1.4 billion [more here]. So far, the company has delivered five aircraft. Two will be in Kandahar and the rest will be based at the air force base in Trenton, Ont.

The entire order is supposed to be filled by the end of 2012…

From the DND news release:

…
The first CC-130J Hercules tactical aircraft arrived in Canada on June 4, 2010, six months ahead of the original scheduled delivery date. The Air Force team demonstrated its agility, flexibility and professional capabilities by readying the aircraft and its crews for deployment to Afghanistan in less than seven months. Training, maintenance and operation procedures needed to be adapted to the specific characteristics of this aircraft, while ensuring an efficient and effective implementation schedule that will facilitate safe, effective, and sustained operations…

All 17 CC-130Js will be based at 8 Wing Trenton, along with the future Air Mobility Training Centre that will house the equipment and personnel required to train the operators and maintainers of the CC-130J Hercules aircraft…

More on the plane here and a photo:

Remember all the controversy over the Conservative government’s effectively sole-sourcing this contract, ignoring the Airbus A400M? Well the A400M was a paper aircraft in 2006 and the Jerc was a real one–and has been delivered ahead of schedule. Meanwhile the A400M is still in flight testing and will be several years late entering service.

Our four C-17 strategic airlifters were also, sensibly, sole-sourced and arrived quickly and on time. Another plane that had been proved in service. In the case of both these transports there really was only one aircraft that fit the CF’s bill. Whereas in another case we really do not know.

Meanwhile another very-long planned aircraft purchase continues to go nowhere.  This from the Liberals’ federal Budget, March 23, 2004, “The Importance of Canada’s Relationship to the World“:

…
Another major priority for Canada’s military is the purchase of modern Fixed Wing Search and Rescue aircraft (SAR) to replace older Hercules aircraft and Canada’s fleet of Buffalo aircraft. Under Defence’s current plan, deliveries of the new aircraft will begin much later in the decade. This budget sets aside non-budgetary resources to allow the Department of National Defence to move this acquisition forward in time without displacing other planned capital investments. By doing so, the Government will accelerate the process so that deliveries of the replacement SAR planes to Canada’s military can begin within 12 to 18 months…

Well it’s now 2011 and just last spring this government essentially went back to the drawing board on the whole project–see also “Rescue Required: Canada’s Search-And-Rescue Aircraft Program”. I strongly suspect a major cause for delays is lobbying by Bombardier to have a (unsuitable) version of its Q-Series considered. And others are lobbying too:

Union selfishness and new Air Force aircraft…

Almost seven freaking years and no competition is now under way. Help.

Update: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

You can’t always get what you want. See this Nov. 17 post by BruceR. at Flit:

I hear Mazar in spring is even nicer than Kabul in winter

Matthew Fisher continues to perform the sin of actual journalism by trying to pin down people on where Canadian troops in Afghanistan post-2011 will be going and what they’ll be doing. This was telling:

As Canada is insisting that most of its trainers will be in or near the capital, which is already awash with trainers from other countries, there is immense interest in what specific training tasks Canada is to be assigned by NATO and how its trainers will be shoehorned into already-crowded bases in the capital…

…the demand for what could be readily offered [by the CF] becomes rather small. So in the Kabul area, there were only 106 critical jobs in police and army training that could be filled by “regular” soldiers as of the NTM-A [NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan] annual report, dated three weeks ago… far less than what Canada is now offering…

Looks like Bruce was bang-on:

Canadian trainers likely to be sent across Afghanistan

The Canadian Forces is rushing to draw up a list of military trainers to send to Afghanistan once Canada’s combat mission ends next summer, but senior officers say training positions in the safer regions of the country are already growing few and far between.

The federal government announced earlier this year that up to 950 Canadian soldiers would participate in a three-year mission to train the nascent Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police force.

The Conservative government insisted that the Canadian trainers would be based “inside the wire,” working in secure bases in the relatively stable area around Kabul, the Afghan capital.

But the NATO training organization in Afghanistan is expanding rapidly and needs trainers at sites across the country.

Many of the training jobs in Kabul have been snapped up by nations who committed to the training mission much earlier and Canada may have to send its soldiers into riskier regions of the country.

Maj.-Gen. Stuart Beare, the Canadian deputy commander of the NATO training mission, told CTV News that the coalition needs military and police trainers in almost every province of Afghanistan…

Col. Paul Scagnetti is one of a group of Canadian officers that helped establish the Afghan Army Command College in Kabul, helping to train the Afghan army’s future leaders.

“They know how to fight, there’s no doubt about that: They’ve been doing it for 30 years,” Scagnetti said. “What we’re trying to do is give them a structure, an organization that’ll make them more effective in their fighting.”

But Scagnetti and his fellow trainers have been so successful that they’ve put themselves out of at least one training job: when the new Canadian-funded college opens next spring it will be run by Afghans [I think that may well be the staff college that Brian Platt posted about when he was in Kabul--unembedded--in early November] .

Caught by surprise at the government’s announcement of the training mission, the Canadian Forces is now working overtime to draw up plans for where the Canadian troops will go and what exactly they will be doing.

Lt.-Gen. Marc Lessard, the head of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, acknowledged that Canada may have little choice but to send soldiers into more volatile regions of Afghanistan.

“The direction I have from (Chief of Defence Staff) Gen. Natynczyk is that it is to be Kabul-centric,” Lessard told CTV News. “And what that means is that the emphasis is to be on Kabul, but not solely Kabul.”

Details of the training mission may become clearer after a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels later in January…

Update remark: Politics, politics, all is politics.

Mark
Ottawa

Photo credit: Master Corporal Pierre Thériault, Canadian Forces Combat Camera

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are up by 20 per cent from the first 10 months of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009, according to the United Nations. But here’s the important part:

The report concluded that the number of civilian casualties attributable to insurgents increased by 25 percent during the 10-month period. It said insurgent groups were responsible for killing or injuring 4,738 civilians during that period, while 742 were killed or wounded by Afghan and international troops – a drop of 18 percent.

In a statement Thursday on its Web site, the Taliban called the civilian casualty figures in the report “a propaganda stunt aimed at concealing American brutalities.”

U.S. airstrikes, long controversial in Afghanistan because of the high incidence of civilian casualties associated with them, were the leading cause of civilian deaths by NATO forces, the report said. At least 162 civilians were killed in airstrikes and 120 were wounded during the 10-month period.

These figures show the Taliban is responsible for 86.5 per cent of harm that comes to Afghan civilians. Significantly, the 742 casualties caused by NATO represented a drop, consistent with their strategy in 2010 to minimize collateral damages.

Part of the strategy of the insurgents, as I was told when I visited Afghanistan in September, is to stage “spectaculars”, which are large explosions causing heavy civilian casualties in order to cause fear and anger at the presence of foreign troops. These spectaculars, however, have had the opposite effect in generating sympathy for the Taliban.

Unfortunately, as the Afghan war reaches a crescendo during the surge, new statistics show that NATO casualties have reached a record high:

The number of NATO troops killed this year also reached a new high, according to a tally kept by the Web site icasualties.org. At least 705 international troops were killed here this year, far more than the 521 killed in 2009, the previous record.

The 101st Airborne, “Screaming Eagles”, for instance, lost 104 men in 2010, which is one less than the most lost in a single year since the Vietnam war.

…all things considered, compare with the US below; most of us are clearly proud of how the forces have fought in Afstan (so much for the torture fracas, always mainly an inside the Queensway thing, not a Timmies’ one–see the third para here):

Canadians trust military more than government: Poll

Canadians have more trust and confidence in Canada’s armed forces than they do in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, according to a new study.

The study, based on polling conducted by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) and released exclusively to iPolitics, found that 75.7 per cent of respondents had trust and confidence in the Canadian Forces to do a good job compared to only 54.1 per cent who trusted the federal government.

While faith in both the Armed Forces and the federal government tended to rise with age, one of the sharpest divides was among English-speaking respondents — 80.3 per cent of whom trusted the military and 52.7 per cent of whom trusted the federal government.

The military also outranked the federal government among francophones. The poll found 71.7 per cent of French-speaking respondents had confidence in the military while only 49.2 per cent had confidence in the federal government.

The gap was much smaller among allophones, those whose first language is neither English or French. The poll found 67.3 per cent of allophones [hurl! that's PC-speak for most immigrants, esp. more recent] trusted the Armed Forces while 57.5 per cent trusted Harper’s government [really good news for the government and for Jason Kenney].

The lowest support for the military was among 18-24 year olds — only 51.2 per cent trusted the Armed Forces to do a good job. That age group was also the least likely to trust the federal government with only 47.8 per cent confident it would do a good job…

The U.S. military, which has been embroiled in Iraq, had the confidence of 80.7 per cent of respondents. President Barack Obama’s administration, which has struggled to restore the U.S. economy, had the confidence of 41.5 per cent…

Via Spotlight on Military and Other News (changed title). I was surprised the Anglo-Franco (more PC-speak, really RoC/Québec) split is so small. And quite depressed about the young people. Just shows what progressive education and a likely reliance on television (if any) news can do.

Mark
Ottawa

Louise Arbour (of whom this blog generally disapproves) looks like she’s actually on to something in the view of Terry Glavin:

As I Was Saying: Get Real.

Most recently here, which I was then pleased to find Christopher Hitchens reiterating here, Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court judge, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and currently president of the International Crisis Group, asserts in clear and unforgiving terms here:

“Shortcuts and backroom deals just won’t cut it. Instead, Canada and other NATO members must focus their efforts on reforms that can give Afghans stability, security and rule of law. More attention and resources, not less, must be focused on building governmental capacity and combatting corruption…

…Canadians must recognize that their continued engagement in Afghanistan must rest not on wishful thinking but on a policy grounded in reality.”

Thank you, Justice Arbour. You’ve just neatly summarized everything the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee has been saying [disclosure: I'm a member--MC].

A truly eclectic meeting of minds.  But achieving their ends will take an awful lot of neo-imperial twisting of Afghan arms, primarily by the US.  And, I suspect, at least tacit Pakistani acquiescence.

Mark
Ottawa

1) NATO fails to deliver half of trainers promised for Afghanistan

…
A further complication is that some contributing countries, including Canada, have placed restrictions on how and where their trainers can be used in Afghanistan.

The pledge of Canadian trainers last month came with the caveat that they not be used outside the Kabul area or “outside the wire,” such as in mentoring roles that would put them in the field with Afghan soldiers or police officers.

Although the makeup of the Canadian training force has yet to be announced [the US has been pressing us], the limitation sets a domino effect into motion. To find places for them, NATO commanders will likely have to move trainers from other countries out of bases and schools in the Afghan capital…

Lots more on that wee difficulty from BruceR. at Flit.

2) Foreign troop deaths in Afghanistan top 700 in 2010: site

…
The latest figures came as The New York Times reported that senior US military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing to expand special operations ground raids across the border in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas.

But the story was denied by a spokesman for ISAF, who said there was “absolutely no truth” to any suggestion that ground operations into Pakistan were planned.

3) U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan

WASHINGTON — Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

The plan has not yet been approved, but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan. Even with the risks, military commanders say that using American Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated…

…one senior American officer said, “We’ve never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across.”..

Update: From Terry Glavin:

…

…
All I’m saying here is that nothing cheers me up more than the sight of an unveiled Afghan woman cradling a machine gun [actually an AK assault rifle variant].

Mark
Ottawa

Senior serving British officers certainly are much more open and frank than ours:

Air Vice-Marshal Greg Bagwell, commander of the RAF’s No 1 Group, which controls all Britain’s fast jet combat aircraft, said that Britain was likely to end up with only six fighter and bomber squadrons, half its current number.

He warned: “That might not be quite enough.”

Air Vice-Marshal Bagwell’s remarks, in a briefing last week to Defense News, a trade journal, are among the most outspoken by any senior RAF commander.

He warned that even the reductions that have been publicly announced — from 12 fast-jet squadrons to eight — would leave the RAF only “just about” able to do its current tasks, with no leeway for the unexpected…

In the medium-term, over the next seven to 10 years, Air Vice-Marshal Bagwell said, the RAF “will be a six-squadron world; that’s what’s on the books”. He said he expected there to be five squadrons of Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft and just one of the Harrier’s long-term replacement, the Joint Strike Fighter. “I expect a single [JSF] squadron in 2020 and that’s it,” he said [more on the UK's F-35 plans here, plus the RAF's giving up aerial maritime patrol].

Asked whether this left the RAF on the same level as Belgium, he replied: “I think we’re slightly above Belgium, and we are not a Belgium-minded country.”

He added: “I might, over the next few years, argue that that might not be quite enough.” As recently as the 1990s the RAF had 30 front-line fast-jet squadrons [emphasis added]…

An RAF comprising six fast-jet squadrons would be smaller than at any point since its foundation in 1918. It would take British combat air power back to the pre-RAF days of the Royal Flying Corps.

Belgium no longer has a stand-alone air force, but an “air component”, with five fast-jet squadrons. In squadron terms the RAF of 2020 will be only slightly larger, but will still have significantly more aircraft, with an estimated minimum of 135 fast jets to Belgium’s 70.

Air Vice-Marshal Bagwell said that one way around the shortages was to collaborate more with the French [emphasis added, more here: "Good froggies!"].

“It looks like we are going to twin 3 Squadron [a Typhoon squadron] with one of the [French] Rafale [fighter-bomber] squadrons. I’ll make a prediction we will have British officers flying Rafale from a carrier within a few years. I’m quite sure of it.”..

Meanwhile:

U.K. Harrier’s Farewell
…

(All Pictures: UK MOD Crown Copyright 2010)
[Note the snow.]

Earlier on the Harrier:

Harrier’s last sea jump

By the way, the Canadian Air Force has two operational fast air squadrons (CF-18 Hornet “gun squadrons”): 409 at Cold Lake, Alberta, and 425 at Bagotville, Quebec.

The Royal Navy, for its part, is also fading fairly fast:

The Royal Navy’s new flagship is a ferry…

Lots more here on the recent UK big defence cuts.

Update: A pilot from 425 Squadron is flying Tornados in Afstan on exchange with the RAF (via Milnews.ca and the Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs).

Upperdate: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa