Posts Tagged by combat mission
Canadian Soldiers Are Both Warriors and Peacekeepers
| 4/14/2009 | Posted by Patti under Afghanistan, Brave Canadians |
The godfather of Canada’s latest fallen hero seems to feel that his goddaughter died for nothing. He believes that Canada’s military should return to its “peacekeeping roots”. Canada’s roots are not in peacekeeping any more than his roots are English instead of French.
In the next few days the remains of Trooper Blais will land at CFB Trenton and like all those who arrived before her, she and her family will travel the Highway of Heroes. On one of those bridges I’ll be standing in my place as a Legion officer to the left of the Canadian flag flying in her honour, saluting her service and sacrifice. I’m assuming her godfather, Mario Blais, will be in one of the vehicles passing under us.
I’d like opportunity to sit down with him and have a quiet talk about the legacy that his goddaughter signed up to. I’d like to talk to him about how his claim (and he’s not the only one to do this) that Canada’s roots are in peacekeeping diminishes the memory of those warriors Karine followed in the footsteps of. I’d like to talk to him about how even peacekeeping missions were not without danger and death, in fact at times the danger was even more while our soldiers were denied access to weaponry to protect themselves. (more…)
Manley Report – No End Date Makes Sense
| 1/22/2008 | Posted by Patti under Afghanistan, Canadian Politics |
I spent some time today reading carefully through the report from the “Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan” chaired by John Manley, the former Liberal Deputy Prime Minister. The report on the whole seems to be in depth and well thought out. It doesn’t sugar coat the mission in Afghanistan nor is it doom and gloom. It raises some tough issues and makes some tough recommendations.
Partisan politics aside, the report lays out some obvious truths that don’t fit well in sound bites for partisan politicians.
For Dion, setting an arbitrary end to our combat role as February 2009 and then expecting our troops to focus more on training and mentoring Afghan National Army recruits just doesn’t make sense. You can’t train and mentor effectively from within the wire, you need to be able to accompany and support the raw troops on the battlefield and that means taking part in combat. You don’t train an army from a classroom. (more…)
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