Afstan: Jack Granatstein takes a dim view of the media and the politicians

Quite rightly too.

Hypocrisy seen on all sides in flag flap

The controversy over lowering the flag to honour fallen soldiers and the ban on media coverage of their return to Canada exposes hypocrisy on all sides, says Canada’s pre-eminent war historian.

Jack Granatstein says the government changed the rules to avoid unpopularity as the death toll mounts in the war in Afghanistan and “hurts the government’s chances of re-election.”

But the Opposition is using the issue for its own political ends in a manner he describes as “stomach churning.”

And the media are using veiled threats against the new Conservative government to try to get their way, he adds.

“Is there no limit? Is there nothing politicians will not do to capitalize on the misery of others and to obscure their own role in that misery?” he asks in an essay written for the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century.

The Harper government has decided to no longer lower the flags to half-mast when soldiers die in military action and to ban the media from covering and taking photographs of the return of their caskets to CFB Trenton.

Granatstein, a military historian and former director of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, says families of the war casualties have been dragged into an “unseemly squabble” in Parliament.

“What is important in this unseemly affair is the hypocrisy of the politicians, all the politicians, and the media,” he writes. “The press have seized on the government’s decision to treat the arrival of the servicemen’s coffins at CFB Trenton as a family matter as a way of chastising Prime Minister Harper for his general attitude to the media. No journalist says this is the reason, but let us be very clear: it is. Give us more access, Prime Minister, the implicit message is, or we the media will make your life unbearable.”

But he also scolds the government for changing the policy without consulting the families.

“Then there is the real reason for the government’s press ban — the all too obvious concern that the attention paid the casualties will impact on the already shaky support for the Afghan War and, perhaps, hurt the government’s chances of re-election,” he says.

But he saves most of his ire for the Opposition parties, particularly the Liberals.

“The Chretien government for a decade and more starved the military of funds and failed to replace its obsolescent equipment,” he says. “The latest casualties near Kandahar died in a G-Wagon, one of the vehicles hastily secured when the wretched Iltis jeeps proved too vulnerable even for the Liberals who had unhesitatingly sent our soldiers into harm’s way in unarmoured, ancient equipment.”

But blasts the NDP as well.

“To have the New Democratic Party’s spokesmen calling for the lowering of the flag on government buildings might be barely tolerable if the NDP had ever called for more money to be spent on the Canadian Forces. The blatant hypocrisy here is, frankly, stomach-turning.”

He sees much of the criticism of Harper over the war as an attempt to tie him to the unpopularity of U.S. President George W. Bush.

“Anti-Americanism is always the last refuge of Canadian scoundrels,” he says.

and Dosanjh’s hypocrisy stands high even in a crowded field. He shamefully seeks to profit politically from the dead. No one in Ottawa comes out of this sorry affair with credit.

To read the full essay on the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century website, click here.