Give them as much rope as they want

What's the point of having a Standing Committee on National Defence if they're not allowed to poke around where they see fit?

Yesterday, eight MPs from the Commons defence committee, all sporting helmets and flak jackets, stepped off a Hercules transport aircraft at Kandahar airfield, the main hub for Canada's 2,500 troops.

The trip, which has been in the works within the military bureaucracy for months, is budgeted to cost $156,000, according to one estimate.

But while extensive briefings have been planned for the MPs, they've been warned by senior commanders that it's not likely they'll see much of Afghanistan "outside the wire" – even though their visit comes during a period of relative calm.

Look, I can see a number of possible reasons for Gordon O'Connor's office to keep such an intensely political group confined to Kandahar Air Field while they're in Afghanistan. Politicians get in the way of operators, and tend not to listen too well when they're told what to do - even in a dangerous situation. Having a parliamentarian killed or gravely injured by an IED in Kandahar City or on the backroads of Panjwaii would impact severely on support for the mission among ordinary Canadians back home. Heck, from a purely partisan standpoint, having unserious opposition MP's sniffing around for stuff to criticize is unhelpful in a whole spectrum of ways.

But none of these reasons should be enough to keep them on base if they want to get out into the field with the troops.

The idea that personal safety concerns are driving this directive from the MND's office is pure bunk. Russ Hiebert puckered up for a photo-op at a Kandahar hospital earlier this month. Rick Mercer poured gravy over trays of steaming...'army food' is the polite term, I guess...at Christmas. Conservative MP's Lawrie Hawn, John Baird, and Jay Hill all made it outside the wire in the past couple of months - and Strong Point West is hardly an insignificant jaunt from the KAF front gates.

If the Minister wants to defang the committee, it would be far better to allow them to investigate whatever they wish and expend their energy discovering for themselves that Canada is making progress in the south of Afghanistan. If that's not the case, if we're just spinning our wheels with ineffective make-work projects or just sitting around doing nothing at the KPRT, then we'll all know it soon enough anyhow, media proclivities towards bad news being what they are. But by keeping the MP's bottled up at KAF, all the Minister is doing is giving his opponents ammunition to use against him in the forum of public opinion.

You'd think a Minister of the Crown would understand the need for parliamentary oversight in Canadian democracy a little better than this. Or, failing that, that a former general would at least have a rudimentary grip on tactics to outmanoeuvre his opponents. Unfortunately, it seems Mr. O'Connor is out of his depth in both areas on this issue.