Why tanks are a Good Thing

Scott Taylor gets this right:

ON APRIL 12 the Canadian government announced the acquisition of 120 Leopard 2 A6M heavy tanks. Unlike many of the protracted procurement projects that get mired in bureaucratic red tape for up to two decades before any hardware is actually delivered, this particular purchase is to be literally "off the shelf."..

News of their acquisition was of course greeted with skepticism by the usual cast of characters who use every snippet of information to undermine the military mission in Afghanistan. The logic of these detractors is that if the 42-ton Leopard 1 tanks in service in Kandahar are not winning the hearts and minds of locals, then how can even bigger tanks get the job done?..

...the peace-at-all-cost brigades resorted to some dirty pool to help make their case against the purchase of new tanks. Instead of running around in their hemp shirts and homemade sandals yelling slogans about beating swords into ploughshares, the peaceniks actually dragged out previous quotes by our own military commanders.

Back in October 2003, then-army commander Rick Hillier said the following: "The Leopard tank — which I love after serving for many years on it and I keep a picture in my office to remind folks that if I can change to the new reality, so can they — is a very capable but less relevant platform for the kinds of missions that we now undertake. The strong qualities of a Leopard tank parked in Valcartier or Edmonton or elsewhere are useless to our soldiers in Kabul, Eritrea, Bosnia or anywhere else that we deploy them and where we require direct fire.

"In some cases, we can’t get it there because the only aircraft that can fly (them) in are the C-130s and it’s too heavy for that. In other places, it cannot manoeuvre and I give you the streets of Kabul, those little tiny narrow alleyways as an example of that.

"On most peace support operations, it would actually be destabilizing to deploy or employ it."

At the time, Hillier was trying to convince the Canadian public, his own soldiers and presumably himself that tanks were Cold War relics and that Canada needs to acquire lighter, more mobile gun systems to conduct counter-insurgency operations.

That very same month back in 2003, there was a lot of controversy concerning the military’s decision to deploy lightweight and unprotected Iltis jeeps to Afghanistan. The Canadian military had just suffered three fatalities in two separate incidents involving a landmine and a suicide bomber.

In response to criticism that the Iltis vehicles were unsuitable for operations in a high-risk environment, then-contingent commander Andrew Leslie made the point that our soldiers could not win the hearts and minds of Afghans if they went speeding past them in heavy armoured vehicles. These comments were later echoed by then-defence minister John McCallum in Parliament to ward off the opposition’s criticism of the Liberal government’s failure to properly equip our expedition to Afghanistan.

While it may seem like a fun exercise for the peace junkies to drag out these contradictory old quotes in order to publicly humiliate the brass, the generals have bigger things to worry about than their media profile. Both Hillier and current army commander Leslie are well experienced in Afghanistan and both enjoy widespread popularity with the troops...

The new tanks will not win the campaign in Kandahar; they will simply add more armoured protection for our soldiers, which in turn buys the mission a little more time. Increased casualties means decreased public support, and ultimately domestic politics will determine the duration of our commitment to Afghanistan...

That noted military expert, Eugene Lang (chief of staff to two Liberal ministers of national defence), has a different view--and makes the utterly irrelevant comparison with the used submarine purchase (though I must say I agree that the subs really are not needed). Mr Lang is currently a policy adviser to the Liberal Party of Canada.