"The cost of everything, and the value of nothing"
The Ruxted Group has an excellent editorial up about the uncomfortable underlying truth behind lack of government support for the CF. Here's a snippet:
I've hammered this point home with a number of people in uniform, but I fear not with enough, and not with those senior enough to make a difference: every single mission the CF wants to undertake is critically dependent upon domestic public support.
You want to retain our maritime command and control capability interfacing with our allies, even if it's with a jack-of-all-trades ship instead of more specialized hulls for different missions? Educate the public, or the money just won't come. You think new strike fighters are at the very least what Canada needs, a compromise between an air-defence fighter and a dedicated CAS aircraft? You won't get them without telling Canadians why they need them. You want to put the myth of peacekeeping to bed once and for all so that you have the mandate, the equipment, and the manpower to take on the new fourth-generation warfare of this century? Make sure your public, the ones who elect your civilian superiors and pay your bills with their tax dollars know enough to make educated decisions about defence.
If it's important enough to volunteer your life to a career in uniform, standing guard over this great and peaceful nation, then it should be important enough to step out of your organizational comfort zone and start proactively educating Canadians about defence, from the ground up.
Every other fight you're in depends on this one: for the hearts and minds of the average Canadian.
As Ruxted has said, a series of Liberal and Conservative governments imposed three decades of fiscal darkness on the CF in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s even as, during the ‘80s and ‘90s, those same governments added new, complex and dangerous tasks. Governments did not do this because they hate the military. They did it because Canadians told them to. Political parties, in and out of government, poll assiduously and deeply on almost every issue; defence and defence spending was polled half to death in those decades and, based on the result, the government cut and cut and cut again – because that’s what Canadians wanted.
I've hammered this point home with a number of people in uniform, but I fear not with enough, and not with those senior enough to make a difference: every single mission the CF wants to undertake is critically dependent upon domestic public support.
You want to retain our maritime command and control capability interfacing with our allies, even if it's with a jack-of-all-trades ship instead of more specialized hulls for different missions? Educate the public, or the money just won't come. You think new strike fighters are at the very least what Canada needs, a compromise between an air-defence fighter and a dedicated CAS aircraft? You won't get them without telling Canadians why they need them. You want to put the myth of peacekeeping to bed once and for all so that you have the mandate, the equipment, and the manpower to take on the new fourth-generation warfare of this century? Make sure your public, the ones who elect your civilian superiors and pay your bills with their tax dollars know enough to make educated decisions about defence.
If it's important enough to volunteer your life to a career in uniform, standing guard over this great and peaceful nation, then it should be important enough to step out of your organizational comfort zone and start proactively educating Canadians about defence, from the ground up.
Every other fight you're in depends on this one: for the hearts and minds of the average Canadian.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 2:43 p.m.
2 Comments:
Great post, Babbling. As Jack Granatstein wrote: "Who killed the Canadian militay? We [Canadians]did."
http://tinyurl.com/2ufae3
Only by educating them can their support be won to provide the military the country needs.
Mark
Ottawa
absolutely spot-on comment, Brooks..
During the early days of the cold war, defense was never an issue, except that Canadians expected the government to keep us safe through adequate strength of our military.
The same sort of public education of the real threats we face today is required from a very basic level. start with the young people...the potential recruits, the media of all types, immigrant populations, corporations...we have to get the message out, and change the way people think about the CAF. What they do, How they do it, and most importantly, the NEED for them to be able to have the tools to respond to the call. This all heas to be done to convince the citizenry of the need to spend huge dollars on the military....now, before the next crisis comes along.
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