The Hillier Attitude

Interesting article in this month's Policy Options magazine: not so much a profile of General Rick Hillier as a review of the history that made him what he is, as Chief of Defence Staff. Him, and other senior officers of his generation. An excerpt, if I may:

Critics of the CDS’s place in public life suggest, therefore, that civil control over the armed forces and policy and a change in Canadian military strategy in Afghanistan will occur only after General Hillier is replaced or decides to retire. Those who hold this view, however, have missed the fundamental shift, the renaissance, if you will, of the professional spirit in the officer corps of the Canadian Forces.

The change is now so deeply embedded in the officer corps that in all likelihood General Hillier will be replaced by another officer who holds very much to Hillier’s views of the role of the CDS in Canadian public policy.

And what, exactly, is this fundamental shift that Douglas Bland is talking about?

While they learned about the so-called new wars, they learned something else as well. And that was that the Canadian governments and most Canadians cared little about what they were doing or the effects the wars were having on them or their soldiers. The Liberal government of Jean Chrétien was particularly neglectful. Reports at the time — never refuted by officials or officers in Ottawa then or since — suggest that the facts about casualties and dead and severely wounded soldiers incurred in the Balkans wars were hidden from Canadians, for fear that the information would prompt a public outcry to properly equip the Canadian Forces for the battles the government had sent them to fight. Spending money on the Canadian Forces, even in these circumstances, was anathema to Chrétien, and so the soldiers suffered, mostly in silence.

Definitely worth a read -- especially by politicians with defence as part of their brief.