Some interesting questions

Peter Worthington's column in yesterday's Toronto Sun raised some interesting questions.

First, is General Natynczyk more reserved than General Hillier was because of pressure from the politicians and bureaucrats who threaten to make his life miserable if he speaks out - or worse, to take it out on his troops by punitively restricting his budget? Or is it just that he has a different personal style?

My guess is that it's a bit of both. I believe the most senior civil servants and Conservative political mavens have threatened in the past to hit the CF where it hurts most - in the pocketbook - if they didn't toe the communications line coming out of the PMO and PCO. I don't see why they wouldn't think they could get away with that again if they wanted to put Natynczyk on a shorter leash than his predecessor.

Remember, on one of his first forays into the media glare as CDS, he got his knuckles rapped pretty badly for this statement:

CBC's Tobias Fisher reports that Natynczyk has "close associations with the Americans," having attended the U.S. Army War College and served with the Americans in Iraq on an exchange posting.

Natynczyk said the posting taught him lessons applicable to Afghanistan.

"The tactics and techniques and procedures are exactly the same and the risks are identical." [Babbler's emphasis]

On the other hand, Walt Natynczyk had a front-row seat to the Rick Hillier show these past few years. He knows quite well all the feathers that were ruffled by Hillier's force-of-nature personality. And he also knows he's not Rick Hillier. So he's likely taken a different route than Hillier partly of his own volition as well as because of implied pressure from other quarters in Ottawa.

Worthington also wonders if a drop in Canadian casualties means the CF is being less aggressive in the field right now:

With the war in Afghanistan intensifying by the day, there's the oddity of Canadian battle casualties dropping, or in limbo. From one point of view that's good, but it also makes one wonder where our troops are, and what they're doing.

Until recently (and maybe even now) Canada's Afghanistan troops have punched far above their weight. We've endured casualties, but we've also been effective in the field.

The implication that our soldiers are sitting on their duffs instead of taking the fight to the enemy has raised some hackles among some of the folks who wear our country's uniform. To his credit, Worthington followed it up with this line later in the column:

Is this reality, or is it just imagination? Dunno. In the past, Gen. Hillier would give clues by his public utterances, but his successor is zipper-lipped -- a good thing at times, but leadership sometimes needs the public informed and supportive.

Worthington is a veteran of both WWII and Korea, and has been a stalwart public supporter of the CF for decades. So I sincerely doubt he was trying to demean Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan with his remarks. My impression is that he's concerned about a couple of things: political control of the CF that might have us taking a step back from going after the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the lack of communication from our military leaders. How can the public support a mission that it doesn't hear about?

Frankly, I'm in agreement with those concerns. The government needs to let the CF tell our soldiers' stories to the Canadian public. Every effort they make to stand in the way of that elemental connection makes them look ever more petty, manipulative, and short-sighted. And the CF needs to continue to tell the stories it thinks are important.

With fewer casualties, what are our soldiers doing?

Well, just to cite one example, our soldiers are taking the fight to the opposing forces:

Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, commander of Task Force Kandahar, is taking the approach that the best defence is a good offence.

There have been a number of operations, both big and small in the volatile Zhari, Panjwaii and Arbhandab districts in the regions surrounding Kandahar city in recent months.

The latest Canadian-led operation in the Zhari district involved a battalion of British Royal Commandos, a mechanized brigade from the Royal Canadian Regiment and troops from the 22 Infantry from the United States.

"They went into an area where the insurgents typically enjoy partial or full freedom of movement. The method in which we deployed forces in the area essentially overwhelmed the insurgency too," explained Canadian Maj. Fraser Auld, the operations officer for Task Force Kandahar.

"We know it took them by surprise and we know the insurgents were unable to cope with the synchronized approach in this operation."

The operation yielded an IED factory (improvised explosive device), 24 barrels of home made explosives, numerous anti-personnel mines, a motorcycle rigged with explosives, several 107 mm rockets, small arms, weapons and ammunition and 500 kilograms of hashish.

...

"His goal is to deny them the ability to reconstitute over the winter," said Auld. "He doesn't want them to be able to rest and the intent of all this is when we come into next summer, we've spent the winter degrading them so next summer is better.

An operation in the Zhari district in August also yielded IED making facilities and huge caches of explosives and weapons. Just three months later, insurgents in the area seem to have managed to resupply. That is a concern.

Keeping on top of the Taliban is the key according to those involved in planning these operations.

"If you always have them on the run then they can't keep making these IEDs, so we've actually seen a drop in kinetic activity over the past few weeks since we've stepped up the operational tempo," added Maj. Jason Guinui, operations officer for 3 RCR Battlegroup.

Don't worry, Mr. Worthington: our troops are still punching above their weight.