Kind words for the CF from a retired US Marine General...

...who soon will have a very important job (via Norman's Spectator):

Obama security advisor is a fan of Canada

Canada has an admirer in James Jones, the former Marine Corps commandant and supreme commander of NATO whom president-elect Barack Obama chose last week as his national security advisor.

Jones has spoken of how impressed he was by Canada's army when it shifted from Kabul to Kandahar in the spring of 2006.

"I think the Canadian leadership in the south is the answer to what was a clearly open question in some communities. Would NATO fight if tested?" the general said during an hour-long interview at SHAPE headquarters in Belgium a few weeks before he retired at the end of 2006. "They chose to test Canada and Canada responded magnificently."

Canada has returned the compliment. Because Jones had "invariably been responsive to Canadian concerns and has provided strong support to Canadian commanders in theatre," he was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross by Governor-General Michaelle Jean last year.

Jones brings a critical, knowledgeable eye to the Afghan file, which Obama has identified as a top priority. A window into his thinking can be found in the publication earlier this year of a report on the war by the Atlantic Council of the United States, which he chaired. "Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," became the report's highly publicized signature line.

Asked two years ago about how the war had been prosecuted up until then, Jones intimated that the initial strategy had been flawed. If Afghanistan was looked at like it was the face of a clock, coalition forces had started out in a counter-clockwise direction, heading west from Kabul and then southwest, establishing themselves in the tamest parts of the country before heading towards the Taliban heartland. If a clockwise strategy had been pursued first, the Pakistani border and Kandahar would have been tackled much earlier and the insurgency might never had had a chance to reestablish itself.

When still at NATO, Jones professed frustration with a problem that still confronts and divides the alliance -- the caveats that have allowed many member countries to avoid fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan. However, as Jones noted, Canada had imposed lots of caveats of its own in Afghanistan until the Liberal government of the day dropped them [emphasis added] when it sent troops into combat in Kandahar in late February, 2006.

"Canada is now looking at it from the other side of the glass," Jones said. "There is a different metric when your country is being shot at and not all the others are coming to your aid."

The caveats are a highly emotive issue that the physically imposing general, who grew up in France and played basketball at Georgetown University, will almost certainly bring up as Obama's national security advisor. Co-ordinating the president-elect's foreign policy is a job that Jones has been preparing for all his life. A soldier-diplomat who was an infantry platoon commander in Vietnam, his 40 years in uniform were spent juggling combat assignments with key staff jobs in Washington and elsewhere.

During the presidential election campaign, Obama made it plain that he expected NATO members to send more troops to Central Asia. Whether Canada should stay or bring its troops home was not yet a major issue two years ago, but Jones made it clear then that he did not think it was right for NATO to ask Canada to increase its contribution. "There are other countries which should, in my view, be stepping up much more and that I would put more pressure on before I would go back and ask Canada to do more," he said.

Based on the themes that Jones elaborated on when he was leaving his post as NATO's top general, he will tell the Obama White House that the U. S.-led coalition must have a multi-dimensional strategy.

"It is not, in fact, a military problem," Jones said. "It turns on the proper harnessing, funding and focusing of funding for the reconstruction effort....

"If you asked me if I wanted 5,000 more troops or $50-million more to build schools and roads, carry out judicial reforms and move against corruption and crime, I'd take the money."

The citation for the Meritorious Service Cross:

General James L. Jones, M.S.C.
McLean, United States of America
Meritorious Service Cross (Military Division)

Since 2003, General Jones of the United States Marine Corps has provided outstanding leadership to NATO at a critical time in the Alliance’s history. During his mandate as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO’s operations in Afghanistan expanded to include the entire country, and thousands of Canadian military personnel served under his command. Although operating at the highest strategic level, General Jones has always had the interests of individual soldiers at heart. He has invariably been responsive to Canadian concerns and has provided strong support to Canadian commanders in theatre. His service to NATO and to our military personnel has brought great benefit to the Canadian Forces and to Canada.

Good to have a friend in a very high place.