The CF and Canadian politics

Peter Worthington is on to something in the Ottawa Sun:

Canadian military could be left in lurch

...Canada is withdrawing from a combat role by 2011, primarily because we have to. The small size of our army demands it; our soldiers and equipment are exhausted [see below].

Repeated tours of duty by our soldiers are unfair and unreasonable. Senior NCOs and junior officers leaving the army is a growing concern.

Yet for the army, the government's shift in emphasis has to be disturbing. It's almost as if Prime Minister Stephen Harper got elected by latching on to the army as a popular cause with Canadian voters [see post from Dec. 2007 here].

That has changed ever since Rick Hillier left as chief of defence staff, replaced by Walter Natynczyk, who makes no waves and doesn't say boo in public. Hillier was always sounding off and had opinions that resonated.

Drifting

So it would seem that politically we are drifting back to the 1990s and beyond, with the military seen as something to downplay. Noble sentiments and promises are mostly rhetoric...

Canada's problem will be maintaining our military's capabilities after Afghanistan -- something our political leaders seem to have lost interest in doing.

From an earlier post:

...
As for the Canadian Army,

Army really stretched

Chief of the Land Staff Gen. Leslie on the Army's future

and the government's rather pathetic future plans for the CF:

DND's Reports on Plans and Priorities 2009-2010: Wow. Not.

Update: How bad is it?

Olympics push army to edge
Guarding 2010 Games and G8 summit means compromises elsewhere - even in Afghanistan, defence documents say...

If there is a federal election this fall I'll wager there is little or no attention paid either to Afstan or defence matters generally (that's what happened during the last campaign). Pathetic.