Bits & bites

I've been busy with paying-job matters recently, but here are a few things that have caught my eye:

• The CF wins an award for mental health issues? As a certain Harrison Ford character said a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: "Great, kid...now don't get cocky!" The CF still has a long way to go managing mental health issues. But BZ to those who are working to move the organization forward.


• I was wondering how long this change to the criteria required for the new Sacrifice Medal would take. It's a no-brainer, to be honest. But it's just a matter of time before a soldier working for CANSOFCOM - to pick just one potential scenario - is injured on a training exercise and his or her chain of command starts raising a fuss. Something career-ending, or something where he or she saved a colleague's life, and the whole debate begins again over whether that is any less important or valued than a less serious wound taken from enemy fire. Personally, I didn't see what was wrong with the Wound Stripe in the first place...


• Here's at least one Canadian officer who seems to think we should accept very limited aims in Afghanistan, and not worry too much that Pax Americana will come grinding to a halt if we don't secure a decisive victory in Afghanistan. Malevich is another fellow with some serious credibility on this file - especially given that one of his Afghan tours was with the stupidly disbanded and much-mourned SAT-A. The one problem I've always had with this line of argument is this: if security is our main reason for being there, and we can't secure the country without a functioning government, then isn't reconstruction, development, and governance a security imperative as well as a humanitarian one? I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to how we achieve our security aims in southwest Asia without engaging in some form of nation-building.

And with that, my little candy-collecting machines need to get prepped for H-hour...