More from retired CDS Hillier on Afstan (and Ottawa)

Further to this post,

Hillier redux/NATO?

General Hillier is starting to give book interviews:

1) Hillier: Ottawa mulled taking command of mission

The Conservative government considered taking day-to-day control of the mission in Kandahar away from the military and giving the authority to direct troops in the field to Canada’s ambassador in Kabul...

In his memoir "A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War," the retired general makes brief reference to a proposal that would have usurped his control over the military, but expanded on it in a lengthy interview Thursday with The Canadian Press.

He said he first heard about the proposal from one of his ground commanders in Afghanistan, who telephoned him in Ottawa in late 2007 and he immediately set about nixing the idea.

"They could have talked all they wanted, it was simply not going to happen," the retired general said.

The proposal, which was one of a handful of options being considered as the government struggled to redefine the mission, would have seen the army asking the ambassador for permission to conduct a combat mission whenever one was prepared. Hillier wouldn’t say who in the government floated the idea.

"It was an idiotic suggestion to start with and it disappeared very quickly," he said.

By law, the country’s chief of defence staff is responsible for directing military forces [emphasis added] and Hillier says he wasn’t about to "illegally hand over that authority to a civil servant" without a huge fight.

[Not exactly. According to the National Defence Act:

Appointment, rank and duties of Chief of Defence Staff

18. (1) The Governor in Council may appoint an officer to be the Chief of the Defence Staff, who shall hold such rank as the Governor in Council may prescribe and who shall, subject to the regulations and under the direction of the Minister [emphasis added], be charged with the control and administration of the Canadian Forces.

Responsibility and channels of communication

(2) Unless the Governor in Council otherwise directs, all orders and instructions to the Canadian Forces that are required to give effect to the decisions and to carry out the directions of the Government of Canada or the Minister [emphasis added] shall be issued by or through the Chief of the Defence Staff.

R.S., c. N-4, s. 18...

If the CDS cannot accept to issue the government's "directions", then the officer should resign.]

Military commanders spend their lives developing expertise in war fighting and civil servants wouldn’t have the proper training to decide such matters, Hillier added.

As the war progressed and casualties continued rising, it was well known around Ottawa that the Conservative government was looking for a way to "rein in" the military which had been perceived by federal bureaucrats as having too much say in the conduct of the mission.

A senior Conservative source said that at one time a proposal was floated between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office about setting up a "political office" in Kandahar to take more direct control of all aspects of the war, including military operations.

The idea was eventually dropped because of resistance from Hillier...

Had the proposal succeeded, it wouldn’t have been the first time the Canadian government micro-managed the Afghan mission, according to Hillier.

In his memoir, the ex-general writes about his frustration with the former Liberal government over restrictions it placed on the use of Canadian troops when they were deployed in Kabul in 2004.

He was commanding all NATO forces at that time and whenever a mission would come up Canadian troops "were not his first choice" because they had to ask Ottawa for permission to conduct operations [emphasis added, those dreaded caveats] — approval that could sometimes take a day or more.

Instead of using troops from his home country, Hillier said he would turn to the British and the Norwegians, who were able to take on difficult and dangerous missions within hours of being asked...

But the above CP story misses some, er, nuance. From Old Sweat at Milnet.ca:

In my opinion Hillier makes it clear in his memoirs that the idea of giving command to fall under civilian jurisdiction originated in the public service and not with the Conservatives. On page 422 he states

"As the mission in Afghanistan began heating up in 2007, various folks around Ottawa became very focused on our actions there and wanted command of Canadian Forces units on the ground to fall under civilian jurisdiction." He then calls them "field marshal wannabes" and calls their understanding of what command entailed "superficial." General Hillier ends the paragraph with "The civil service had no say in the matter [conduct of military operations]."

2) Keep troops in Kandahar, ignore politicians: Hillier

Pulling Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan in 2011 will leave a gaping hole in security efforts and won't necessarily ensure the end of combat operations, former chief of defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier says.

As MPs prepare to debate the future of the country's military mission in Afghanistan [but when will the government call such a debate? and if the military mission is really, really to end in 2011 no further Common' resolution should be needed--see here, here, here, , here and here and go figure, while the pre-electoral dance of words continues], Hillier delivered some plain-spoken advice in an interview with the Toronto Star: don't trust the twisted rhetoric and outright lies that will surely be delivered by the Conservative government or opposition parties.

There will still be a need for security and counter-insurgency operations when Canada's current mandate expires in 2011, he said. If experienced Canadian troops leave Kandahar, some other nation, likely less familiar with the local terrain and power brokers, will have to do the job.

Hillier also said there's no need for Canadian troops except in Kandahar or the northeast, and there's no way Canada can carry out a goodwill mission without encountering frequent violence.

"If you stay in the south and try to do something like training, you will still be in combat. I don't care what (political) staffers say in the media about how they can find a way to do it. You simply will not. You will be in combat," Hillier said during a promotional interview for his new book, A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War...

The most prominent theme in Hillier's autobiography is a distaste for politicians who cast aside responsible, realistic and professional assessments to impose their own torqued political imperatives and for bureaucrats who would rather protect their turf in Ottawa than Canadian soldiers in a war zone.

"It's a terrible, terrible environment in which to work. Very vitriolic. We've been in ... (minority parliaments) for five years and it doesn't appear that we're going to break out of it."

What's lost, he said, are the courageous long-term commitments necessary to fight a tough war or rebuild the Canadian military, in favour of short-term government gambles or unfair opposition criticisms that sell well with voters.

An analysis he conducted of the daily question period in the House of Commons found about 150 questions on military and defence issues in one session of Parliament. The vast majority focused on the treatment of suspected insurgents by Canadian soldiers, and whether they were abused in local Afghan-run jails – a matter Hillier views as a tempest in an Afghan teapot.

"I'm not sure our parliamentary system right now is delivering really what Canadians would like to have," he said. "That's a big thing to wrestle to the ground, but it was a tough environment in which to work, and many times it was disappointing."

3) Hillier on Afghanistan troop training “schemes” that “lack credibility”

...

Most of the considerable controversy generated by the book swirls around Hillier’s recounting of old clashes with his political masters and the public service. But in the interview he wades none too delicately into a very current issue—the possible role for Canadian troops in Afghanistan after they are withdrawn, as promised by the government, from fighting in Kandahar in 2011.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman, have both commented on this thorny question in recent weeks.

MacKay said any Canadian soldiers who remain in Afghanistan beyond 2011 will move to non-combat roles that might include training Afghan forces. Soudas elaborated by stressing that ongoing training will be “in training facilities” and “Canadian soldiers will not be doing combat training of Afghan soldiers in harm’s way.”

That’s important because, as I’ve pointed out before, much of the current training involves Canadian troops working closely with Afghan units in the fighting zone. Training today largely means mentoring Afghans in those dangerous places where IEDs explode and firefights errupt.

Is there a safer way to teach those Afghan recruits? Hillier doesn’t think so. Here’s what he told us about the sort of scenario sketched by Soudas: “You can come up with all kinds of schemes to hide away in a camp and train people for the Afghan army or police, but they lack credibility. If you try to help train and develop the Afghan army or police in southern Afghanistan, you are going to be in combat.”