A study in contrasts

While the government, the opposition, and the various trained seals of either camp continue to act out their unwitting self-parody of how our political system is supposed to operate (a Canadian Abu Ghraib? Really?), Eugene Lang and Eric Morse make a serious suggestion:

The government didn't designate a power centre for Afghanistan until 2007 -- five years after Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan began, a group of supporting officials called the Afghan Task Force was established. A cabinet committee wasn't set up until 2008.

Prior to that, Afghanistan-related messages and issues, presumably including Colvin's, simply drifted into various divisions of the Foreign Ministry, CIDA, the Privy Council Office and the Defence Department. There was no senior, central authority responsible for tying the threads together and making sense out of them. In addition, turf wars, resentments and personality clashes among officials in these four departments were among the worst kept secrets in Ottawa.

That is the fundamental point that Colvin's testimony shows us -- a government not managerially prepared or structured for war. One that barely admitted it was at war, even to itself.

A narrow public inquiry into who knew what and when about prisoners misses this basic point. And it would lead nowhere...

...

What Canada really does need to come out of this affair is a hard, serious look at how this country goes to war, and how it then conducts its statecraft during war. Rather than a narrow Colvin inquiry, we need a broad structural investigation -- perhaps even a Royal Commission -- into the management, mechanics, processes and structures of Canada's governmental institutions in times of war.

We have pretended for too long that Canadians simply never go to war. But we are in one now, and there is a good chance that before the first quarter of the 21st century ends, we will be in one again. Unpreparedness for war may fit the patterns of our history all too well, but that is no excuse before our allies, our prisoners or our dead.

Of course, that wouldn't serve the self-interest of anyone in a position to influence the decision: there's no potential for a "gotcha" moment to make big political ripples. So I expect that, at best, the individual departments will undertake a quiet internal review of how such information is handled, but that it will remain largely siloed by ministry. And the merry-go-round will continue to go-round.