I wish work I'd done would stay done

Between my paying job (which is eating up not only my time, but a great deal of mental energy), and my family life (a number of recent challenges, not the least of which was losing a dear uncle the other day), I haven't felt much like writing recently. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that much of what's going on with the CF today is stuff I've already addressed so many times over the years, it seems like Groundhog Day to me.

Example #1: General Leslie and the Congo idea

OK, I know we're past this, but seriously: egad. Where to begin. Mark laid it all out in a number of posts, but really...

• Why is it in this country that we start with what we want to do, and then retroactively try to justify it? It's completely ass backwards. Start with our national interests. Do we have any in the Congo? Sure: international good order, humanitarian need, being seen to contribute. Maybe a bit of mining. That's it. Is that enough to want to do this?
  


• If we're pulling out of Afghanistan because Canadians are tired of a mission that doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything quickly enough for our MTV-gen attention spans, WTF are we even talking about the Congo for?


• Leaving a LGen with no job inspires this sort of mischief. Don't. Do. It.

Example #2: the Canadian Navy, which is thirty-one flavours of hurting right now

• 100 years. Yay. Look the Navy is soooo dense on how to promote itself. NOBODY KNOWS WHY WE NEED A NAVY. Ask a hundred people at the corner of Yonge & Dundas in Toronto why we need a navy, and the most common response you'll get is "We have a navy?" It never ceases to amaze me the number of naval officers I speak with who see their raison-d'etre as self-evident, or barring that, who figure as long as the "people who matter" - read politicians and bureaucrats - understand why a navy is important to a nation with the second-longest coastline in the world, who cares if the plebes do? They have no clue how politicans and bureaucrats work: mandarins care what their political masters think, and politicians care what their voters think. So without the voter...you're always vulnerable to getting completely screwed. Brutal.


• The fiasco with the admiral getting overruled by the general at the prompting of the minister is just ugly. Look, I have no idea if the navy has the money to continue operating if it trims a bit of internal fat or if it's actually dead broke. But regardless of that, when you task a senior leader, and the senior leader makes decisions within his mandate, undermining that leader's decisions is just wrong. I had some seriously high hopes for Gen Natynczyk when he ascended to the CDS post. But I'm afraid that - from the outside, at least - it looks like he's meekly overseeing a serious reduction in CF capability with no discernable scale-back in CF responsibilities. With at most a year left in his career, one wonders if pushing his hat across the desk and saying "No, sir, I won't be a part of that" would have left a stronger and prouder legacy of his time as CDS.


• I had a journalist contact me to pick my brain about the navy's problems recently, and after talking about the obvious personnel (not enough trained sailors, too much cross-docking, feel like they're always sucking hind teat behind the army and air force for money, etc) and ship problems (destroyers, subs, replenishment ship, even FELEX is a dog's breakfast), I pointed out another couple of less obvious indications of the problems the navy faces. First, look at the JSS charlie-foxtrot. Not how it turned out, but just the fact that it was proposed at all. Why in the world would a trained military professional even propose a ship that puts so many capabilities into one vulnerable basket, one ship that is a single missle or torpedo away from becoming the biggest naval disaster in living Canadian memory? Because our naval leadership is so beaten down, so conditioned with low expecations, that it knew it would never get the two or three classes of ship it actually needs, and so asked for this Frankenstein's monster of a ship instead. Second, the navy's even taking it in the teeth on projects that aren't navy: what are the three biggest equipment problems for the air force right now? FWSAR, shipborne helo, and maritime patrol, right? All three significantly affect naval operations. The navy just can't seem to catch a break.

At the end of the day, both situations - the navy's problems, and the Congo idea - can be traced back to a lack of serious thought in this country about defence issues at all. And I'll be honest with you: I'm getting increasingly tired of trying to make those same arguments again and again and again.

We're getting precisely the defence policy we, as a country, are demanding. What a sad statement that is.