Kudos on Canadians' Approach in Afghanistan

Buried in this piece on a contractor's blog out of Afghanistan, talking about how the U.S. military isn't optimally organized for the "build" phase following "taking" and "holding", is a little atta-boy for the approach of some Canadians re: monitoring development and reconstruction projects:

.... The future of war for the rest of our lifetimes will feature very little peer to peer wars pitting one state against another and a lot of what we see in Afghanistan which is battle in the daily context of everything else. The United States needs to develop the force structure to function in this kind of an environment and the proven solution would be to grow the Marine Corps (who has the mission of expeditionary warfare) and couple to them a contractor based organization which would be just like the old East India Company, but different. Different in the sense that it works directly for the Marine Corps as armed reconstruction implementers and project managers. The natural choice for the management side would be guys like me, retired Marines who are well known to the commanders and have to answer to those commanders for everything they do and fail to do. Just like they did on active duty. Project management of that nature coupled with implementers who work just like Team Canada is working now would make lines of authority and accountability clean, simple and efficient ....

Some earlier praise here:

On 24 February Panjawaii Tim was called to the Kandahar PRT to see if he could help mitigate the damage caused by flooding to the irrigation system of northern Kandahar Province. Knowing why he was going, he called the USAID official in Kabul who adminsters the cash for work program Tim and company are implementing to see if he could free up some cash for a massive emergency project. The AID official immediately gave him permission – to the credit of USAID they do work with incredible speed when they have a vehicle in place which is proving successful. Tim arrived at the PRT and was asked how soon he could get workers to clear 36 canals of an estimated 600,00 cubic meters of silt and debris. The conversation went something like this:

PRT SgtMaj (Canadian Army): ”When can you get started, eh?”

Tim: “Tomorrow, eh?”

SgtMaj: “No, Tim, I mean when can you really get started, eh?”

Tim: “Tomorrow SgtMaj no shit, eh?”

As promised Team Canada was on the job the next day. Yet they still had to deal with senior guys from other agencies who seemed to be upset by the speed at which they got a massive project off the ground. Every day Team Canada expats are out in the bad lands performing the time intensive task of monitoring and evaluation. As usual, they travel in local garb without armored vehicles or armed PSC escorts (PSC gunmen raise your profile, which increases risk for very little gain in security). They did not have to do this job, they are not paid more cash for taking this additional risk, they could have said no and saved themselves hundreds of man hours of additional work for which (I need to stress this point) they receive not one penny of additional compensation. Team Canada is comprised of mission-focused former Canadian soldiers who look upon these dangerous tasks as yet another opportunity to perform. That is what military men are raised to do – accomplish any and all assigned missions to the best of their ability. You would think for doing this they would receive at least a hearty handshake and an ata boy, not a ration of shit from senior bureaucrats who could not manage to do the same no matter how much time and money is thrown at them ....

Well done, whoever the heck "Team Canada" is, on the work you appear to be doing.