Sunday, July 13, 2008

Private wars, proxy armies

In my rant the other day, I said:

Hell, the entire exercise seems to be about protecting the war, as it is, like it some sort of bloody pet project for politicians and their fellating hangarounds.
Commentator "The Seer" responding to my post on Lulu's link to it, said:

If Boris is right, some of the same thing — not the inter-service rivalry but the spirit of enterprise — is going on in Afghanistan today. Talk about Canadians arriving!
While I think there is definitely something truthful about naive notion of Canadian enterprise in Afghanistan, I'm not sure it's as much of an entrepreneurial engagement as The Seer appears to suggest. Let me put on my tin-foil hat for a few minutes...

  • The Harper government has locked up information about military activity and the mission outside the official "support the troops" or "Afghan people" cliches.

  • The Harper government is in ideological lock-step with the Bush administration.

  • The Harper government has not published a defence white paper or review but has begun major equipment purchases and planning that are questionable in their need to the Canadian Forces. Are these purchases in keeping with some US/neocon requirement?

  • The Harper government uses the same advisers as the GOP.

  • The Harper government is a strong advocate of deep integration and interoperability between Canadian and US forces.

  • There are indications that HMC Ships may find themselves involved in US operations against Iran.

  • The Harper government has reversed decades of neutral Canadian policy regarding Israel to put it in line with US policy.

  • Afghanistan is fundamentally a US security operation.

The CPC have shut down debate and discussion on Canadian military operations and defence policy, but have undertaken a whole lot of action in terms of purchases and operations that are directly in keeping with US and Israeli policies.

Examined a certain way, it appears that 'Canadian' neoconservatives are turning the CF into a proxy armed forces for the United States, and private militia for North American neoconservatives.

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