Posted on 07/07/2007 3:31:45 PM PDT by GMMAC
Don't turn Canadian soldiers into victims
The press has re-evaluated the mission 66 times - and still asks 'what happened?'
By CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Toronto Globe and Mail
Saturday, July 7, 2007 – Page A15
The official news came only this week, and only from one half of the investigative whole, the American one.
A report released to the Associated Press formally announced that Private Rob Costall, whose gorgeous face is by now familiar to many Canadians, was killed by friendly fire.
It was hardly news to the soldiers, Canadian, American and Afghan, who were on the ground on the night of March 29 last year in that miserable little forward operating base called FOB Robinson. The base - austere, which the U.S. report calls it, is a generous description of that dismal patch of powdery sand - came under concentrated Taliban attack from three sides that night.
There was no moon; visibility was minimal, even with night-vision goggles - a single row of as yet-unfilled sandbags and a ring of concertina wire offered the only fixed protection.
The Canadians were there as the Quick Reaction Force sent from Kandahar Air Field, dispatched by U.S. helicopter when an Afghan National Army convoy was ambushed the day before and left temporarily stranded from the base.
The QRF, composed of the soldiers of 7 Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, had arrived at the base and taken up positions about the same time as the wounded convoy made its way back; tracer fire and explosions were lighting up the dark sky even then. The Americans, both Special Forces and the trainers embedded with the ANA, apparently hadn't asked for and weren't expecting reinforcements.
So all in all, it was a night in which the ordinary fog of war was rendered more chaotic by other circumstances, which can and do change in Afghanistan on a dime.
Pte. Costall's mates, immediately furious and grief-stricken of course, soon came to accept their friend's death with a soldier's equanimity. No one better understands the bloody frantic nature of battle better than the fighting men, and few are as forgiving.
But neither should the report's findings come as a surprise to the public, for just days after the firefight in which Pte. Costall and U.S. Army Sergeant John Stone were killed and other soldiers wounded, American and Canadian generals held a press conference to announce that both countries had appointed teams to probe the ugly possibility.
That it took almost 16 months for the findings to be released - and the Canadian board of inquiry at this writing still hasn't been made public - speaks to what I think is the military's fundamental lack of faith first in the news media of both countries, and secondarily in the citizenry who get their information from the press.
It's a mistrust I understand, though consider wrong-headed because delaying the report's release serves only to raise the suspicion that there is something to hide or that there is something embarrassing about the way Pte. Costall and Sgt. Stone died.
With this week's deaths of six more Canadians - Rob Costall was the 11th Canuck to die in Afghanistan, a number that seems almost innocent now, like something from the good old days - there were the usual stark reminders.
A line I heard on CBC Newsworld, a teaser for the story to come on the evening news, on the day of the bombing captured it all.
"Tonight," a sombre voice intoned. "Six more Canadians die in Afghanistan. What happened?" the voice asked. "And what does this latest blow mean for the mission?"
With every single one of the deaths of the 66 Canadian soldiers who have died in that country, the media, like baying hounds in pursuit, ask those very questions or variants of them.
The inference in the first is that something went wrong, or someone screwed up, or that someone is to blame or some equipment is faulty or at best that something could have been done to prevent it. Canadians are in a general way obsessed with personal safety - to wit, bicycle helmets for all, the growing demand for the return of photo radar in Ontario, widespread bans not just on those substances that might kill the allergic but irritate the sensitive - and now it extends to the expectation that war, too, ought to be more manageable and less dangerous.
What happened?
A frigging big bomb, buried in a road that like every other road in southern Afghanistan is never really perfectly secure, blew apart an RG-31 Nyala, the vehicle purpose-built to withstand such blasts but which like all the vehicles in use in Afghanistan doesn't always do it perfectly, and the result was catastrophe.
The suggestion in the second question is that it's time to re-evaluate the United Nations-approved, Afghan-initiated, NATO-run mission. Again. The press has re-evaluated the mission 66 times.
What does a death, or six deaths, mean for the mission? Well, casualties ought not to be the determining factor - this mission either has merit or it does not. But each death ought not to be used automatically as fodder for another round of angst-ridden examination, largely from folks who consider Question Period a rough proving ground.
But that's what the death of a Canadian soldier has come to mean in my business - calls are made to the usual suspects (the leaders of opposition parties in Ottawa, military critics, groups baldly opposed to the mission) so that they might grind once again their various axes, and opinion polls are commissioned to measure the public mood after days of announcers sombrely asking, "What happened?" and lingering shots of returning caskets.
The army has a practice it calls "lessons learned." It is the reappraisal, sometimes painful, of events, battles, successes and failures. The idea is that there is always something to learn, the goal to avoid repeating mistakes where possible. It too works imperfectly, but we could do with a bit of that inward self-criticism in my game.
Except for those reporters who actually go to Kandahar, the only time the press appears to understand soldiers is when they are badly treated, terribly wounded or denied a treatment or pension to which they are entitled. These things happen too often, in Canada and everywhere else, and they need attention.
But the Canadian soldier is not by nature a victim, the media's best efforts to turn him into one notwithstanding. Neither is he a tragic figure. He's a soldier, resilient, hard and capable. The six killed this week were all of that. And so was Rob Costall.
cblatchford@globeandmail.com
Christie Blatchford is one of the only people writing for the Globe and Mail (Margeret Wente is another) who actually “gets it” on a lot of issues. This is just further proof.
Keep up the good work.
Bump
The Globe has lost its compass.
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