Sometimes Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay are given insufficient credit for their wry sense of humour. The serious, literal-minded members of the opposition need to lighten up.
Yesterday, three Canadian generals testified before the parliamentary committee that is hearing testimony on the allegations that detainees handed over to the Afghans by Canadian soldiers were tortured and that the top soldiers and government ministers failed to heed the warnings coming to them from diplomat Richard Colvin in 2006-2007.
The soldiers---Major General, See No Evil, Lieutenant General, Hear No Evil, and General General Speak No Evil---seemed genuinely mystified at what Colvin said in his testimony last week. The generals didn’t get Colvin’s message at the time, they told the committee. In fact, Colvin didn’t even use the word “torture”, Lieutenant General Hear No Evil insisted.
Two of the generals are now retired, but that didn’t stop them from being allowed to read Colvin’s missives so they could prepare for their testimony.
Meanwhile, Colvin is being blocked by the government from releasing those missives so that we can all learn what he said in them. And the government won’t let the members of the parliamentary committee read them either.
In a perfectly realized military operation, the generals aimed their heavy fire power at Colvin, but no one on the other side could shoot back.
That’s because in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence were carrying out their own maneuver---denying the MPs the Colvin documents, while insisting that the opposition was trying to block those on the anti-Colvin side from testifying.
Peter MacKay plays a great straight man to Harper’s straight man. Droll. So much wit and leger de main that the plodding opposition members don’t stand a chance.
5 comments:
Professor:
The opposition could have put the ex-generals' credibility at issue. They chose not to. Hillier with his simplistic view of the Taliban and politicians -- scumbags and the enemy, in that order -- was a sitting duck. But the Liberals, NDP and Bloc prowled around him with servile deference. They could have gone after Mulroney, too. His notion that regular meetings with Karzai and occasional sight seeing tours of government prisons were important to maintaining the Geneva Convention in Afghan prisons. The reality is that the Afghans were allowed to torture prisoners to get information. It's a guerilla war, you know. And the generals know it. Besides, bothering your allies over the niceties of the Geneva Convention makes for unhappy allies.
No, don't blame the government; blame the opposition. Colvin will be the first and the last of the whistleblowers, thanks to the likes of Dosanjh and Dewar. They let him hang while they ingratiated themselves with the very men who were smearing him.
So it's been a good couple of days for the government. After all, who will the street believe -- Colvin or the men trashing him -- the men the opposition handled with kid gloves?
Dear Anonymous at 8:14 pm:
Thanks for your great post.
If both the generals and the government types were happy with handing prisoners over to almost certain torture - and please don't tell me they didn't know - then this leaves a couple of questions.
Who are our soldiers working for - Canada or the Afghan "government"?
Why was no plan in place for prisoner detention or transfer before this whole disaster was initiated?
As for the blustering generals, they give me a pain. I'd believe the intelligent and understated Colvin over all that hot air any time.
Thank you for the article! Good luck!
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Filostrato asked:
"Who are our soldiers working for - Canada or the Afghan 'government'?"
Invariably soldiers work or fight at the behest of their political masters. In rare cases, the aims of those political masters coincide with the best interests of the countries involved. I would submit that the Canadian government's armed services are not deployed in Afghanistan to advance any of Canada's widest interests.
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