At times, recently more so, I've wondered of myself why I seem to have more general respect for the UK senior army personnel than I do for the current, what I think of as almost cartoon like, Canadian senior officer types. I wonder if it could be that the UK senior types, or some that speak in public appear to have brains, that commodity which seems dearly short at our saintly Canadian Department of National Defense.
Whatever, eh, just my impressions of our our current military senior types. But they do look charming in their red shirts or strutting around with that other well know cartoon-like Canadian - Don Cherry - waving a replicate of yet another Canadian symbol which is now usually resident in the US, the Stanley Cup.
But I should keep on topic.
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Yesterday, Friday, September 21, 2007, General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, gave a presentation at the International Institute For Strategic Studies as part of a Military Leaders Forum in London. Unlike our cartoon like senior officer types, the UK General seems articulate, appears to have a knowledge of recent history and of international affairs, wow.
The entire speech can be found, in wvm format or as a text transcript at the IISS site here.
Aspects of the General's speech relating to a "gulf between UK citizens and troops" were reported on the BBC last night, see the short clip below the excerpt from the BBC print story:
"Gen Sir Richard Dannatt said soldiers were sometimes greeted with indifference on returning from service.
He contrasted the attitude in Britain with support for soldiers among people in the United States.[**see footnote]
A "willingness to serve in such an atmosphere again" could be sapped, he said in a speech in London.
Army chief warns of social 'gulf'
BBC
Although the General indicates that this "gulf" is from his perspective a UK problem which may make it harder to get people into the military and keep them there, in the future, I think he is wrong.
I agree that some in the US seem to show what could be characteristed as strong "support for the troops" but frankly I suspect what the General sees is the usual passing fad of just a very few mixed with the perennial illusion about the grass being greener other places.
Since the General's concerns are the UK army, he didn't mention any of the downside in the US, for example, the fiasco at Walter Reed nor the fact that some US military depend on charitable hand-outs to make ends meet. Nor did he mention that one side of the US political elite in effect dismisses and belittles those who actually served in the military if they don't think the same as them and the sentimental, fair-weather, flag waving, "support the troops" crew accept this humiliation of yesterdays troops.
Interestingly enough the whole matter of "gulfs" between the military and civilians was just a topic on the ABCs (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Late Night Live, with Phillip Adams:
The Civil-Military Divide
As a result of the drop in American public support for the war in Iraq, members of the military and their families are feeling increasingly isolated and misunderstood as they bear the brunt for simply carrying out orders. However, this also highlights a divide which has existed between members of America's civil and military establishments since Vietnam. In fact surveys reveal that elite members of civil and military institutions remain suspicious of one another, and continue to harbour strong negative stereotypes about the other. It turns out this has wide-reaching implications for government policy, particularly on the way wars are waged. On Late Night Live we explore the history of this divide and look at how a more coordinated approach to Iraq - one which included greater civilian and even humanitarian input - might have turned out.
Late Night Live
September 19, 2007
ABC
Kristin Henderson, one of the people on the LNL broadcast, writes fairly regularly about the "gulf" from a US perspective.
In one of her WaPo pieces this summer she began with a fact and then a question:
Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in our military. In a time of war, what should that mean to the rest of us?
Neither the clip nor the BBC print story report on a couple of the move interesting aspects of the General's speech i.e. the fact that he didn't demean the people the UK are engaging in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
For example, of those faced by the UK in Iraq, he says:
So, because as an Army we are enemy focussed, some words on our adversaries in southern Iraq.
The militants (and I use the word deliberately because not all are insurgents, or terrorists, or criminals; they are a mixture of them all) are well armed – certainly with outside help, and probably from Iran.
By motivation, essentially, and with the exception of the Al Qaeda in Iraq element who have endeavoured to exploit the situation for their own ends, our opponents are Iraqi Nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – jobs, money, security – and the majority are not bad people.
In amongst them, however, are a hard core of well trained, well motivated, ruthless individuals who have the capacity to organise and control a highly effective campaign, or perhaps better described as a matrix of campaigns, of violence and intimidation.
and of those in Afghanistan:
In Afghanistan, we fight a rather different campaign.
Again our adversaries are also quite complex and I would prefer to once more use the term militant and to be careful not to demonise the people we fight in Afghanistan.
There is a lazy tendency for them all to be lumped under the term “Taliban”, but it is not as simple as that.
Yes, there is a hard core of Islamist extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority of the people we are engaged against are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons.
So we must beware of tarring them all with the same brush, as I am sure that one day we will need to deal with and eventually reconcile the elected Government with the majority of these people.
And the character of the people who oppose here is different to that of the people in Iraq.
Afghans are a hardy people, who respect force and the warrior ethos. They are generally more impressed by a company of infantry, fighting bravely with bayonets fixed than by high tech ISTAR and offensive support.
Their current choice is to fight in the cultivated areas where the visibility and fields of view can be measured in tens of metres, where basic skills, not technical prowess are most important. Indeed, it is a form of operation that our fathers would recognise from the Normandy bocage – indeed on their part it is clever, because we are denied the hi-tech advantages of stand off and range, but our training gives us the edge.
I contrast the General's view with the collective Canadian crew who believe following on our great general Hillier's view that Canadians only engage "scumbags". We also mimic US handling of detainees which some of our red shirt flag wavers associate with "supporting the troops".
I don't agree with everything the UK General said yesterday but I do appreciate what seems like a thoughtful speech and delivered articulately with none of the usual cute stupid meaningless caught phrases.
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** The General also mentioned Canada, though not the red shirt "support the troops" bullshit, supported by the federal government, rather, he mentioned the Ontario provincial government's renaming a section of highway 401, between Trenton and TO, the route the hearses travel on their way to have the military corpses autopsied prior to handing them back to families.
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