Canadian Military Creating New Guidebook For Attacking Oppressed Populations

Here is a depressing article called "Canada's Counterinsurgency Strategy" by Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton, which documents the latest stage in Canada's transition from its longtime quiet complicity in war and empire to a more active, openly bloodthirsty, "out" kind of complicity.

The article's focus is a new counterinsurgency manual that will soon be released by the Canadian Armed Forces. This is the first time the Canadian armed forces have had a formal guide for how do participate in the violent suppression of what the article says that the manual characterizes as "local and often popular movements". However, it is a long Canadian tradition -- for example, the lead author of the manual has in the past cited the armed suppression of the Metis nation and their allies in 1885, a classic example of a white settler state militarily crushing indigenous peoples who do not particularly wish to be colonized, as a historic counter-insurgency by Canadian forces. Needless to say, this does not appear to trouble him.

The article talks about three current counter-insurgency efforts of various levels of intensity in which the Canadian forces are participating: the recolonization of Afghanistan, the support of the government in Haiti installed after the U.S.-sponsored coup against the democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the enforcement of colonial relations in Canada against indigenous insurgencies.

I found some of the quotes from senior Canadian military officials to be particularly chilling, things like this:

"It is a fascinating time to be a Canadian soldier," Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, head of the army, told journalists at a recent policy briefing at the Fraser Institute, a conservative research institute in Vancouver.

"We are no longer a blunt instrument relegated solely to watching from the sidelines or inter-positioning ourselves between two formerly warring factions," Leslie said.

Canadian generals such as Leslie, Chief of Staff Rick Hillier and retired Maj. Gen. Louis MacKenzie have been outspoken critics of the accuracy and utility of the long-fostered national self-image of the Canadian military as a neutral middle-power and "blue-helmeted" peacekeeper.

While the Canadian Forces commitment in Afghanistan is currently slated to end in February 2009, "Let's not kid ourselves," Gen. Leslie said. The enormous resources invested by the government in the transformation of Canada's armed forces are clearly not for Afghanistan alone, he said, adding: "It is logical to expect that we will go somewhere fairly similar to Afghanistan and do much the same sort of activity."

Well, I do agree that we shouldn't kid ourselves. But these men should not just be fired, they should be locked up and provided with access to free psychological care for their casually cruel boosterism of Canadian complicity in murder, torture, and other oppressive violence against (mostly racialized) human beings.

The fairly open complicity of the Canadian International Development Agency, which used to have a few quite progressive corners from what I've heard, is also interesting. Particularly telling is the list of countries receving the greast aid, which are defined as "countries of strategic importance for Canada": Afghanistan, Haiti, and Iraq. Hmmmm....now why could they be "of strategic importance for Canada"...hmmm....

Read the article.