Newsletter July, 04

Table of Contents:

[Uber-Deconstructionalist "Thought"] [On Canada's New Peacekeeping Brigade] [What Do We Really Need to Fear?] [Principle and Intellect ] [Voices of Freedom]

Uber-Deconstructionalist "Thought"

It is usually a dangerous thing to leave a tool kit lying around where any fool can pick it up and play with it. A wise parent will not leave power tools plugged in on a workbench where their children might play with them; nor would they put up with the use of well-tempered chisels as improvised screwdrivers. Professionals tend to be even more guarded.

In the world of thought, people are much more careless than they are in the world of tools and some very dangerous intellectual tools have been left around where the less rational can play with them. There are concepts that cry out to have big yellow warning stickers plastered all over them.

Jacques Derrida, the recently deceased philosopher and father of deconstructionism, lived to see his fuzzy logic tool become grossly misused throughout the world. What he intended (apparently) was a means of demonstrating that there are layers of meaning in any argument and that the truth — if there is one — can be concealed behind them. But, like a virus escaping from a laboratory, the technique has spread so that anybody can argue that any conclusion with which they disagree is flawed because it is sexist/racist/homophobic/elitist etc… simply by deconstructing the argument. (Well, we’re deconstructionists too — often looking for the emotion which underpins the "logic" of a position).

Alas, the emerging post-Derrida buzz-phrase for the aligned intellects of the world is "Post-Structuralism", where every argument is invalid and every truth (barring those which the Post Structuralist — inevitably a fuzzy ‘progressive’ — holds dear) is untrue. This is deconstructionism on steroids… Watch out for this one!

We normally refrain from offering direct advice to Ministers of the Crown — or indeed to any politician — unless our opinion is solicited. However, a custom is not a rule or a tradition, and so the occasional violation is permissible.

When one has been poor for a long time, it becomes hard to keep up appearances; holes in the sole of one’s shoes become uncomfortable and occasionally one will forget to hide the bottom of their feet when sitting. Fabric wears thin, rips become common and darning is not invisible. A frayed cuff or collar soon cannot be hidden, and patches were only fashionable in the 1970s.

Eventually, the pretences fail entirely, and one’s poverty (and much else besides) is exposed to the world. The Canadian military has been keeping up appearances for a long time — pretty much since the early 1970s — but the charade is rapidly coming to an end. The list of the woes of the Canadian military was perhaps best summarized by the Globe & Mail’s brilliant editorial cartoonist Brian Gable when he depicted an Iltis Jeep suspended beneath a Sea King Helicopter, coming to the aid of our stranded second-hand Upholder class submarine, HMCS Chicoutimi.

Our ragged military’s near-naked condition has finally become clear to all Canadians. The federal Liberals (the main cause of the military’s woes — although their felonious neglect has certainly been abetted by many others) have pledged to help out with some new fig leaves. One election promise that the new Minister of Defence, Bill Graham, has sworn to make good on concerns the creation of a 5,000 man "Peace-Keeping Brigade" for the Army. This is welcome news, but even as dishevelled a beggar as our military would do well to take this gift with caution.

Brigades in the normal military sense are operational units in conventional warfare and remain useful administrative and training organizations in peacetime. A brigade normally consists of a balanced grouping of battalions and regiments which become used to working closely with each other under a single command, so that the combat arms units and their support arms develop working relationships that enhance operational efficiency.

Brigades normally have long-time tasks and might have their equipment and component units tailored accordingly — Canada’s 4^th Mechanized Brigade Group in Germany in the 1970s and ‘80s long remained oriented for mechanized warfare against the Soviet team, while the 2^nd Brigade in Ontario was built around the Canadian Airborne Regiment and light operations in a difficult logistical environment — such as northern Canada.

The usual organization of one of our Regular Force Brigades through most of the Cold War consisted of three infantry battalions, an artillery regiment, an armoured regiment, with support from a Service Battalion (for supply, maintenance, etc.) and a handful of company-sized units such as a helicopter squadron or an ambulance company. The entire group had around 5,000 personnel and reflected our long experience in three major wars and a variety of Pearsonian-style peacekeeping missions.

By dint of enormous effort and generous dollops of imagination, the Army has kept the Brigade concept alive through decades of darning and patching. Our infantry, armoured and artillery units may have only about 1/3 of the raw combat power they mustered thirty years ago (for more on this see "Our Incredible Shrinking Army" in our October 2003 newsletter.), but their three surviving brigade groupings have remained intact. Our Reserves are also lumped into Brigade groupings that reflect concepts for how they might be structured if ever mobilized.

Support units and major equipments have been peeled off, there have been critical shortages of fuel, ammunition and money for collective training, and personnel have been stripped out of combat units to be stuffed into overseas deployments, but we have still stuck with our brigade organizations.

Now the Liberals propose an infusion of 5,000 men into a new "Peacekeeping Brigade". This is most welcome news, as the infusion of manpower and (hopefully) new equipments would be most welcome. However, there are several problems with the whole concept.

For the last couple of decades, the defence community has become used to hearing the word ‘peacekeeping’ used by any number of people without any military experience — let alone any experience on UN or multinational force deployment — to justify a diminished Canadian military. "What do we need tanks/submarines/fighters etc. for? We’re a nation of peacekeepers" — a refrain the author has heard on countless phone-in shows and speaking engagements. Likewise, the need for hard training and robust military units has been questioned as being unnecessary for "peacekeeping".

A couple of years ago, one of those otherwise splendid "Heritage Moments" on television showed the arrival of a Canadian peacekeeper in Cyprus in 1964, inserting himself between quarrelling Greek Cypriots and Turks while bidding them to go quietly about their business. The reality was quite different. Sean Maloney’s excellent history Canada and UN Peacekeeping: Cold War by Other Means, 1945-1970 decisively argues that Canada engaged in UN peacekeeping for much more strategic reasons than selfless altruism.

Moreover, some memories of Cyprus in 1964 and 1974 are a lot bloodier than the Heritage Moment suggests: One acquaintance of the author recounted the successful machinegun ambush of a platoon of Greek-Cypriot national guardsmen by a troop of Canadian Ferret armoured cars, killing them all to rub in the lesson that we really did not like having anti-tank weapons fired at our vehicles. There are veterans of the supposedly disgraced Canadian Airborne Regiment with memories of episodes of similar violence from 1974; and some of our troops in the former Yugoslavia also took part in a lot of combat. (If one is to acquire Sean Maloney’s book on peacekeeping, pick up Maloney’s and John Llambias’ Chances for Peace as well -- an illuminating collection of accounts from Canadian soldiers in the former Yugoslavia).

In a recent conference in Toronto, a number of Canada’s defence experts were gathered under one roof to talk about the future of peacekeeping… except that the word itself seldom came up and what was discussed were "interventions", "stabilizations", "reactions" and similar terms. One speaker, a particularly and deservedly prominent member of this community, did discuss peacekeeping — using imagery from the classic Monty Python "Dead Parrot" comedy sketch as he did so. Peacekeeping was a "dead parrot, and nailing it to the perch does not mean it is alive. It is an ex-parrot, it has ceased to be."

It was at that same conference that the Minister of Defence reminded what he thought would be a friendly crowd of his government’s promise to provide a Peacekeeping Brigade of 5,000 troops. To no great surprise (except, perhaps, his) the audience was not all that warm to the idea… perhaps because most of them were former soldiers who have heard the promises of Canada’s governments all too many times to believe them. Moreover, returning that which was taken away from them earlier, does not generally inspire much gratitude from the recipients.

Oh, the troops will be welcome all right — they are badly needed. But why hire a complete set of 5,000 — with officers and NCOs in their usual generous proportions? Why not add the funding necessary for 5,000 more privates and corporals, and use them to fill out the deflated battalions and regiments we already have? Might it be possible to have three full rifle companies per infantry battalion once more? Let us fill the skeletal battalions we have, rather then let them continue to starve while gazing with envy on a fat new one. Also, let us fill the sagging armour and artillery regiments we already have, the field engineer squadrons, and let us not forget the badly depleted service battalions either. Remember that these existing units possess vast experience in peacekeeping and such -- so why create inexperienced new units?

In the pledge for a Peacekeeping Brigade —and given that modern peacekeeping demands well-trained and well-armed and equipped troops -- does this mean the government was planning to dig up the money for a whole new brigade’s set of equipment? After all, 5,000 troops need trucks, armoured vehicles, radios, tents and a host of other necessaries. In previous peacekeeping missions we have also found that mortars, anti-tank missiles, thermal imagers, heavy machineguns and other items could be a very present help in time of trouble. More of these will certainly be needed.

It might be added that many of our soldiers think their body armour is inadequate (and who would know better?). They also think a more generous distribution of night vision goggles and GPS devices would be right handy. It would also be a good idea not to be red-faced again over the bright green "camouflage" our soldiers have to wear in dull brown desert environments in the future. Could we buy a brigade’s worth of desert camouflage too?

Nor should one ever forget the Reservists — the Federal Liberals did promise the kit and funding for several thousand of them for the promised peacekeeping brigade, and they could really use the funding for more training and equipment.

If, perchance, the Minister of Defence does get energetic about filling out the ranks, there are significant savings to be made in reducing the civilian component of National Defence Headquarters. Some serious reform in NDHQ is long overdue, particularly given the number of ‘general equivalent’ civil servants there. We trimmed the number of generals and admirals in recent years, but their civilian counterparts on the defence payroll grew in numbers.

All in all, we can make our Army look respectable again, and Ottawa really need not spend that much on tailoring if they are careful.

The Canadian comedy troupe "The Kids in the Hall" has long broken up and gone their separate ways, but they did leave some enduring skits and characters. Among these was a sketch where a fly-weight bar-brawler felt compelled to continually pick fights with the largest and toughest men there. He would poke and pester his chosen opponent to the point where a violent confrontation was inevitable in the alley behind the pub. Invariably, one punch would knock him down, but the berserk bantam would pop up again, refusing to admit defeat even after everyone else (including his unharmed opponent) grew bored or disgusted and left — whereupon the bruised and battered instigator would claim victory.

Another superb set of comedians had their finger on the same phenomenon in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This 1970s cult film had two skits that every student of terrorism should keep in mind. The first concerned an ‘Anarcho-syndicalist’ peasant who continues to insult King Arthur until the outraged monarch reacts; whereupon the medieval collectivist cries out "Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed! You saw him repressing me, didn’t you?" Another skit concerned a knight much like the Kids in the Hall’s half-sized belligerent — a challenger who regarded the traumatic amputation of his arm as a "mere flesh wound" and continued to challenge Arthur even after losing all four limbs — finally screaming insults and more threats as the exasperated king rode on.

Terrorism, like other forms of asymmetrical warfare, operates on much the same dynamic. The terrorist is inevitably much weaker and smaller in terms of conventional strength --although, in that target-rich environment where the government is restrained by law and custom and the terrorist remains covert, he has the advantage in applicable strength over the authority he attacks. In short, the bantam bar brawler is attacking a much larger and more powerful man whose hands remain tied behind his back, or is dueling with an opponent whose sword must remain sheathed.

It is an old principle that terrorism is really only possible in a democratic society where the authority is constrained in its ability to respond, or else in a chaotic society (such as Egypt, Indonesia or Russia), where the authority is weak through poverty, neglect or indifference.

It is inevitable, however, that the terrorist seldom truly appreciates what the restraint of a democratic government does for him. Instead, if the terrorist is a revolutionary, this restraint becomes a target itself — understanding that, if it vanishes, the revolutionary has somehow toppled the state itself, and set the precondition for a war which he thinks he shall win because he is mentally prepared for it.

There are a lot of Leftists wearing rusting chains and concrete boots sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic off Argentina and Uruguay who thought this way; and they are surrounded by the skeletons of their families, friends, colleagues, etc. In one way they were right, they could successfully topple a fragile democratic state by goading the authorities into abandoning the restraints of law and legitimacy. They were dead wrong about what the results would be once they accomplished this.

The Jihadists of al Qaeda and related organizations don’t think in terms of class war and revolution in the way that the Marxists of the 1970s did. They are making an even older mistake when it comes to daring Western societies to set aside their restraints: They think we are all weak and corrupt, and thus deserve to go down into defeat at the hands of their glorious selves… There were a set of ideologues back in the 1930s and early 1940s who thought much the same way.

The Jihadist threat today is an ideological one and there are only three ways to successfully deal with an ideologically driven security threat.

The first way is to smash the populations that support the ideology, to fight violence with more violence. This works — we haven’t seen a real threat from Nazism since Soviet tanks rumbled up the Unter der Linden in Berlin; and Japanese Imperialism died when an Anglo-American fleet dropped anchor in Tokyo harbor.

The second way to defeat an ideology is to seal it off from the rest of the World and let its own internal inconsistencies rot it out. By and large, this is what the Western World did to Soviet Marxism-Leninism, and it worked.

The third way to defeat in ideology is broadly similar to the second option — to try to limit its effects on your own population and to limit the potential of the ideologues to damage your society. With the passage of time (two to four decades), the threat will abate as the ideology ceases to maintain its attraction.

By and large, the third way is the one currently being pursued by all Western governments. The second way is not possible — we need Middle Eastern oil, and the vast immigration from the Islamic world into the West means pockets of would-be Jihadists exist almost everywhere.

Our problem is that 20 to 40 years is a long time, and the style of attack that the Jihadists dream of can cause immense harm. We can survive one 9-11 style attack every few years, but one every year (or worse) would be too expensive — psychologically and materially -- to tolerate. Moreover, the first option reflects the "clash of civilizations", which is actually a situation that many Jihadists wish to realize. They want such a war because, like many terrorists before them, they believe it would catapult them to greatness within their own society, and that their fervor and revolutionary purity could win out over Western decadence and laziness, etc.

The first option might be thrust on us before this crisis is over, and this is what we fear. However, what we are really afraid of is not the possibility that we might lose such a war, but what that war would do to us. Here is where the Jihad movement has been making its potentially fatal miscalculation.

In discussing the War on terrorism last year, a prominent Hungarian-Canadian columnist told the author what Europeans really fear… and many others have since confirmed what he said. Europe had an abominable experience in the first half of the 20^th Century with violence along ethnic lines, and most of the continent would do almost anything to avoid returning to a similar situation. Today’s Europeans fear the passions that their grandparents knew.

The rest of the Western World fears warfare, primarily because our both World Wars were extraordinarily violent as they were primarily internal to the West. Also, Western democratic societies are — once their willpower has been summoned — extremely good at unleashing destruction. Read history, the fact that Westerners wrote most of it should tell you something…

If successful Jihadist attacks force us to drop the third way and turn to that war of civilizations they desire, the outcome would be an episode of violence that could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people, smash whole cities, and ruthlessly shatter the confidence of an entire society. And afterwards, secure once more, we would be extremely sorry and write histories and stories about how kind and noble the pre-war Muslims were — just like we romanticize about peoples on a long list that stretches from the Aztecs to the Zulus.

Al Qaeda and the Jihadists are a dangerous threat today, and the modern security environment certainly has its critics, not least among whom are the apologists and supporters of the Jihadists. However, it might be in their best interests that we do not relax our defences, and they should be careful about what they wish for.

Evidently, like many people in the world — if not the United States — I am not a big fan of President George W. Bush. However, I do not despise him nor do I hold him in contempt. Sometimes I grudgingly think he is doing a decent job at being the President of the United States. Moreover, were I an American elector this November, he would have my vote.

The first reason why he would have my non-existent vote is simple enough — anyone that viciously denounced by so many smug actors, in so many partisan books, and by such a piece of cinematic McCarthyism as Fahrenheit 911 must be doing something right. Anyone that the likes of George Soros sink millions of dollars into unseating must be worth supporting.

Regarding the first, the rock singer Alice Cooper made some rather interesting remarks at some American musical industry awards show in Miami during the 2004 Republican Convention. A number of entertainment celebrities had stampeded out of New York (where they were busy demonstrating their terrific goodness by posturing against the Republicans) to make the show and be seen there. Cooper, usually better known in the 1970s for being one of the founders of heavy metal rock and wearing outrageous make-up, reminded his fellow entertainers that they really should cool it with their opinions about politics and policy. After all, as Mr. Cooper observed of his fellow entertainers, "most of us dropped out of high school" and, he went on to add, know little about most issues.

Bravo, Mr. Cooper! I never bought one of your albums as a teenager, but I think I will now. I might even listen to it.

I do not buy political biographies or, worse still, autobiographies by politicians (or their ghostwriters). Neither do I buy books about a current administration. Yes, the author usually has a partisan axe of some kind to grind, but I’m a commentator about current events too — and know well enough that for real accuracy one should wait long enough for political trenchancy to fade into history. Seeing the stacks of Bush bashing books now, or when I saw those taking stripes out of Clinton when he was President, I pass them by and wait for the next US election to invalidate the lot.

Given the tons of Bush-bashing material now weighing down the shelves at my usual book store, I hope the staff member who orders their inventory gets the sack next November when the store’s owners find they are stuck with tons of valueless paper… not that this prevents their political science department from sitting on tons of Chomsky books. Otherwise, if a "Day After Tomorrow" scenario unfolds and we are somehow subjected to an instant ice age, I know where to find a large stock of fuel while waiting for the chance to rebuild civilization. Best of all, the political science department is right next to the New Age Spirituality department, so I could remain toasty warm for months!

What really tips my sympathies in the direction of President Bush are two other considerations: The first is the sweeping arrogance of the contemporary liberal mind, the second rests with observations from history — that the best and brightest sometimes can’t be trusted to run a popsicle stand, let alone a government.

Since the late Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy it has become truly disturbing to watch the Western World’s liberal elites at work. One first starts with an assumption that the most intelligent are best suited to govern (of which more anon); then one assumes that the truly intelligent are those most like themselves — a natural conceit in any circle.

Jacques Ellul, in his classic 1961 exploration Propaganda, pointed out that the intelligentsia in any society are usually the first to fall in line with any propagandist; while Joe Six-Pack and company tend to be much more resistant to it — inevitably distrusting something new until it is proven. One should remember the story about the Emperor’s new clothes and how everyone looked on his naked majesty and exclaimed how marvelous his apparel looked. Care to guess how modern liberals and conservatives are dividing?

The intelligentsia in the last four decades have largely come to embrace post-modernist thinking and the ‘Progressive’ illusions generated by the old Left. To them, society can be improved if wisely governed and administered by the elite; failures in the past can be discounted (history carries little weight with Post-Modernists or Marxists), and the hoi polloi really cannot be trusted to think for themselves. This elite is self-defining and anyone — as P.J. O’Rorke pointed out in Give War a Chance — can join by adopting the group-think without having to have real concrete accomplishments to prove worthiness for elite status. It is plain to contemporary liberals that they deserve power, and that any government that does not share their assumptions is somehow less than legitimate.

Indeed, our elites seem to disfavor people who have measurable aspects of success — athletes, entrepreneurs, objective scientists (pop junk science is quite acceptable, provided it is ‘progressive’ in its conclusions), soldiers and so on.

The flavor of the group-think this year is that Bush is a disaster and must go; and that surely only some dense nincompoop would disagree with them.

Conservatives are not without their flaws too, having been trapped in a hostile intellectual climate for most of our lives. We have become quite bitter and are locked in an increasingly determined rear-guard action, desperately trying to hang on to the speed brakes as our societies accelerate into an unknown and uncharted territory. We do have two advantages that liberals do not share — we tend to trust our instincts and we read history. It is not that we are against progress, it’s just that we’d like to see where we are going first.

It is lovely to be intelligent, but not when you let your intelligence override instinct; suppress experience; and cloud your vision with wonderful dreams about what could be.

In the Province of Ontario, we had the socialist New Democratic Party govern us from 1990 to 1995 under Bob Rae, a charming Rhodes Scholar and very bright. It was an economic disaster. The recovery came later under Mike Harris, a Conservative ex-teacher and one time golf-pro of decidedly plebian tastes and appearances. Harris didn’t know much, but he knew enough to wrestle the Province’s books back into shape and make some very long overdue changes to our public institutions — not that anyone thanked him for it.

President Clinton was, likewise, a Rhodes Scholar and evidently very bright. President Bush the Younger seems much less so --although this appearance might be deceiving, Bush did go to Yale after all, and did learn how to fly a fighter plane. Perhaps he isn’t that swift, but neither feat can be achieved by an average intellect. Yet Bush is a doer rather than a thinker, while the Clinton years will probably go down in history as a decade of missed opportunities.

As an aside, I wonder how many people prefer Kerry over Bush simply because one looks more patrician than the other? Isn’t it one of the supposed contemporary values to look past appearances?

I also note that Canadians who feel that Bush is of a lesser intellect seemed to have no problems with Jean Chretien, who illustrates another point. There is a place for intelligence, and there is another one for cunning -- which is applied intelligence. Chretien was not charismatic or clever, but he — however much so many of us disagreed with him — knew to stick to what he knew. In revolutionary or extremist ideological circles, the geniuses usually go off and make a complete hash of things — one can think of Robespierre making a solemn ass of himself with his worship of reason in 1794’s ‘Festival of the Supreme Being’. However, it is usually the Stalins and Hitlers who end up running things. Of course, these are not good arguments for the likes of Bush, but one should also remember Winston Churchill’s much less than spectacular academic achievements.

It wouldn’t do to describe Bush as another Churchill either… but Americans might be happy with an analogy from their Civil War. There were brilliant well educated generals like McClelland or Halleck, but when it came to wartime performance, they proved spectacularly inept. The best battlefield commander of the war was the eccentric and inarticulate Confederate Stonewall Jackson, and U.S. Grant’s peacetime record, taciturn nature and unassuming appearance didn’t inspire much confidence either. Perhaps Grant didn’t know much, but he knew what had to be done and went after victory tenaciously — much like Bush the Younger, really.

There are times when instinct is more important than articulate intelligence… and this is one of them.

"Do you suppose there might be a couple of journalists out there guilty of the sort of hypocrisy they find so shameful in others — say, editorializing against vouchers for poor kinds while sending their own children to pricey private schools?"

-- Bernard Goldberg, Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite, 2003

"Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We’re in crisis and we’re dragging the rest of the world with us."

-- Irshad Manji, The Trouble with Islam, 2003

"If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known."