The Canadian Peacekeeping Myth (Merged Topics)

[McG]

http://army.ca/quotes/?shownum=1553

 

[geo]

You can't protect people just with blue berets and a sidearm. It requires -- and this is the difficult bit for Canada -- it requires military capability.
- Michael Ignatieff , Jan 2008

If Mr Ignatief & Mr Dion both understand this concept, why are we pissing about with this uncertainty of what we'll do after March 09?


You or someone else wages war
Someone asks you to intervene and bring peace to the area
If both parties are tired and want peace but don't trust the other.... then Blue Berets come on & Peacekeeping is possible BUT, if either party does not want to know anything about peace, then Helmets come on & Peace making is the only possible alternative.

If we don't have the stomach to contribute to peace making in support of the legitimate government of the country, they we should shut our yap & get out of the way.­..

 

[MarkOttawa]

Liberal Eugene Lang
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/threads/67585.0.html
points out realities that those such a Prof. Michael Byers
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/01/were-tired-of-byers.html
choose to ignore (reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act):

The 1950s ideal of non-violent missions for our soldiers flies in the face of current reality
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/570442

Canada's involvement in United Nations peacekeeping missions has mythical status in this country. Our rich history in peacekeeping – a concept invented in the 1950s by Canadian diplomats, notably Lester B. Pearson – should be the cornerstone of Canada's foreign policy today, according to many Canadians.

Unfortunately, the allure of non-violent peacekeeping does not correspond to the realities of today's UN missions.

UN operations are routinely characterized as a reflection of Canada's values and consistent with our appropriate role in the world. They are portrayed as non-violent, and are contrasted favourably with combat-oriented operations, such as the NATO mission in Afghanistan, of which Canada is an integral part. The fact that Canada's participation in UN blue-helmeted missions is virtually non-existent today is often bemoaned.

Peacekeeping reminds us of an important post-war Canadian role in international affairs – symbolized by our innovative involvement in Suez in the 1950s, and in Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s. Peacekeeping also helps with Canada's self-definition by setting us apart from the Americans. For many Canadians, a foreign policy anchored in peacekeeping equates with a defensive military, one that rarely if ever is engaged in violence, combat or war.

But today's peacekeeping operations do not resemble those of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Those earlier missions were comprised of forces interposed between previously warring states or groups that had achieved some measure of peace that could be kept. By contrast, today's UN missions are typically in the midst of regional or civil wars, insurgencies or genocide.

The largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world today is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The force has been expanded from an initial 5,000 troops to 17,000 today. It is a complex mission operating in a violent and unstable environment, involving a multitude of factions and states. Scores of UN peacekeepers have been killed since the operation began in 1999. Today the Congo is falling apart. This mission is anything but peaceful and non-violent.

We hear a lot in Canada about the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur. Some 200,000 civilians have been killed in Darfur since 2003 at the hands of a Sudanese government allied militia known as the Janjaweed. The Bush administration called the Darfur crisis genocide. The atrocities have continued virtually unabated, notwithstanding the presence of a significant African Union force, which has now morphed into this much larger combined AU-UN operation. Darfur is a war zone – there is little peace to keep.

In 2005, then prime minister Paul Martin wanted to deploy the Canadian Forces to Darfur if the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a mission [it didn't--and Sudan still will not let any significanct number of non-African--especially Western--forces be involved in the currrent mission]. Canada's military leadership assessed the situation on the ground at that time and advised the prime minister that it could be more dangerous for Canadian troops in Darfur than in Kandahar.

Those who argue for Canadian involvement in blue-helmeted missions on the grounds that they involve little violence and are basically exercises in military diplomacy also forget the experiences in the Balkans (where the Canadian Forces were deployed in significant numbers for nearly 15 years) and Rwanda during the 1990s.

The Dutch led a UN peacekeeping operation in Srebrenica in 1995 that witnessed the killing of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys by the army of the Republik of Srpska. Ask the Dutch if they think modern peacekeeping is non-violent.

Likewise the Belgians, who had 10 soldiers slaughtered in one day in 1994 in the ill-fated UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, which was led by Canadian general Roméo Dallaire. When all was said and done at least half a million Rwandan civilians were massacred in that conflict. Both of these UN missions took place in the middle of civil and regional wars where there was nothing resembling a peace to keep.

Today there is increasing talk, including from Condoleezza Rice, of sending UN peacekeepers to Somalia. The Canadian Forces know something of that country, having been deployed there as part of a UN effort in the early 1990s. That mission was withdrawn a few years later after the UN and the Americans suffered significant casualties at the hands of Somali militias. Today, according to the UN, Somalia is the world's worst humanitarian emergency – a country rife with factional violence, and in conflict with its neighbours. It is on the verge of total anarchy once again.

Canadians are rightfully proud of our peacekeeping history. In a world full of war, peacekeeping conveys an image of Canada using its military in ways other than fighting. It is an image that many Canadians cling to and even cherish. Canadians do not like the idea of our military killing people in wars. We do like the idea of Canada keeping the peace. Unfortunately, the allure of non-violent peacekeeping that is embedded in the collective Canadian consciousness is an illusion in the 21st century.

None of this is to say that Canada should rule out contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. But we should do so with our eyes wide open. Some suggest that if we stick to peacekeeping, we don't need to spend a lot of money equipping and training the Canadian Forces to fight – that we can have a military on the cheap because peacekeeping is not terribly onerous. The recent history of UN peacekeeping suggests nothing could be further from the truth.

Eugene Lang, former chief of staff to two ministers of national defence, is co-author (with Janice Gross Stein) of the bestselling and award-winning book The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar (Viking Canada, 2007).

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

‘Bogus’ peacekeeping?
It wasn’t long ago that Michael Ignatieff had harsh words for Canada
Article Link

Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader, is lavish in his adoration for the country and the people he wishes to lead. His recently published book, True Patriot Love, which dovetailed with his ascension to the Liberal party leadership, is replete with fuzzy bromides about Canada and its “quietly but intensely patriotic” citizens.

Yet Michael Ignatieff, Harvard professor and public intellectual, was once slightly more harsh toward his native land. Following a 2005 lecture at the University of Dublin’s Trinity College, Ignatieff excoriated Canadians for trading on Canada’s “entirely bogus reputation as peacekeepers” for 40 years and for favouring “hospitals and schools and roads” over international citizenship. “If you are a human rights defender and you want something done to stop [a] massacre, you have to go to the Pentagon, because no one else is serious,” Ignatieff said.

“It’s disgusting in my own country, and I love my country, Canada, but they would rather bitch about their rich neighbour to the south than actually pay the note,” he said, in response to a question about peacekeeping. “To pay the bill to be an international citizen is not something that they want to do.”

Ignatieff gave the lecture while he was director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The talk, which received brief mention in Canadian media at the time, reiterated Ignatieff’s belief that the U.S. is a force for good in the world. “Don’t forget that the speech given by a U.S. president that most committed the United States to the promotion of human rights and democracy in the Arab world was given by George W. Bush,” he said. He later told the Irish Times that he was taken aback by the “waves of anti-American and anti-Bush feeling in an Irish audience.” It was in the question-and-answer session which followed, and which has never been reported, that Ignatieff was most critical of Canada.

He was also seemingly at odds with the party he would come to lead four years later. Peacekeeping is the stuff of lore within the Liberal party, which bills itself as the founding father of Canada’s traditional role as a peaceful international referee to the world. As Liberal external affairs minister, Lester B. Pearson is credited with inventing the very concept when he championed the first armed United Nations peacekeeping force in 1956. “There tends to be a strong association with peacekeeping” within the Liberal party, says author and former Liberal strategist John Duffy. “Liberals are proud of their role in this tradition.”

Ignatieff, circa 2005, begged to differ. Introduced by Trinity College professor Ron Hill as “a challenging liberal thinker,” Ignatieff spoke favourably about America’s peacekeeping capabilities and the need to use “men with guns” when protecting the world’s vulnerable. Ignatieff had already backed away from his support of the Iraq war when he gave the speech, though he still praised George W. Bush’s foreign policy at a time when then-Liberal prime minister Paul Martin was attacking Bush for what he said was the U.S. president’s lack of “global conscience.” Canada certainly didn’t fare well in Ignatieff’s speech; Ignatieff portrays the country as a somewhat frustrated, reflexively anti-American middling power that has become something of a pretender on the world stage.
More on link

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I'm not an Iggy fan, but he had it right in this speech.

I wonder how well it is playing in the Chretien wing of the Liberal Party right now....

 

[GAP]

I didn't say he was wrong, but you can bet the CPC is going to have a hayday with this one on top of the other ads.....

 

[McG]

I didn't say he was wrong, but you can bet the CPC is going to have a hayday with this one on top of the other ads.....

It might be a little difficult to build attack adds hitting on policies where your target has voiced a position in line with your own.

 

[AmmoTech90]

It might be a little difficult to build attack adds hitting on policies where your target has voiced a position in line with your own.

No, just spin and dramatize them so he is shown as a hypocrite and use it as proof that the PC's policies are in reality the honest beliefs of the opposition leader and then question why he is against them...
It's a gold mine for the PCs should they decide (and I would be surprised if they didn't) stoop to attack adds (again).

 

[Roy Harding]

I thought the contents of an email I sent to both Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff on 24 May of this year may be apropros:

Gentlemen:

After the proroguing of parliament late last year, I had hoped that both of you would find higher ground from which to conduct your business.  A hope, alas, which you have failed to fulfil.

Mr. Harper:  I don’t watch a lot of television, but I happened to catch your party’s smear of Mr. Ignatieff last night.  It is disgusting, uncalled for, and smacks of desperation.  Just for fun, Mr. Harper, consider that as a member of the Canadian Forces for 25 years I spent a CONSIDERABLE amount of time residing beyond our borders – am I less of a Canadian for it?

Mr. Ignatieff:  Your recent rejoinder to Mr. Harper (issued at the Gander gathering of Liberals) that "If you mess with me, I will mess with you until I'm done" smacks of a similar vein of disgusting, uncalled for, and perhaps desperate behaviour.  I had hoped that you might have the personal integrity, dignity, and self-confidence to rise above the baiting.  A hope you have dashed.

Both of you:  You are behaving like two boys in a schoolyard – and what you need is to have your heads smacked together.  The time you are spending hurling insults and challenges at each other is time NOT being spent on the very real problems of the day.  Shame on both of you.  Do something else to amuse your inner children and get down to business.

You both disgust me.  For pity’s sake – start behaving like the gentlemen and leaders you claim to be.


Roy Harding

Terrace, BC

Nothing either have done since has changed my opinion.


Yoy

 

[Old Sweat]

Well said, Roy, and welcome back to the net.

 

[Edward Campbell]

It might be a little difficult to build attack adds hitting on policies where your target has voiced a position in line with your own.

Agreed, this is not good ammo for the Conservatives, but there are three other groups who might find its useful:

1. The Bloc;

2. The NDP; and

3. Those Liberals (about half of 'em?) who do not approve of Ignatieff's style or substance.

My guess: it will be used, by all three groups.

 

[ltmaverick25]

This is exactly why I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of Ignatieff.  I beleive his original speech that he gave while in the US is dead on and needs some genuine debate here in Canada.  However, now that he has gotten into Canadian politics he is shying away from his previous viewpoints, which I think is a shame.  Also, extremely aggrevating is the fact that Harper and Ignatieff seem to have way more in common then they have differences, when both of them are being honest anyway.  Ignatieff joined the wrong party.  Now, instead of having two possibly great leaders working together, they are pulling themselves down working against each other.

I have always had great faith in Harper and I still do.  Similarly I have always had great faith in Ignatieff, and still do.  They need to stop worrying about being politically correct and talk about what they beleive in, instead of crapping on each other for essentially having similar views.

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

[quore]“entirely bogus reputation as peacekeepers” for 40 years and for favouring “hospitals and schools and roads” over international citizenship. “If you are a human rights defender and you want something done to stop [a] massacre, you have to go to the Pentagon, because no one else is serious,” Ignatieff said.[/quote]

I lived through the National Energy Program and have little good to say about any Liberal but...

The effectiveness of peacekeeping missions could be questioned.  The peacekeepers themselves have been used for political and strategic games.  The peacekeepers in Croatia served as a buffer between Croats and Serbs only until Croatia built up sufficient forces to continue the tit-for-tat ethnic cleansing.  The Serbs killed thousands of Bosnian Muslims right under the noses of non-Canadian peacekeepers.  When Egypt was readying for war with Israel in 1973 they booted out the peacekeepers.  The Cyprus mission was generally effective but the two sides came to blows in 1974 and sorted things out for themselves.  Separation of warring parties does lead to reduction in tension on a day to day basis but the final political solution often seems to demand war.

In Rwanda, had the troops been poured in rather than pulled out they could have been effective but it was not a classic peacekeeping mission.

 

[lavoie020]

I don't like Ignatief and the liberals... but on this matter, he is bang on. Peacekeeping as we know it is useless and dangerous. Send 1000 soldiers in a war-torn country (when 10 000 is necessairy), with barely enough ammunition to defend themselves and tie their hands with rules of engagement so tight that even the ones who wrote them are not sure about them, is just non-sense.

Think about it, how many lifes could we have saved in Rwanda if we had had a forces equivalent to the one deployed in Afghanistan? How many of our soldiers would not have to withness genocide if we could have had the tools to act and stop it when it began?

The peacekeeping way as we know it is dead. Someone once said, if you want peace, prepare for war, it couldn't be more true.

 

[ltmaverick25]

As much as some of us agree with Ignatieff's original statements about peacekeeping before he entered politics, it is important to realize that now that he is involved in Canadian politics, he is backtracking on his previous statements.  Flip flopping if you will.  As I said before, I think Ignatieff's original statements are bang on, but if he becomes the Prime Minister, he will forget all about his previous stance and adopt a more politically correct Canadian stance.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The CPC can use it to attack Iggy with "faint praise" basically poisioning the well iggy wishes to draw from. It would have been refreshing for him to state the same stuff publicly and tell people that they been keeping alive a myth which can cause harm, but he seems to be showing a lack of spine to carry his convictions with. Harper is to busy in survival mode to become what he could be.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Agreed, this is not good ammo for the Conservatives, but there are three other groups who might find its useful:

1. The Bloc;

2. The NDP; and

3. Those Liberals (about half of 'em?) who do not approve of Ignatieff's style or substance.

My guess: it will be used, by all three groups.

Edward,

Does this not then indirectly play in the favour of the Conservatives by having the left side of the Liberals bleed back to NDP?

 

[ModlrMike]

Edward,

Does this not then indirectly play in the favour of the Conservatives by having the left side of the Liberals bleed back to NDP?

Oh, the irony. This is exactly the position the PC, Reform and Alliance parties found themselves in prior to the uniting of the right. Certainly a divide and conquer situation in the making... if the Torries can take proper advantage.

 

[Roy Harding]

Like others here - I actually (mostly) agree with Mr. Ignatieff's original statement.

I served under the UN on two deployments (UNIIMOG, 88-89 and UNPROFOR, 93-94).  I subsequently served under NATO command in SFOR (3 tours) and Op APOLLO (02).

From a soldier's perspective - NATO is better, for a lot of reasons not germane to this thread.

I have my own theories about how the whole UN Peacekeeping idea has deteriorated - but once again they are not germane to this thread.  Suffice to say that I think they were originally a great idea - but they became watered down over the years.

I, however, am a (retired) soldier - and necessarily have that point of view.  Mr. Ignatieff (as someone else has pointed out) is a politician - and needs to reconcile his past remarks with his current portfolio of Leader of the Loyal Opposition.

He's not in a position that I envy.

 

[zipperhead_cop]

Well, if nothing else, in 2011 when the battle group leaves and the PRT should be staying, hopefully whomever is in power will give it the green light and skip the political BS.