Israel Intended to Kill Our Soldier

I've been thinking a lot about the death of Major Kruedener in Lebanon the other day. A lot of the speculation seems to revolve around the question of whether the IDF intended to actually shell the UN observation post.

I was in the Royal Canadian Artillery (as a reservist) for three years. Let me tell you what I think.

I was a signaller (that is, a radio-man) in the RCA. I was on a gun for a year, and then in the Command Post for two years. A total of maybe 12 weeks in the field on live fire exercises. And I can tell you, when you're firing live ammunition, you care passionately, all-encompassingly, that every round goes where it's supposed to. If you're even near one of the "safe boxes" around your FOOs or other friendlies, you double-check everything. I know that was the case in every box I was in. (And by double-check I mean triple-check; you normally double-check every round.)

Here's the sum total of the mistakes I saw:

1. We once fired at the wrong time. This was because the fire orders were being given from our regimental commander in a non-standard way. Our rounds went to the right place, but they went before they were supposed to. It was actually my own personal fault, because I misinterpreted the command coming over the radio.
   
2. We once missed the target by a huge margin. The command post officer failed to double-check the calculations from the technician, and sent the fire order without checking. Our observers immediately radioed in to say the rounds were off target and to check again.

We were high school kids, mostly. We trained a few weeks in the summer, a few weekends in the year, and one evening a week. We were not the professional, highly-trained units in the IDF. And our guns were Korean War relics. (Literally, the date the barrels were cast was stamped right on 'em. There wasn't a gun in our battery cast after 1954. My regiment has since updated to lighter, more accurate howitzers.)

My conclusion is that someone was ordering fire on the UN observer post. Maybe they saw it as a calculated risk, because there were Hezbollah units nearby. But that means they knew there was a chance of hitting it, and they took that chance. For ten hours. Despite repeated calls from the UN post, pleading them to stop.

On that chance, they lost, and four peacekeepers are dead. One was a Canadian.

Any reason to feel okay with that any more? Yeah, not for me either.

So when Stephen Harper waves his hand at the IDF's role in this, when Stephen Harper asks "what were they doing there?" instead of "why is our nation's son dead?" -- I refuse to accept it.

Bill Turner was a command post officer in our regiment. I worked with him many times. We filled sandbags together, for god's sake, in 30 degree weather on the Mattawa plains. He was killed in Afghanistan in April.

Al Prentice was another gunner in my regiment. We went through our basic training, artillery training, and signaller training together. We've had more beers together than I can count. We ate wings together on my nineteenth birthday. He'll be rotated to Afghanistan this September.

These lives could be tossed aside just as easily. Will Stephen Harper care?

I'm calling on Mr Harper to support our troops, first and last. To refuse to use our men and women as pieces in some game where political capital is the currency. The real currency is life, Mr Harper, human life, that you and I agree can be risked to help people, to help keep peace.

Mr Harper may be willing to sacrifice Major Kruedener and Lieutenant Turner and Sergeant Prentice in the name of political expediency. I am not. And I won't forget Mr Harper's shameful abdication of his duty to his nation, and to the men and women who fight at his command.

Mission Accomplished, Mister Prime Minister

Stephen Harper's five priorities, as he laid them out for us during the election campaign, were:

• Cleaning up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act
• Cutting the GST
• Cracking down on crime
• Increasing financial assistance for parents
• Working with the provinces to establish a wait-times guarantee for patients

Then came July, when they had mysteriously morphed into:

• cleaning up the federal government
• cutting taxes
• cracking down on crime
• supporting families
• strengthening our country at home and around the world

Now, we all know about the bait and switch Harper played this month with the five priorities. And he replaced a definite, measurable one (wait times guarantee) with a vague one (strengthen our country).

The last two weeks have made it clear, though, that Harper is incapable of strengthening our country abroad. In the Israeli conflict, he has called the bombing of civilian populations "measured"; refused to call for a cease-fire even after eight Canadian civilians were killed and 10,000 Canadians were forced to leave the country; refused to call Israel to account for killing one of our UN workers; and actually blamed the UN worker for carrying out a UN mission in the first place.

Other than the US, Israel, and the UK, we are alone in the international community in defending Israel. While we might get a little more credibility from the USA (and we know how useful credibility is with them), we have lost face at every single turn in this crisis.

All we need is an aircraft carrier and a banner.

Afghanistan: End it

You know, I was originally pro the Afghanistan mission. Then, since Canada re-upped its deployment there, I was on the fence. Now, I've moved over to the "get out now" side.

I don't know how we can extricate ourselves before our mission ends. But unless we get a clear mandate for what we're going to achieve there, and unless that mandate is consistent with actual improvements to the lives of Afghanis, we have to leave.

It comes down to what I've said about every UN mission Canada joins in on: it all depends on the mandate. If we have clear objectives and clear means of achieving them, then we can be okay with the mission. (Cyprus is a good example of that, if a little old.)

If we're to fight the insurgents in order to clear the way for a natural gas pipeline, we've gotta bring the soldiers home.