Tragically flawed Afghanistan remembrance

In advance of Remembrance Day, retired Col. Jamie Hammond penned a series of essays in the Times Colonist honouring Canadian military casualties in Afghanistan.

It was, in the long-ago words of a better U.S. president, “altogether fitting and proper” that he did this. It was particularly appropriate that one of the essays highlighted the contribution of women and another remembered families of soldiers.

But as a Canadian who is also a veteran of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, I found the series tragically flawed in at least two important respects. First, the articles were, probably unintentionally, misleading about the reason Canadians were in Afghanistan sacrificing the lives of the men and women Hammond honoured so eloquently.

The essays leave the impression that Canadian forces were in Afghanistan to help Afghans. The photo of the Afghan memorial that accompanied the first article does the same. That impression is comforting, but false. There were, indeed, many Canadians who worked to build schools and hospitals and make life better for civilians. They should be remembered. But that was not why Canada was there. Canadians went to Afghanistan because the U.S. wanted to free up troops for its illegal war on Iraq. It had nothing to do with helping women and girls. The warlords backed by the West have always been as bad as the Taliban on that point. Minister Bill Graham succinctly explained at the time: “Foreign Affairs view was that there is a limit to how much we can constantly say no to the political master in Washington. All we had was Afghanistan to wave. On every other file we were offside.”

The Canadian military hierarchy was eager to accept the task and get into “real combat.” Gen. Rick Hillier reminded us all candidly that the Canadian Forces is not a social-service agency, that its purpose is to kill people. In furtherance of that purpose, he went around the country preaching that we were in Afghanistan to kill “detestable murderers and scumbags” who were threatening western societies. Most of the rest of the coalition recognized that line as pure propaganda.

Eventually, the U.S., U.K. and Canada were left to do the fighting and dying. The lives of many named on the memorial were sacrificed for nothing. The lives of many more who survived were shattered. When we remember Afghanistan, we should consider how long we will allow the U.S. to do this to us.

Second, exclusive Remembrance Day focus on military deaths omits remembrance of the death and displacement of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere, whose numbers far exceed military casualties. Western forces are not the only ones responsible for this outrage, but they are the only ones committing it in our name. Personally, Canadians wish no one harm. But we are benignly indifferent to the humanitarian consequences of continued fealty to Washington.

Hammond writes that: “Afghanistan still has a long way to go.” That is an understatement. Afghanistan is the graveyard of foreign invaders. The British failed twice. The Russians failed. The Americans and Canadians failed. But the suffering of civilians continues.

A relatively sane U.S. president gave us permission to withdraw. For that, we should be thankful and take the opportunity to examine how we might put down our weapons and really engage in building schools and hospitals.

Before the next Remembrance Day, we should consider that Canada is literally fuelling the deadly air campaign in the Middle East; that we are one of the world’s leading arms merchants; and that our bloated military budget is stealing from all of us. We should consider making the government and the Canadian generals explain to us why we plan to allocate more than $75 billion for warships and jet fighters to serve the interests of a deranged U.S. president, while there is still no clean water on First Nations reserves and our teachers buy school supplies with their own money.

Before next Remembrance Day, might we Canadians at least begin to demand that our priorities be reordered to reflect more closely who we like to think we are?

We should always protect the space for those who wish not to romanticize wars, but only to remember and honour friends and relatives lost. On Remembrance Day in particular, I recall my friend, Capt. Gordon O. Walsh. Each of us newly married, we made a lot of plans for things we would do together. He died, unheroically, from a mechanical failure of the helicopter he was flying over Cam Ranh Bay.

I was one of those who buried him with full military honours. He is gone. I am still here. I have had a full and rewarding life. His plans for a life with his family ended — for nothing. The focus of Remembrance Day should be honouring his service, and that of other soldiers — and making a commitment that these stories not be repeated.

Walsh did not die for freedom and democracy any more than did the Canadians who died in the strategically insignificant battle of Vimy Ridge, obediently fighting for the U.K. in a petty imperial struggle that got horribly out of hand, nor did those who went obediently to Afghanistan at the bidding of the U.S. They are not to blame.

But there is blame, and part of it rests with the inadvertent glorification of war that our standard observance of Remembrance Day and the Afghan Memorial foster. Our Remembrance Day observances do not reflect that the lives of our friends and relatives were cut short in wars that could have been avoided and should never be repeated.

It is ironic that Hammond began his series with the final line from And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. That song is a powerful antiwar statement. It is about the senseless waste of Australian lives in the Great War disaster at Gallipoli.

The narrator is a legless veteran. He sings of sitting on his porch and watching the parades passing before him, his comrades getting older and fewer. Hammond’s first piece begins with: “And the young people ask, what are they marching for?” The rest of the line is: “And I ask myself the same question.” With respect, so should we all. Retired law professor William Geimer is a U.S. army veteran and the author of Canada: The Case for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars. He lives in Sooke.