The Famed and Storied Regiment

According to Jim Travers, the scheduled deployment of the 3rd battalion, Royal 22e Régiment in August 2007 is a major political factor in the national political scene, influencing the timing of an election call.

Recall that 22e served with distinction in 2004 in Kabul, Afghanistan and no political hay was made of that deployment.

Recall that francophone soldiers have been serving continuously in Afghanistan, and in all Canadian missions.

Recall that 22e is the "Régiment canadien français", representing not only Québecers, but all French-speaking Canadians.

Recall that 22e fought in every major conflict since 1914, twice in Europe, in Korea and again was stationed in Europe during the cold war as part of NATO deterrence against Soviet forces. The 22e was deployed to peace-keeping and peace-enforcement in Cyprus, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Somalia (as part of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia). A company from the 22e deployed to Kuwait during the first Gulf War. In nearly all of these cases, the majority of Québecers did not favour military involvement. The 22e is not a puppet of provincial sentiment. It is a regiment like any other (although probably better than any other), at the service of Government of Canada, and a unique opportunity for francophone soldiers to serve in French-speaking units. The régiment has always answered to the call:

"À Flers-Courcelette, le 15 septembre 1916, le 22e Bataillon pris part à sa première attaque d'envergure au niveau de Corps d'armée. Tremblay était fier de la caractéristique qui distinguait l'unicité de son bataillon. En demandant de mener l'attaque sur Flers-Courcelette, il était déterminé à prouver la vaillance et la haute distinction de ses hommes. Après avoir transmis ses ordres, il avertit ses hommes que
«...ce village, nous allons le prendre, et quand nous l'aurons pris, nous le gardons jusqu'au dernier homme. C'est notre première grande attaque, il faut qu'elle soit un succès pour l'honneur de tous les Canadiens-français que nous représentons en France.»
Après plusieurs jours d'âpres combats et malgré de lourdes pertes, cette attaque est couronnée de succès. La majorité des journaux du monde entier rendirent hommage à la bravoure canadienne-française. Au 25e anniversaire de la bataille Flers-Courcelette, le Ministre de la guerre de la Grande-Bretagne soulignait la vaillance des canadiens-français." (1)

Why did the Commanding Officer of the 22e implore his brigade commander to put his battalion front and centre in an attack on Flers-Courcellette? If the regiment is to exist, it is to distinguish itself, it is to command the respect it has earned, it is to hold its head high when it displays the regimental colours and it is to take its place among the proud fighting regiments of Canada. As the regiment approaches its 100th anniversary in 2014, it is not as a relic of past glories. It is the living embodiment of the fighting Canadien-français, the minority who wish to serve Canada in their own language and live as a majority within their own units. The régiment canadien-français has never hesitated to serve in the most adverse conditions before, despite misgivings in official Québec. The planned deployment in Afghanistan in 2007 is the natural army planning cycle, but it is also the duty of the regiment, a military unit that exists to serve Canada and has never shrunk from a fight.

Sandbox Politics

Volunteering at a kids camp last summer, I got to do all sorts of fun jobs. One of them was lifeguarding during the free swims. This is an interesting time, when kids are no longer told where to go and what to do. They are constrained only by the intense safety procedures in place. So the little loveable rascals are beautiful objects of anarchy in a very constrained space.

My favourite place to guard was the digging beach. The digging beach would normally be the place where you put the novice lifeguard. Or, alternatively, you put the old guy who is comfortably lazy and has no other ambition but to observe the riotous interaction of little people in the mini-desert that is the digging beach. I fall into the lazy category. In all of the other zones, you have to do head counts all the time. You have to be constantly vigilant for epiletic episodes, and the potential cost of screwing up is a drowning. Being entirely capable of handling that pressure, I chose as often as I could to guard the digging beach. The digging beach is composed of a 30 foot frontage of roped-off beachfront, with a buoy line two feet into the water. There is just enough water access to fill up the buckets, and not enough to actually swim (although there is enough water to drown, which I'm told can be reliably done in a couple inches of water).

I would come to the beach, lather on the sunscreen (always ensuring a nice backrub), don my trademark straw hat and sunglasses, and put on my uniform. The lifeguard ballcap went on top of the straw hat, which ensured that nobody accused me of not wearing my uniform. I would "call" the digging beach, which was fine with everyone else (they were all racing to get to the big action zones where they could count lots of heads, many times over).

I would install myself at the centre of the digging beach, with overwatch over my little desert kingdom. With a torpedo-buoy safely strapped to my body, in case anything went awry in the 10 inches of water under my supervision, I would begin supervising the daily digging.

Perhaps it doesn't occur to the average city-dweller the intense joy that can be derived from beach digging. Many of my clients in the digging beach never swam the entire summer. They were diggers. They dug. That's what they did. That's how they made their mark, and that was the extent of their beachly ambition. And what an ambition. It was not long before ambition and rivalry set itself upon the young people as they went about digging their way to freedom. The diggers began in small groups or individually creating their engineer-works in the sand. Before long, the tragedy of the commons had run its course. The individuals and small groups soon began competing for space to extend their dig-works. The drive for expansion forced groups and individuals to merge together until larger groups were formed. These groups rapidly took on hierarchical values, with an older or wilier little person dominating and directing the strategy of the group. Two groups emerged. The Alliance was presided over by a tall young boy with more chin than hair to cover it, and the unique fashion of wearing formerly white socks in the sand. He commanded his troops with the conviction of a Hannibal crossing the Alps. A division of labour quickly emerged. There were the water-bearers, the fixers (who shored up the failing walls of the sand structures), the miners, the diggers, and at the top of the pyramid stood the strategists who directed it all with the expertise of a master mason. Complex problems called for complex innovation, and the engineers were up to the task. They adapted their structures using straw and clay. The clay had to be dug specially from the mines that had been dug deep into the beach. The constant need for water to run through the dig works kept an entire group of young people employed and entirely satisfied.

The overlord, which everyone refused to call me, but which I insisted on being called, supervised the emergence of a bi-polar inter-alliance rivalry that allowed us to believe that the Cold War had never ended. The occasional violent eruption provided the overlord with just cause to intervene with my coercive power. I exercised my jurisdiction by exiling the offending agressors... Equivalent to ejecting a player for one game. The offenders would return the next day, chastened and wary of the overlord's watch. A pax romana emerged, enforced ruthlessly by the overlord. The overlord, content to allow a stable peace to exist between the Alliance and the Confederacy, applied a laissez-faire ideology and allowed his interventions to be the exception rather than the rule. Smaller, non-violent conflicts were allowed to persist. However, I always retained the option to entirely wipe out all of the dig-works as soon as the kids had to leave. Thus, when things got out of hand, I waited patiently for the kids to leave the beach. As they were putting on their shoes and cleaning the sand out of all of their nooks and crannies, I would entirely destroy all of the dig-works of the offending parties. The nuclear annihilation of the sand-societies on one occasion was enough to convince the Alliance and the Federation that mutually assured destruction was the only possible outcome of bi-polar conflict. Luckily, these sand-societies would rapidly rebuild in the vacuum left by the nuclear annihilation. The lessons learned from prior conflict were not lost on the leaders of the two groups.

Conflict was expressed by children destroying each others works, taking sand from mines that didn't belong to them, pouring water where it wasn't wanted, and in the more extreme form it expressed itself by the sand jumping into the hands of children and then miraculously launching itself into the faces of other children. This inexplicable sand property was quickly brought under control.

This walk down memory lane has served to demonstrate some principles of human organization in the hands of the little people who have grown up in a big world, with big people showing them how the world works. Domination, competition, cooperation, negotiation, hard work, conflict, division of labour, social organization were all in varying degrees demonstrated by the little sandbox experiment that was never intended as such. Rather, it existed as an alternate reality to the swim-centric values of a beach-going child society. The non-swimmers found their raison d'être in the earthy reality that was the digging world. They constructed an alternate playground, rejecting the the axiom of sink or swim and revelling in the opportunity to work for play and to play with work. The game began as an expression of the American dream, the desire for realty and the constant improvement the human condition in their living-space. The evolution of said game revealed the extent to which children are both a continuation of the dominant socio-political values that prevail, and the purest expression of human nature in a confined and constrained social environment.

To conclude, I got a good tan.

General Disagreement

A pissing contest between retired generals makes for relatively good debate. Here is an article showcasing a critique of Lgen(ret) Dallaire, senator, by Mgen(ret) Mackenzie. Mackenzie lays some solid punches on Dallaire regarding the Darfur crisis.

What I like about Mackenzie's piece is that he suggests the possibility of lengthening tours in Afghanistan to allow for a new deployment in Darfur. The idea is a non-starter for the Canadian military establishment, and it would be highly unpopular among many members who want to return to their families etc.

But the strength of the idea is that it is a departure from current conventional thinking. It relies on the essential point that military units ultimately exist to serve government policy, regardless of how much they might like to come home. Sometimes its worth saying unpopular things. Mackenzie's idea is not without merit, and policy makers should consider it among the range of options available to the government.

Wow

This article alleges that a terror suspect arrested in Toronto is a former reservist member of the Canadian Forces.

As if we needed more reasons to distrust the reservists! No, seriously, this is a disquieting allegation. Of course, if we trust everyone then we will eventually get burned. That's the beau risque that we tend to take in a free and tolerant society. And it's all the more reason to hedge our tolerance with agressive and targeted anti-terror operations both inside and outside Canada.

Jim Travers' Article on the National Interest

Some say that Canada has a culture and needs to ensure its security. This type of argument is rare enough. In the aftermath of the terrible allegations in Toronto, we can presume that this idea will become more pervasive.

The above linked article is required reading for those sick of reading the arguments of the Margaret Wente's of the national news media (ie. We should not do anything to offend the bad guys because they might hurt us, or they might want to fight us).

Everything's Turning Up Millhouse - This Boyband is Going Someplace

This blogger went underground for about a month, categorically refusing to post due to complications related to watching 5 seasons of West Wing.

Why would I allow myself to lose a month of free time to watching old West Wing episodes? Well, here are all the good reasons: It rained most of May. I hadn't seen most of the episodes.
Here are all the bad reasons: Because I got rid of cable and needed another fix. Because I got hooked. I knew the only way through the addiction was a gianormous overdose. So now I am recovering, suffering the inevitable withdrawal of knowing that the cancelled show will never air a new episode. The upside is that with the end of the show, my addiction will wither away.

Well, the news ain't all bad. I had a very nice Monday at work. I got a little promotion, improved my performance in the Piuze Trophy competition (55.2% increase in my score from last year to this year), and I got an additional staff member assigned to help me at work.