Sunday, February 18, 2007

It doesn't work... unless

It must the day of the soldier. I support our troops. However I do not support the clowns in Ottawa who run the show. Good soldiers obey orders. No matter how stupid those orders may be.

One of the most important lessons of the Viet Nam War was the fact that rotation of active combat troops doesn't work. In that war the rotation for troops was one year duty.

Now on the eve of a Taliban spring offensive General Hillier is rotating out veteran troops and is sending in green or raw troops. Even if those troops have been there before, it takes a bit of work to get back into the non routine of being shot at. This is the critical point in the war. The decisive moment. The Taliban will certainly throw everything they got.

The Taliban now know that the Canadians rotation is coming about. Notice they haven't picked a fight with Canadians in the last couple of months. But last spring when the Royal Canadians showed up for the first time they waited till the Pats went back to the Edmonton barracks.

Most of those 44 Canadian casualties were suffered on a fresh rotation. This is a no brainer. The smart move would be to rotate the Princess Pats back into action sooner than later. Then keep them on station as a regiment until next year in the autumn of 2008. But Hillier is Harper's lap dog now.

An all out attack by the Taliban against fresh raw Canadian troops may cause another 200 casualties under the worst scenario. But keeping the present troops on station then supplementing them with Princess Pat vet volunteers would enable the field commanders in Afghanistan to have the best available human resource for countering the new Taliban offensive.

_

No comments: