No beating around the bush

This is troubling business: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates supposedly, grievously, insulting NATO forces in Afghanistan by noting their lack of counterinsurgency skills.

As the great boxer and businessman George Foreman would say, he's only saying it because it's true.

Opposition politicans proved themselves eager to help give the exaggeration wings. It's akin to the terrorist prisoner treatment fiasco of only too few months ago.

Counterinsurgency is more than chasing guys though the jungle, desert or grass. It's a whole set of skills and programs that need co-ordination. You can't pick one and leave the rest out.

It was the topic of my Master of Arts thesis at Acadia University in ‘79. Back then, everyone was into aspects of counterinsurgency. In the militia, a developing craze was bush warfare, as successfully conducted by the British and Australians - the best in the business. The NATO military was also preparing to duke it out conventionally - and then with nukes - with the Soviets.

The British had wide experience in Kenya, Malaya, Aden and, more lately, Ulster. They had developed a comprehensive means to conduct such operations - involving the military, police, political and development sectors.

The French, not involved in South Afghanistan, are old hands - perhaps the best, if they take the mind to be. Out of the loss of Indo-China in 1954, they developed an impressive program, la guerre revolutionaire. Their skills were perfected in Algeria.

In the early 1960s, the Americans had access to the British and French methods, and even enhanced some of them. They defeated the Viet Cong insurgency, but in such a ham-fisted manner it left the host country open to North Vietnamese invasion in 1975.

For a country with little leaderhip in past counterinsurency operations, Canada has a very good program based on defense, diplomacy and development. Unlike some, our young Canadians in Afghanistan are the best - many on their way back to university or the trades when their tours are finished.

Canadians ask whether our mission should change: of course. Even if it goes toward more development and training, the hard defense has to be there, too.

Other NATO countries don't grasp that. If they don't want to get their ideas into the mix on the ground, the Americans are all too willing to come in with the Marines, just as they had in the counterinsurgency in South Vietnam.

Do we really want that?