Cop-out
Babble on.
Why fight for the money your people need to do their job properly, when you can be a good little political appointee and sell your subordinates and your service out to political expediency?
If this article is any indication, Rick Hillier is following the time-honoured tradition of the man in the green flannel suit.
Any rapidly deployable expeditionary force needs a military-style, long-range strategic airlifter, with some degree of 'rough-field' performance. The U.S. Boeing C-17 is an excellent aircraft, but alas, the price tag puts it out of our range. Hillier has said that he intends to stop the practice of endlessly studying systems that DND cannot possibly afford. (Babbler's bold)
So much for using strategic requirements as the basis for equipment decisions.
Yes, I fully understand the counter-argument that he's being smart by devoting resources only to battles he thinks he can win. I think that argument's garbage. Over the past few decades, the CF has had all too many flag-rank bureaucrats who fought only the battles they thought they could win. Ask normal men and women in uniform how well that plan has worked out for them.
At this point, the CF needs a military leader who will challenge his political masters to do things right, not another tame manager who will work quietly within the continually-shrinking box they allot to him. This is just one more piece of evidence that the Liberals are succeeding in their quest to breed the fight right out of the Canadian military.
It makes me want to empty my stomach.
Babble off.
posted by Babbling Brooks @ 11:01 a.m.
3 comments
3 Comments:
Has anyone studied the long-term health effects from drinking the water at CFB bases? What Hillier has seems to be such a common malaise.
That's sad. I had high hopes for Gen. Hillier, but I'm not surprised he's gone native at the Puzzle Palace.
I always thought the job of administrative REMFs (like CDS) was to get appropriate funding and equipment from the legislative and executive branches, and put that funding and equipment into the hands of the combatant units. Apparently the real purpose of CDS is to provide P.R. cover for an ever-shrinking slice of the pie. Do these guys ever look at the words on their commissioning scroll after it goes up on the "i love me" wall? Fargin' outrageous.
I think you were right when you said most days, the place ought to burn to the ground.
General Hillier's comments do not bode well for the immediate future. And if we don't do something positive for the Forces in the immediate future, we can just about pack it in. In the first ten months of last year's fisc, the feds racked up a $10.7 billion dollar surplus. What ever excuses there may be, affordability is not one of them.
Well said, Damian. Give 'em hell.
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