It's Elementary: Teachers Disgrace Themselves

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Aug 2017

RE:  Ottawa pressured to examine how historical figures are celebrated.

Canada is not immune to the destroy-the-statues mania that has gripped the United States.  Last week, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario voted to have the name of Sir John A. Macdonald removed from schools in Ontario.

This is what forty years of revisionist history gets you: a collection of ignoramuses who don’t understand why Sir John A. Macdonald would be memorialized in Canada.

A sign of emotional maturity is the ability to make complex moral judgements, to be able the weigh the bad with the good and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

Thus we get this wave of demands to pull down the memorials to those who built this country.  These demands come from emotional children who fail to weigh the bad with the good, and who are not even aware of the good because of a defective education.  These people cannot even look at the country around them and wonder how all the good around them got started.

The Elementary School Teachers Federation proved themselves to be both emotional children and defective in their knowledge of history, which raises the question of why these people are allowed in front of classrooms of impressionable children.  What are they teaching them?  And you wonder why there is a need for competition in the education sphere.

And for all the evils visited upon the Indigenous by wicked Europeans, the fact remains that Canadian Indigenous are much more numerous, far better off, and infinitely more educated than they were in 1880.

It is a waste of time trying to reason with children who know nothing.  The adults in this country need to remain firm in the face of this coming wave of emotional outburst.

-30-

**UPDATE 31 AUG 2017**  Math Test Scores called 'disappointing'  From CP  "Math test scores among public elementary school students have not improved  - in some cases they have decreased slightly - despite a $60-million 'renewed math strategy' the [Ontario] government had hoped would solve the problem."     Just in case you thought my use of the word 'ignoramuses' was a little harsh.

Antifa, Neo-Nazis, Trump, and the MSM

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Aug 2017

The historical ignorance of the major news media is both selective and appalling.  A small riot in Charlottesville, and suddenly Donald Trump’s bona fides as a racist are established - according to the Main Stream Media, those who live under the left-wing prejudices of the left, and those who live in fear of it.  (i.e. leaders of businesses who fear being victimized by smear campaigns organized by the left.)

By some immutable law of politics, Republican politicians are expected to engage in a ritualized denunciation of some person or group said to belong to them in response to an emotional demand for it from the political left.  The reverse, of Democrats being forced to denounce in ritualized fashion, is never demanded by media political enforcers.  Barack Obama was never required to denounce the Black Lives Matter movement even after police were killed in response to BLM incitement.  Nor was he called upon to say that BLM was founded upon a lie.  Obama never denounced radical Islamic terrorism, but he did lecture Americans about the Crusades and getting on their moral high horse. Obama paid no price in the MSM for these actions.  (The difference in media treatment between Trump and Obama is even more striking than between Bush and Clinton.)

The groups that attacked each other in Charlottesville are heresies of the same political cause – socialism.  ‘Nazi’ is a contraction of the German words for National Socialism; the communism of Stalin and Mao were socialist in economics; and Fascist Benito Mussolini was a socialist.  It was Stalin who invented the trick of calling those he didn’t like ‘fascists’ – an opposing heresy of socialism.  Hence, Antifa and neo-Nazism are opposing heresies of socialism – the defining economics of leftism.

Donald Trump does not have a dog in that fight.  He is the president of all Americans, even the ugly ones; and as such ought to maintain an evenhandedness towards citizens of all political stripes.  As between two hate groups that oppose each other, he cannot favor one side over the other, as those in the Democrat-media complex demanded of him over Charlottesville.  Donald Trump swore and oath to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States, which includes the First Amendment.

That Amendment means that people you don’t like have as much right to speak their minds as you do and there is no exemption for so-called "hate speech."  It is at violence that a line has to be drawn, and Trump, the Chief Executive, did draw that line.  Trump condemned violence and the continued incitement towards violence.  Yet, the left-wing MSM demanded that he award one side in that riot a victory over the other in some contest of morality.

When both sides are evil, both sides deserve condemnation equally.  That is what Trump did at his various press conferences, but evenhandedness was not to the liking of the MSM.  If his refusal to engage in ritualistic denunciation of the preferred media victim enraged the MSM, it also caused consternation among other Republicans who fear the smearing power of the MSM.

Trump was elected because enough people believed he was strong enough not to bow to the ritualistic demands of the swamp creatures of Washington and the MSM.

None of this is visible to those in the gutter who secretly root for one side or the other, or who unconsciously agree that neo-Nazis and the KKK belong to the conservative Republican side as left wing hate groups do not belong to the Democrats.

-30-

Charlottesville: Getting Trump to dance to their tune.

Virtue Signalling over Charlottesville

Vincent J. Curtis

14 August 2017

Compared with a routine weekend in Chicago, IL, a small disturbance took place in Charlottesville, VA, last Saturday. But from the reaction to it in the media, one would think that a shattering apocalyptic event took place.  Perhaps one did, but more on that later.

First, some background.  One of the tacit acts of reconciliation of the American Civil War was the acceptance, or at least toleration of, some of the Civil War heroes and symbols of the South.  That included the tolerance of the erection of monuments and statues of important Southern generals, such as, for example, Robert E. Lee.  General Lee, the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, is perhaps the most important figure of the war on the Southern side.  He is certainly one of Virginia’s most famous sons and is perhaps the most respected general on either side of the war.

Of late, it has become common that these old monuments and old flags be disrespected.  It is as if people woke up one morning and suddenly realized that these symbols represented the cause of racism and slavery.  For several years now, statues of Confederate generals have been taken down from places of prominence they occupied for over a century, and are being put where they cannot be seen.  That old compromise of the acceptance of remembrances to the courage and sacrifice by and for Southerners for a bad cause was being broken.

It came to pass that the city council of Charlottesville, VA, contemplated removing a statue erected to the memory of CS General Robert E. Lee from the public square.  In reaction to this perceived desecration, a rally was organized under the auspices of a Unite the Right committee.  The group obtained from the city a proper permit to hold a rally around the statue.  As you might expect, a small group numbering perhaps a couple of hundred from several states came together in the ironically named Emancipation Park.  These people were described as “white nationalists” (whatever that is; I get the ‘white’ part), members of the alt-right movement, neo-nazis, white supremacists, and members of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan (both of them).  I believe I have accounted for all the left-wing dog whistles used to describe the ralliers.

If they were described in the media as the “lunatic fringe,” much of the newsworthiness of the rally and of the violence that followed would disappear.  However, for the purposes of criticizing President Donald Trump, these groups and this rally was held out as being vaguely representative of something white, conservative, and Trumpish.  And thus of significance.

The Antifa movement couldn’t let this one go.  Used to shutting down free speech of those they dislike, Antifa haters, progressive left-wingers, communists, anarchists, Black Lives Matter racists, and assorted left-wing fringe groups organized a counter-protest in order to disrupt the original rally.  And violence did occur between the two groups before the original rally got started.  The most significant act of violence was the running down of one of the Antifa side by a car, which killed her and in its career injured nearly two dozen more of the Antifa side.

This killing is being held up in the media as being significant for all the wrong reasons.  It is being offered as an act of terrorism by “white nationalists” and as symbolic of the truth of the alt-right and possibly of conservativism itself (through association).  These insinuations give the media circus an opening to condemn Donald Trump for not denouncing with sufficient ardor those they see as his hardest core of supporters.

This killing was not an “act of terrorism.”  It merely resembles one.  An act of terrorism is perpetrated against innocent people going about their daily lives; the act is planned; it is done in a cold emotional state, and most importantly it is done for a definable political cause.  The running down of people on Westminster Bridge or in Nice, France, were acts of terrorism to advance the Islamist cause.  The killing in Charlottesville was not done against innocent people going about their daily lives but against violent counter-protesters who had no business being there; the act was done in anger and frustration, it was not long planned, and it is not exactly clear in whose name or what cause this supposedly political act was done.  This was not an act of terrorism, but an ordinary act of homicide – murder in the second degree or criminal negligence causing death (if the driver hadn’t formulated the intent to kill.)

The Antifa movement couldn’t be more pleased with itself, for it got what it came for and more.  It got a martyr.  It got an act it can point to as an act of terrorism by “white” “right-wing” “nationalists.”  It completely disrupted the rally it intended to disrupt before it got started.  And it brought a bright media spotlight on people and causes it hates, that had nothing to do with the original rally.  And nobody is asking what Antifa was doing there.

Prominent conservative spokesmen were falling all over themselves condemning “white nationalists,” the alt-right, and KKK, and called on other white conservatives to do the same.  The provocative actions of the Antifa movement were completely ignored.  All the blame fell on the “white conservative movement.”  Even Newt Gingrich on Fox News Sunday fell into this trap, failing to mention the Antifa movement in an even-handed condemnation, which to me is a sign of how powerful left-wing prejudices are in the public mind.

Leave it to Trump to act with the wisdom of Solomon and condemn the violence which came from many sides.  Trump is president of all Americans, not just left-wing or right-wing Americans, as his immediate predecessor often acted.  Trump’s even-handed condemnation of violence and political division infuriated the media because they wanted him to make a one-sided condemnation of his alleged supporters and thus separate him from them.  Trump out-smarted the media – again – and this only redoubles their fury as it adds to their confusion.

If I seem to be going a little light on the “white nationalists” it is because I see the Antifa movement as the more dangerous to public policy.  Nobody takes the tiny right-wing fringe movement seriously, but the wacko-left seems to be taking over the core of the Democrat party.  The right-wing fringe aren’t going to revolutionize public policy, but the Antifa hate movement has had serious repercussions causing a loss of scope of free speech.  Free speech is not allowed on most college campuses in America, and now in the major American corporation Google.  Only approved speech is allowed, and the Antifa movement has and will react violently to challenges to their regime of approved speech.

Everybody is expected to tolerate demonstrations by left-wing groups, be they BLM, LGBTQWERTY supporters, transgender supporters, racial segregation groups, etc.  But the equivalent on the alleged political right is not going to be tolerated, and that lack of even-handedness I deplore.  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Trump was right in saying that deep political division has long been present in America; and that he condemns violence from any side is the wisdom of a president of all the people.  That white and conservative commentators are reacting defensively looks bad on them, and shows the power of left-wing prejudices in the public forum.

Charlottesville is being blown way out of proportion by a media looking for another excuse to put conservatives on the spot, and to make Donald Trump dance to their tune for once.  Besides, Chicago is a Democrat city.

-30-

What to do with the Navy? A Landlubber Asks

An oldie but a goodie.

My support for a "big honkin' ship" for the RCN goes a long way back

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                     24 May 2011

Of the three services, the navy is the hardest one to develop a future operational concept for.  What follows is not the elaboration of a program, or even a recommendation.  It is thinking out loud.

The earlier two perspectives in this series, on the future of air power and the army of tomorrow, relied upon a concept of the future of expeditionary conflict that was sketched by outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.  In Gates’s view, the Air Force and the Navy, operating jointly, will provide most of the force projected by the United States in Africa and Asia.  Large, mechanized armies, “boots on the ground” in those places, are not something a future Secretary of Defense should recommend without “having his head read,” in Gates’ view.

So the question then, to be answered, is what can Canada’s navy contribute to a joint air-naval enterprise?  At the moment, HMCS Charlottetown is in the Mediterranean Sea in support of NATO operations over Libya.  At the risk of offending the sailors, what, other than signifying Canada’s political commitment to the NATO operations against the Gadhafi regime, is the Charlottetown able to do?  The ship lacks the missiles and guns to bring effective fire against Gadhafi forces on the ground.  Lacking a navy to oppose her, the Charlottetown has nothing afloat to attack or to defend against.  Neither the Charlottetown, nor anything else in Canada’s navy, nuclear submarines included, has the means of making the Gadhafi regime feel directly the wroth of NATO and Canada.

In EdC Vol 16.9, the future of the naval shipbuilding in Canada was broadly reviewed.  The tenor of the policy of shipbuilding at that time seemed to be to find employment for Canada’s shipyards for a prolonged period of time. They would construct numerous small vessels suitable for minor naval operations.  In fact, the dominant aim seemed to be construction per se, and operational naval requirements would be found for the vessels.  So starved is the navy for vessels and so numerous are the potential tasks that this order of priority, ‘find uses for what we can make’, is not completely without merit.  And many nations, particularly the United States and Great Britain, have used the government spending power simply to keep strategic industries in being.

But a really fundamental review of naval acquisitions should ask and answer fundamental questions.  One important question that should be asked and answered is what is the navy able to do that would enable it to operate jointly with Canada’s air and land power?  Sure, the navy can contribute vessels to a US or NATO fleet, and can undertake tasks such as anti-submarine warfare and minesweeping.  Yes, it can undertake anti-piracy and contraband interdiction patrols.  But what can it do to strike a blow the government of Canada wants delivered?

A Canadian flagged Aegis class missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf, for example, might make an Ahmadinejad think twice about abducting, raping, and murdering a Canadian citizen.  A vessel bearing guns which can hurl 2,000 pounds of steel 40,000 yards down range - 70 year old technology - is still a force to be reckoned with on land.  But, I digress.

An anchor which can tether this blue-sky thinking to reality is money.  Naval units, even small ones, are extremely expensive.  And herein lies the problem.  Economy has to be balanced against strategic purpose.

The acquisition of a few capital ships would consume all the money and would not keep Canada’s shipyards humming, if they could even build them.  On the other hand, large numbers of small vessels keeps the shipyards humming, but provides the navy with nothing in the way of strategic punch.  Does something in between risk falling between two stools?

Littoral type vessels, such as those being developed at Lockheed-Martin, would enable the navy to operate jointly with land or special operations forces.  Perhaps these are part of a mix of vessels the navy might acquire; the component that offers the strategic punch albeit as part of an amphibious force.

Great strategic benefit often comes by the taking of risks.  The safe solution is to craft a navy which is strategically harmless, consisting of small vessels that perform small, needful, politically defensible tasks, and built by Canadian shipyards as a kind of workfare project.

But are there strategic thinkers in the navy and in government who are prepared to take a risk and demand for Canada a capital ship as well as all the other ships the navy needs to be a navy?  And find the money and provide the vision too?

-          XXX –

This Useless “war crime” Enquiry

An oldie, but a goodie.

This piece will be useful in understanding my opposition to the Khadr settlement.

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                             25 March 2010

With the return of parliament from prorogation, the enquiry into alleged Afghanistan war crimes was resurrected.  Yet no successful prosecution will result from the enquiry even if the worst of the allegations prove true, so why keep it going?

Not being one who believes that political hygiene motivates those pressing the enquiry, I divide those interested in keeping it going into two groups, whose membership overlaps.  One group is motivated to inflict pain upon those in office; the other in gaining readership through sensationalism.  The one outcome that neither group cares a fig about is inflaming the enemy into greater resistance to us.

Putting the most sensational spin on it, the accusation is that a Canadian, somewhere in the chain of command from the section 2i/c to the Prime Minister, is guilty of a war crime because Afghans captured by Canadian soldiers were turned over to the government of Afghanistan and were subsequently tortured while detained in Afghan custody.

By way of background, the transfer and custody of Afghan prisoners was the subject of a MOU with the Afghan government, negotiated by the Liberal government of Paul Martin and signed into effect by then LGen Rick Hillier.  Later, when it was discovered that rumors of torture may have had some merit, the MOU was strengthened under the Harper government to prevent it.

The law under which Canadians are allegedly guilty is the Law of Armed Conflict.  CF Pamphlet B-GJ-005-104/FP-021, in fact.  Our DND codified what is called the LOAC.

The LOAC as expressed in the pam is how Canada understands the Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention, and other customs and traditions of war.  Insofar as the law of armed conflict applies to Canadians, it is Canadian law and Canadian jurisdiction.  There is no supra-national body or supra-national court with superior jurisdiction that Canadians need fear in this matter.  Jurisdiction over how Canadians interpret and apply the LOAC in respect of ourselves lies in our own court system.  So let's apply some Canadian common sense to the matter at hand.

For a crime to be felonious, there has to be a grave degree of moral culpability.  Capital murder, second degree murder, manslaughter, and criminal negligence causing death are crimes of diminishing moral culpability to the act of party B killing party A.  The less morally culpable B is, the lesser the crime and the lesser the punishment.  There is a wide moral gap between murder and accidentally killing a fellow hunter, thinking he was a deer.

For there to be moral culpability, an act has to be voluntary.  If the act is involuntary or non-voluntary, little or no moral culpability attaches to the act.  If an action is done in ignorance, or done under compulsion, or it is not in one's power to stop, the action is involuntary.  We call such acts mistakes and mishaps.  There has to be malice in the performance of the act for the moral culpability of the act to be highest.  Malice is not present when an act is done in ignorance or under compulsion.  The real moral agent in the torture of Afghan prisoners, the person most guilty of malicious action, is the Afghan torturer himself or his master, who are not Canadian.

This being so, it would seem that those at the bottom of the chain of command are innocent of a grave offense since they either did not know of the consequences of their actions or were compelled by orders and operational circumstances to forward the prisoners up the chain of command.  Those at the highest level were not aware due to remoteness that the actions of their subordinates led indirectly to the torture of prisoners.  Let us defer consideration of those in the middle, those who actually handed prisoners over to Afghan authorities, and look now at the LOAC itself.

The LOAC concerning prisoners of war is the Third Geneva Convention of 1949.  Three elements of the Geneva convention apply to the matter of the torture of Afghan prisoners.  First, for an act to constitute a war crime, the act must be grave; second, the responsibility for the prisoners lies with the detaining power; and finally, the person in question has to be a prisoner of war.

In respect of torture and acts committed by Canadians, two of the tests for a war crime fail to be met.  Although torture is deplorable, what was done by Afghans to their own countrymen does not rise to the level of a "grave act" as that term was understood in 1949, written with the memory of the Nazi atrocities in mind.  Canada is not the "detaining power" as that term is understood by LOAC; and no particular Canadian was responsible for the treatment of the prisoners that were turned over to the detaining power, viz the government of Afghanistan.  These in themselves are sufficient to establish that no war crime, no "grave act," under the Geneva Convention was committed by a Canadian.  The mere handing over of prisoners in good faith under a MOU does not constitute a war crime.

But what has not been explored is the legal status of the persons detained: were they prisoners of war or not?  The Geneva Convention established who is liable to be classed as a PoW and who is not.  The Taliban most definitely are not lawful combatants under Geneva and are not entitled to PoW status.  Being Afghan nationals held by the government of Afghanistan, were they held under Afghan civil law?  Were they accused of treason, murder, attempted murder, sedition, or some such civil offense?  Is torture a civil crime in Afghanistan?  If such turns out to be the case, civil detention and civil offenses, not being covered by LOAC, there is no underlying war crime that a Canadian can be accused of being complicit in.  This potentially decisive question has not been explored.

Regardless, since the LOAC is Canadian law, and Canada a sovereign country, it would be strange indeed if Afghan actions and Afghan law were to affect Canadian law and expose Canadians to legal culpability.

What we do know is that when high military authorities in Afghanistan became aware of the mistreatment of prisoners they ceased turning over captives to the Afghan authorities pending action on the part of the Canadian government.  The government, in turn, demanded and received strengthened conditions in the MOU concerning prisoners, and the problem ended.  Malice towards the prisoners is lacking on the Canadian side.  One can always second guess and castigate the man on the spot for not thinking or acting swiftly enough, but one cannot Monday morning quarterback a lack of speed or of awareness into a grave, morally culpable act, or war crime.

Press sensationalism and political theatre can be great amusement for all but the targets.  Lack of malice and lack of knowledge are sufficient defense against the charge of a war crime in this case, and the underlying acts themselves under the worst conditions do not amount to a war crime.  To prolong a useless enquiry too long risks inflaming the enemy and creating altogether undeserved impressions.

                                                            - XXX -

The Future of Air Power

An oldie, but a goodie:

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                                16 March 2011

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave what he called his last address to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs as Defense Secretary in March.  Why Canadians should pay attention to his speech is that he described what he believed the USAF of the 21^st century must look like, and experience and common sense say that this vision will have impact on the Canadian air force, the equipment it will have to purchase, and the training it will have to undergo.

Gates began the statement of his vision with the premise that air supremacy will continue to be indispensable for the maintenance of American military strength, deterrence, and global reach for decades to come.  That said, the traditional air missions of air-to-air combat and strategic bombing have to make room for new capabilities which unmanned aerial vehicles bring into being.  UVAs provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities undreamed of a decade ago, and now such capabilities are so in demand by ground commanders in Afghanistan that it outstrips supply.

Strategic and tactical air lift are, and will remain, essential to future joint operations, according to Gates.

Gates warned against the Air Force sinking back into a complacency he called the “Air Force normal.”  He asserted that stability and security missions, counterterrorism, persistent battlefield ISR, close air support, search and rescue, and transport missions are central to the role of air power for the foreseeable future, even without a repetition of Iraq or Afghanistan.

But Gates does not see anything like Iraq or Afghanistan in the future of the US military.  He does not see large US military formations on the ground in Asia for a very long time.  What he foresees instead are joint missions between the USAF and the US Navy.

Gates foresees the emergence of high end, asymmetric threats, such as long-range precision weapons, anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, quieter submarines, advanced air defense missiles such as China, North Korea, and Iran are developing.  He describes these as belonging to an “anti-access, area denial strategy” because these capabilities strike at the unfettered ability of the US to project power anywhere on the globe.  Even now, Gates has Pentagon strategists developing the Air-Sea Battle concept, akin to the Air-Land Battle concept.

To meet these future threats, the US is developing a new optionally-manned, nuclear-capable penetrating bomber, has built the F-22 Raptor, is building the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is modernizing the F-15, and is developing a new medium range air-to-air missile.  He explained that the reason for developing the F-35 is for its multi-role capability.

How does this vision impact Canada?  The future uses of Canadian air power outside of North America will be as an element of some US-led NATO or coalition force.  If so, where do we stand in respect of these future missions in the face of an anti-access, area denial strategy?

With our new C-17 Globemaster, C-130J Hercules, and our Chinook helicopters, the Canadian air force has some capability in respect of strategic and tactical air lift.  One may quibble about the numbers of aircraft and the volume of lift being inadequate, but with these we have something with which to make a gesture towards our alliances.

We are behind the curve in respect of a fully integrated ISR capability with UAVs, but so is the US, according to Gates.  This is a relatively inexpensive field to enter, and a tactical ISR capability with an American-compatible UAV would make the Canadian air force operationally relevant in an overseas contingency operation.  This field practically cries out for the development of Canadian expertise and capability.

The final area to be addressed is the manned fighter-bomber.  This piece of the puzzle is solved with one of three aircraft: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22 Raptor, and the F-16 Fighting Falcon, which is still in production.  The F-35 will enable the Canadian air force to participate in most of the manned fighter-bomber missions provided the aircraft is equipped with the necessary electronic suite.  At least some of the F-35s Canada is going to buy need to be equipped with an electronic suite that will enable them to engage in air to ground missions if we are to maximize the value of this acquisition and render our fighters operationally relevant in overseas contingency operations.

If Canada is going to use the F-35 strictly for the air superiority role over North America, we might as well try to buy the F-22 Raptor, which is by far the better aircraft for that purpose.  Granted, it would require an act of congress and more money to buy the F-22, but future air superiority combats over North America may be against Chinese or Russian equivalents to the F-22 and we might as well have the very best aircraft to defend our skies.

One inexpensive option that no one has yet publicly discussed is to buy the F-16, which is now in block 60 of its development.  The F-16 is the most successful of the fourth generation fighters, and it was the one we turned down thirty years ago in favour of the CF-18.  What we need here primarily are new airframes, not necessarily new capabilities, and the F-16C/D has capabilities which will make it operationally relevant for the next twenty to thirty years.  At $20 million a copy the F-16C is less than half the cost of the F-35.  If we were to buy new F-16s to replace our aging CF-18s we would be turning over the highest end of air superiority over North American air space to the USAF; but with the F-22 Raptor the US already has taken that role.  And the Canadian air force would not have to fight with aircraft that are too precious to lose.

                                                            -XXX-

Canada's JTF2 and 3,540 meters.

JTF2 heard you, Scott

Vincent J. Curtis

22 June 2017

For some time now, Publisher Scott Taylor has criticized the Canadian government for allowing Canadian soldiers to fight in the front lines in Iraq against ISIS forces.  One example of front line fighting was of a Canadian soldier taking out a VBIED with a relatively short range Carl Gustav rocket launcher.  The Canadian troops deployed in Iraq are on a training mission, and fighting in the front lines runs contrary to that agreed upon mandate, he argues.

It appears that Canadian Special Operations Forces in Iraq were paying attention.  In June, a Canadian JTF2 sniper made a record-breaking kill shot in Iraq from a twice-confirmed range of 3,540 meters.  You can’t get much further behind the front lines than that.  Any further back, and you’d bump into the Iraqi Officer’s Mess.

Canadian snipers now hold three of the top five confirmed sniper shots.  Dropped into second place, with a range of 2,475 meters, is British sniper Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison of the Blues and Royals, followed by Canadians Cpl Rob Furlong at 2,430, and MCpl Arron Perry at 2,310, both of 3 PPCLI.  Fifth place, at 2,300 meters, is held by Sgt Bryan Kremer, 2^nd Battalion, 75^th Ranger Regiment of the United States Army.  The famous GySgt Carlos Hathcock III, USMC, falls into sixth place at a mere 2,286 meters, albeit made with a scope mounted M2 Browning machine gun - not ordinarily considered to be a sniping weapon, until he made it into one.

The first Canadian experience of sniping occurred during the Boer War.  The Boers were armed with the Mauser Model 1895 that fired the 7 mm Mauser spitzer cartridge.  This combination completely outclassed and outranged the British Magazine Lee Enfield rifle, which fired the Mark II .303 cartridge - hard-hitting but ballistically wanting.  The Boers were largely an army of snipers, and it was this experience that gave Sir Charles Ross and Sir Sam Hughes the idea of an army of marksmen equipped with a rifle superior in accuracy and range to the Mauser – the Ross rifle in .280 Ross calibre – and with the Colt M1895 machine gun included for additional firepower.

The British learned some lessons too from the Boer War, and they entered World War I with the Mark VII .303 cartridge and the Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle.  Under Sam Hughes’ tutelage, Canadians stayed with the Ross, adapted for the improved British cartridge.  Major H. Hesketh-Prichard, author of Sniping in France gives his account of ‘How the British Army won the Sniping War in the Trenches.’  He writes, “The Canadian Division and, later, the Canadian Corps was full of officers who understood how to deal with the German sniper, and early in the war there were Canadian snipers who were told off to this duty [i.e. counter-sniping], and some of them were extraordinarily successful.  Corporal, afterwards, Lieutenant, Christie, of the PPCLI, was one of the individual pioneers of sniping.” 

In his book A Rifleman Went to War W.H. McBride wrote of pre-war Canadian training.  “Here, in Canada, the program, which was certainly laid out by an officer who knew his business (I suspect it was Colonel Hughes himself) was one calculated to do just two things: to put the men in physical condition to endure long marches and to thoroughly train them in the use of weapons….In the Battalion were many of the best riflemen in Canada, including Major Elmitt (member of the Canadian Palma team of 1907)….I just mention these things to show how it was that this particular battalion developed into a real aggregation of riflemen….We were using the Ross rifle, a splendid target weapon…” 

The top Canadian sniper of the war was Cpl Francis Pegahmagabow, 1^st Bn CEF, with 378 kills with his Ross.

In World War II, Canadian snipers were equipped with a scope-mounted Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1 (T) and organized into Scout-Sniper platoons.  Perhaps the most famous picture of a sniper, then or now, is of Sgt Harold A. Marshall of the Calgary Highlanders, wearing a Denison smock and a Hollywood-handsome look.

In 1972, the Canadian army adopted the C3 Parker Hale, which was based upon a modern target-competition rifle with all the latest improvements for consistent, long-range accuracy.  This excellent rifle was in combat service as late as Op APOLLO, and MCpl Graham Ragsdale of 3 PPCLI recorded over 20 kills with a C3A1 in Afghanistan in March, 2002.

The 7.62 NATO calibre C3A1 is being phased out and replaced with the C14 Timberwolf, in .338 Lapua Magnum.  The problem with all the classic rifle calibres for sniping nowadays is lack of range.  They are limited in effectiveness to the distance at which the bullet falls below the speed of sound, and this typically occurs about 900 meters downrange.  Better ballistics dramatically improves range.  The Lapua Magnum cartridge is good to 1,500 meters, and the .50 calibre BMG, to over 1,800 meters; and the extraordinary multi-kilometers kills were done with these.  The problem for accurate, long-range sniping becomes accounting for such esoteric factors as atmospheric pressure, and the curvature and speed of rotation of the earth.  For this, the sniper’s spotter and his ballistic computer become an absolutely essential part of the team.

The idea of Sam Hughes and Charles Ross of an army of marksmen proved to be impractical, and precise, long-range shooting is now delegated to platoons of snipers with special equipment.  Beginning with Hughes, the Canadian army developed a culture, and now have a reputation for excellence in sniping.  Sniping is a skill that is inexpensive to develop. It is a craft that smaller armies like Canada’s, lacking in money and men, can cultivate, and snipers can deliver tactically important results.

With modern tools, Canadian soldiers don’t have to be in no man’s land to be able to dispatch the enemy.

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 A version of this appeared in the Vol. 24, Issue 7 edition of Esprit de Corps magazine