The fall of Afghanistan prompts a tough question: “Was it worth it?”   The Afghanistan government of Ashraf Ghani collapsed in mid-August and the Taliban, which harboured the 9/11 terrorists, now reigns supreme over the troubled country.  The 9/11 attacks led directly to the invocation of NATO’s Article 5—the collective security clause—which led Canada directly into the war in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. Now, after 20 years of fighting, the war has been lost. The extreme Islamist group rules again. It is easy to blame the collapse of the Ghani government on President Joe Biden’s hasty withdrawal of the remaining American troops from Afghanistan, but Canadians also have tough questions to answer about what we were doing there in the first place.   Canada sent more than ...

Norad needs stronger cyber defences This year marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001. The day will no doubt be marked by sombre reflection on what happened and grief for the victims.  But will anyone think of that day as marking the greatest failure of the North American Aerospace Defence Command?  Norad is responsible for protecting North American airspace against attack, but it responded only after the fact by closing U.S. airspace and ordering all operating aircraft to land at the nearest airport. Even today, Norad has no recourse against another 9/11-type attack except to shoot down a hijacked airliner. There is a lot of discussion in the United States and Canada these days ...

Gender discrimination is not acceptable, in any way, shape or form   I have been writing this column for Legion Magazine for more than 15 years and I have written columns for other magazines and newspapers for even longer. Until now, I have never written a personal column. Why now? Because I want to express my view about gender discrimination and sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces.   In several ways, I was involved in the aftermath of the Somalia Affair of the early 1990s. That disgraceful series of events emerged after Somali civilians were killed by Canadian soldiers on a United Nations Chapter VII peace enforcement operation in Somalia. The killings were covered up and, as the scandal emerged, it was apparent that there were some deep problems in the Canadian A...

Last October, thousands of American and Japanese troops and hundreds of naval vessels from both countries held a joint landing exercise not far from Okinawa. In recent years the annual operation, Keen Sword, has become more intense and more extensive. This time, an American Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with a strike group participated. Keen Sword is part of naval preparedness operations under “The Quad,” an informal—but growing into a stable—mini-alliance of the United States, India, Japan and Australia. It was formed to counter growing Chinese naval threats to countries on the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and China’s efforts to expand its influence to island nations scattered from the Indian Ocean to the central Pacific. The United States and Australia have long had mutu...