Canada needs its own Afghanistan Papers to unmask domestic propaganda

OTTAWA—There is a trend happening in the U.S. wherein the media are starting to aggressively uncover the failures made by the political and military leadership in recent conflicts. One of the most potent examples of this would be the Washington Post’s recent lawsuit, which forced the release of what are now known as the “Afghanistan Papers.” This treasure trove of official documents revealed that senior American officials knew they were losing the Afghan war, and instead of admitting the truth, they lied to the U.S. public. Last October, a former U.S. military public affairs officer—Ben Brody—released a book entitled Attention Servicemember detailing his two tours of service in Iraq, as well as his time later on in Afghanistan. In a recently published interview with online journal Task and Purpose, Brody admitted that he and his public affairs colleagues were state propagandists whose task was to shape the story of the Iraq war. “A good example is we would photograph hospital openings. Or cut the ribbon on this hospital we just spent a lot of money on,” said Brody. “I knew, and everyone there knew, there weren’t any doctors left in the area. No one was going to work in this hospital. It was going to be looted immediately and taken over by squatters. But of course the story and the press release would be one of building capacity and setting conditions for increased security and all these sort of double-speak buzzwords.” What is refreshing about Brody’s words is his belated honesty. In Afghanistan, embedded Canadian journalists would be escorted to numerous such ribbon-cutting ceremonies—usually a new schoolhouse with Afghan girls positioned in the front row for maximum propaganda impact in the photo-op. In 2007, at the height of Canada’s combat deployment in Kandahar, I visited the local high school. Our documentary film crew—which included Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese—was operating unembedded, with no military escort. What we found at the school was the principal and a couple of his cronies playing cards and drinking tea. Although there were 4,000 students registered and it was a school day, not a single student was on the premises. The reason for this was that all the teachers had left to join the Afghan army or work for foreign military forces as interpreters, where they could earn three times a teacher’s salary. Contrary to the oft-repeated official line that we were “one schoolhouse building away from victory,” our presence and NATO’s sole focus on security issues actually stymied what little education was available in the Kandahar region. So the question now is: when will we see similar honest admissions from our Canadian military public affairs officers? When the damning story of the Afghanistan Papers first broke in the U.S. media, Canadian officials were quick to distance themselves from the whole affair. The Canadian claim was that our officials handled things differently. That claim simply makes no sense. The vast majority of all the intelligence shared within the NATO-led ISAF force came from U.S. sources. That means we were sharing the same lies with the Canadian public for the same reasons of maintaining popular support for the war. The only difference is that Canada concluded the combat mission in 2011 and brought the last of our troops home in 2014. As the architects and initiators of the Afghanistan invasion, the U.S. feels duty bound to remain until they can negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. Yes folks, after 19 years of fighting the Taliban—who the U.S. declared defeated in 2001—the Americans are in talks with them now to end the war. Canadian soldiers who served in Afghanistan displayed the courage, discipline, and professionalism one would expect from one of the finest militaries in the world. The problem was that the war was unwinnable from the outset, and our senior leadership knew it. Here’s hoping that a Canadian officer follows Brody’s lead with an exposé on Canada’s propaganda machine. Maybe that would spark the call for a full parliamentary inquiry into just who was responsible for leading us into such a quagmire in Afghanistan. And, more importantly, reveal who was responsible for telling the lies of false progress that kept us there. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times