Tonight it was Red Tuesday. The Ottawa Senators and Washington Capitals squared off in a game in front of thousands of our military and the stands were full of people wearing red to show support for the troops and their families.
Sitting in some pretty fine seats, I managed to get the ceremonial puck drop on video. General Rick Hillier had the honours and to his right (left of video) is Karen Boire and Lisa Miller, the two Petawawa women who started Red Fridays. I had no idea this was planned when I bought the tickets, but considering I took the original Red Friday video, I felt honoured to be at this game.
I apologize to the two women on Rick Hillier’s left (right on video) as I did not catch who they were. If anyone knows, please drop me a note.
The two on Rick’s left are Karen MacEwan and Debbie Potter, whose husbands are serving in Afghanistan the military. (I hope I spelled those names correctly. I could not for the life of me hear the sound on the video until it was uploaded, thus the “moment of silence” remark. But it’s working now so enjoy)
Click the video ONCE to view it on this page.
If the above video did not display for you, try clicking the link below.
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Nice video!!
How lucky we are in Canada to have such an excellent man as Hillier as Chief of Staff. Did you read Lew MacKenzie’s editorial comment re: Afghanistan?
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Mac, I didn’t read it. Can you point me to it?
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Globe and Mail, Wednesday, January 31, 2007, Page A19
I’m unable to link as the commentary is in the subscriber area so I will cut & paste the text…
-Mac
NATO’s shame in Afghanistan
by Maj-Gen Lewis MacKenzie (ret’d)
For the past month, the news media have been replete with forecasts of a looming spring offensive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Open sources have guesstimated that as many as 15,000 of them are mobilizing just over the Pakistani border. Many are “tier one” (really dedicated in the jihad against the rest of us) and the remainder “tier two” (in it for the money). NATO is deemed to be “preparing” for this offensive and continues to call for a modest injection of additional troops to deal with the increased threat.
There was rejoicing on the weekend over the news that a 3,500-strong brigade of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division (headquartered just across the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, Ontario) will stay in Afghanistan for an additional four months. One of the brigade’s combat battalions of 650 soldiers is to be relocated to Kandahar airfield as a rapid-reaction force. The other two can also be deployed to the south if necessary. There was also talk of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization providing a mixed international brigade of as many as 3,500 troops to help out in the south, but no countries have yet stepped forward to volunteer their soldiers.
So, we have 650 additional troops from the 10th Mountain Division. We have about 2,500 additional Mountain Division troops standing by in other parts of Afghanistan who, in the event of a Taliban offensive, will find themselves unable to redeploy to the south as a result of modest Taliban diversionary attacks aimed at freezing U.S. soldiers in place. And we have a phantom NATO brigade of 3,500 troops from various countries yet to be identified, who have not trained together and presumably employ different tactics (assuming that some ex-Soviet satellite countries and recent NATO members would be involved). Conclusion? NATO has found 650 extra soldiers to help thwart the Taliban’s spring “offensive.”
As an armchair general nearly 10 time zones away from Kandahar and with no inside access to military intelligence, I find the response from NATO’s political headquarters to the so-called Taliban spring offensive deplorable and a threat to NATO’s very survival as the world’s leading military alliance. No military commander sits around and waits for the enemy to take the offensive. When you are invited to a knife fight, you show up at the back door with a gun. When the U.S. Marines arrived at night on the beaches of Mogadishu under the glare of the television cameras in 1993 to rescue a failed United Nations “peacekeeping” mission, the naive chuckled at the assumed overkill.
In fact, arriving with more than required to do the job persuaded the enemy to abandon the battlefield. For the next six months, the U.S. led the most successful UN-authorized forceful intervention in its history. It seems almost everyone associates the “Black Hawk down” incident with the U.S.-led intervention when, in fact, it occurred after the withdrawal of most of the Americans, the handover of command to the UN and the idiotic placing of a ransom on the head of the leading warlord. I always thought it was just the UN that chronically showed up with fewer resources than were necessary to do the job.
The outgoing commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, British Lieutenant-General David Richards, has been pleading for months for an additional 2,500 troops. Presumably, at least half would be deployed to the south if he got them. In fact, he needs the 2,500 and 27,500 additional troops if he wants NATO to win, secure, develop, train the Afghans and get out of Dodge ASAP. Sure, it’s impossible to interdict all the Taliban reinforcements as they sneak across the Pakistani border; but once they’re in Afghanistan and concentrated for any offensive, with adequate NATO troops, you can make it impossible for them to escape back to their sanctuary.
There are about 800,000 troops available within the expanded NATO membership. About 4 per cent of them are in Afghanistan, and the alliance is “concerned” and “preparing” for a Taliban spring offensive! Will someone please give me a break — if anyone is going on the offensive, it should be NATO, and it shouldn’t be waiting for spring.
Unfortunately, thanks to a lot of talk and empty promises by most NATO members at the political level, the military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan have little choice. The time for diplomatic niceties is long past. If we are serious about rebuilding Afghanistan, we have to eliminate the security threat that stands in the way of that undertaking. That won’t be achieved with 650 additional troops and handing the initiative to the enemy.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was the first commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.
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How pleased am I that you were at that game … sitting where you were … fate? maybe … I had been trying so hard to figure out how in the world to get a video or pictures to show my ‘VERY PROUD’ husband and children … all of them, and myself, are very thankful to you
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Thank you sooo very much!
What a coincidence that you just happen to be there WITH the video cam.
I, like Lisa am very pleased that you were there. We are now able to view, anytime we want, something that we weren’t sure we would ever be able to see!!
My ‘friend who is currently serving in afghanistan’ that was mentioned when I was introduced was sooo very excited to hear that he would actually be able to see and hear for himself, when he returns home in a few days, that his name was mentioned over a PA system at an NHL hockey game. Hmm…every hockey fans dream?? lol
Again, I thank you very much.
Karen