Esprit de Corps editor says defence minister was way off base

Scott Taylor, the editor-in-chief of the iconoclastic military magazine Esprit de Corps, has taken a strip off the Canadian defence minister, Gordon O'Connor for remarks he made last week to Canadian troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan. O'Connor justified the mission to Afghanistan and lit into the media for emphasizing casulaties and combat rather than reconstruction activities. Taylor, who wrote his response in the Halifax Chronicle Herald said, in part:

According to the defence minister, embedded journalists and military commentators have been focusing too much on the combat and casualty count rather than on the positive achievements of our expeditionary force. In particular, O’Connor wanted the media to talk more about the battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans. Unfortunately for those who wish it otherwise, you cannot divorce the increased combat reports from the overall situation.

Furthermore, many of the most violent Afghan attacks are being perpetrated against our Provincial Reconstruction Teams — those are the soldiers tasked with the aid and development projects that the minister feels are being underreported.

In defence of my media colleagues, it would be pretty difficult to imagine a headline proclaiming “ Canadian soldiers dig well in village" and only in paragraph 15 of the story do we learn that the combat engineers responsible were blown to bits by a suicide bomber while returning to their base.

However, the fact that I openly question the government’s justification for the present mission to Kandahar does not mean that I do not support the troops. As a Canadian, it is possible to morally support each and every individual soldier who represents our national interests while simultaneously questioning government officials who define those interests.