When Stars Do Not Align

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being. -Goethe IN MARCH 1993, soldiers of the Canadian Airborne Regiment tortured and murdered a teenage Somali thief Widespread distrust of a subsequent military investigation led the Crown to order a public inquiry by Justice Gilles Letourneau. As he began to reveal organizational malaise at the highest levels of the military-bureaucratic interface, the government terminated the inquiry six months short of its original mandate-an unprecedented action. Much of the Canadian military believes that the story has not been effectively told, that responsibility has not been assigned, that leadership is lacking and any similar situations in the future would bring similar problems. Indeed, as Latourneau points out in the executive summary of his report, the type of closure people seek after such disturbing events is still missing. Due to the Government's decision to terminate the Inquiry, we were unable to reach the upper echelons with respect to the alleged issue of cover-up and the extent of their involvement in the postdeployment phase. . . Evasion and deception, which in our view were apparent with many of the senior officers who testified before us, reveal much about the poor state of leadership in our armed forces and the careerist mentality that prevails at the Department of National Defence. These senior people come from an elite group in which our soldiers and Canadians generally are asked to place their trust and confidence.1 Even worse, since the release of the truncated report, poorly considered new-age programs attempted to improve soldier morale. But because many of these efforts have ignored the deficiencies noted by Letourneau, they have often damaged morale, Peter Senge warns, Vision without an understanding of current reality will more likely foster cynicism than creativity.2 The US military, in a somewhat analogous situation in 1975, released the Malone-Ulmer report, a study by the US Army War College on ``Military Professionalism. It was not flattering: Gentlemen, a scenario that was repeatedly described to us during our interviews for this study includes an ambitious, transitory commander. marginally skilled in the complexities of his duties, engulfed in producing statistical results, fearful of personal failure, too busy to talk with or listen to his subordinates, and determined to submit acceptably optimistic reports which reflect faultless completion of a variety of tasks at the expense of the sweat and frustrations of his subordinates.3 Why do these things happen? Officers receive commissions that clearly repose special trust in their loyalty, courage and integrity. They are charged to carefully and diligently discharge their duty, to keep their subordinates in good order and discipline.4 Often the tools are there to do the job, but leaders simply fail to execute this responsibility. Sometimes the political context compels them to ignore what would normally be the warning signs that something is seriously amiss. Late in his life, General Howard K. Johnson, US Army chief of staff under President Lyndon Johnson, revisited an earlier turning point. He had decided that resignation over the conduct of the Vietnam War would be an empty, quickly forgotten act, for others would be brought in who were more amenable to the president. Better to serve on, faithful to the Army and the soldier, he thought, and improve the things he could. He reflected that there are sins of omission and sins of commission. `I remember the day I was ready to go over to the Oval Office and give my four stars to the President and tell him, You have refused to tell the country they cannot fight a war without mobilization; you have required me to send men into battle with little hope of their ultimate victory; and you have forced us in the military to violate almost every one of the principles of war in Vietnam. …

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