First it was his use of a search and rescue helicopter to pluck him from a private fishing lodge. Then it was his department’s $10-billion accounting shortfall on the cost of buying the F-35 fighter jet. Most recently, it’s been his bobbling of the actual cost of Canada’s participation in last year’s Libya mission.
On Oct. 29, 2011, just days after Moammar Gadhafi was killed and the NATO campaign was coming to a close, a gleeful MacKay told the CBC that the war effort had come in under budget at less than $50 million.
Last week, the Department of National Defence tabled the final tally in a parliamentary budget report, which pegged the total cost of the 10-month long intervention at $347 million, of which at least $106 million was “incremental” costs directly associated with the Libya mission.
To explain the more than 100 per cent discrepancy in the calculations, MacKay insists that he never misled Canadians.
Instead, we are to believe that at the time of his CBC interview, MacKay was referring only to the actual costs spent up until that juncture, and did not include the expenses involved in bringing the troops and equipment back home.
If we are to take the good minister at his word, then we must believe that it cost only $50 million to deploy our planes and a warship for 10 months of continuous operation, including lodging, food and the ammunition expenditure of $25 million worth of bombs. And yet, somehow, it cost more than $56 million just to get these same planes and the warship back home.
While that is admittedly a bit of a stretch, MacKay has also made the point that whatever the cost — $50 million, $100 million, $347 million — it was all money “well spent.”
According to MacKay, Canadian troops fought the good fight as part of a NATO alliance under the command of Canada’s own lionhearted Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard to rid the world of a murderous tyrant. Mission accomplished — case closed.
Lost in all the victory parades, self-congratulations and dispensing of valour medals is the fact that NATO was never mandated to effect regime change in Libya. And despite the removal of Gadhafi, the Libyan people remain entrenched in a state of violent upheaval.
The U.N. Resolution 1973, which was passed on March 17, 2011, authorized NATO to enforce a “no-fly zone” over the skies of Libya.
At that point in the uprising, the Libyan rebels were being pushed back by the pro-Gadhafi loyalists and it was feared that Gadhafi’s air force would be employed to punish the rebellious civilians of Benghazi.
The NATO commanders chose to liberally interpret the UN mandate into one of using airstrikes themselves in order to protect anti-Gadhafi Libyans from the threat of airstrikes.
Those familiar with the roots of the Libyan conflict know that it was largely a tribal-based civil war. Once the rebellious eastern tribes had seized control of Cyrenaica, the eastern region of the country that includes the majority of Libya’s oil fields, the conflict had settled into a relative stalemate.
There were a number of peace initiatives launched at that time, including proposals from South Africa for a negotiated division of Libya.
Such negotiations could very well have involved an immediate ceasefire and put an end to the bloodshed, but that just wouldn’t do for Canada’s foreign affairs minister
We now know that when John Baird flew into Benghazi on June 27, 2011, he did so to encourage the rebels to keep fighting.
And with help from NATO airpower and advisors, the rebels did indeed continue fighting, until their eventual military victory. And beyond.
Unfortunately for those who wanted a storybook ending, the ill-disciplined polygot of rebel militias celebrated their victory with a torrent of bloody reprisals against Gadhafi’s loyalists.
Seven months after Canada staged a victory flypast in Ottawa, the Libya militias still refuse to disarm, thousands of Libyan civilians are still illegally detained, international observers have reported prisoners being tortured to death, and tens of thousands, mostly sub-Saharan Libyans, were ethnically cleansed from the city of Tawergha.
In addition, the abundance of weaponry and lawlessness in Libya has also been linked to the recent coup in neighbouring Mali.
Money well spent indeed, Mr. MacKay.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: SCOTT TAYLOR
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