Canada in World War I: Part 5 - Tactics, Restructuring, and Post-Somme Recovery

Yes, I understand I'm jumping back into the war after a long hiatus (part four was written in February) but it's for a good reason. The books I'm reading on the subject are long. It's not so much that it took me ten months to read it, but it's taken me ten months to summon the will to take up the second volume.  So, let's recap, since it's been a while.

Artillery fire would be pretty if it wasn't abjectly horrifying.

The Canadian army was a rag-tag fighting force that was called in to support the British, thought to be full of cowboy-style ruffians and undisciplined soldiers. However, after a few key battles and hard fought victories, we began to earn our reputation as a small but elite army of troops. We fought from Ypres, to Mount Sorrel, to the Somme, fighting and dying and typically succeeding, but the lattermost was the most devastating - and not just to the Canadians, but pretty well everyone. The Somme had over a million casualties on each side, and once the battle was over the Canadian forces took a step back to lick their wounds and regroup.

Meanwhile, back home, a regrouping took place as well. Sam Hughes, the conservative military minister, had ruled with an iron first up until this point. This helped the early stages of the war as having one singular overseer of the situation was helpful considering the massive degree of chaos that came with organizing a previously non-existent, untrained military force into something worthwhile. As they settled down, Hughes' use wore off, and complaints rose about his erratic, prone to anger personality, his many scandals and mistakes, and appointments of friends and political allies that were far from hidden. Prime Minister Borden, as a result, removed Hughes from power and replaced his role with two people; one to run things at home, and a new office, a minister strictly for oversees military forces.

Sam Hughes, angry with Canada
for ousting him from his position
of power, later became
vice-president Mike Pence.

Leading the men in Europe was Julian Byng, the well-respected general of the Canadian forces of 80-100,000, who spoke with the French and the British to share and learn tactics after the Somme. 

Over the past few years the Canadians developed a system. The artillery would bombard the defences of the Germans about ninety metres ahead of their infantry every three minutes, allowing the soldiers just enough time to storm through and clear out the trenches and continue going forward in what was called a "creeping barrage." The problem was the Germans were getting wise to the plan, starting to predict when it was coming and bombarding the troops as they crossed no-man's-land towards the trenches. The new plan was to focus on taking out the big guns so that couldn't happen, but that was a difficult task. A number of solutions were utilized to varying effectiveness; using observation planes to give the friendly guns something to shoot at (critical, but thankless work), using advance spotters to look for the flash of the guns and hopefully triangulate the distance (through either math, science or magic), and using sound-waves to measure the speed and trajectory of the artillery shells to guess where they came from (again, math, science, or magic). 

Another key part of strategy was raiding, and the Canadians were experts. It was here they would learn how to fight effectively, swiftly, and hopefully capture a few prisoners to gather intelligence about the enemy. The whole idea was to have a raid completed, start to finish, in just fourty-five minutes with as much damage done as possible and to return before the defenders had even figured out what hit them. The most important aspect was the element of surprise, hitting during the night when soldiers weren't at the ready, and retreating under the cover of darkness. However, that began to die down as raiding became far more common as the war pressed on, especially for Canadians who saw it as a means of earning their reputation, pride, and rewards. Larger, more audacious raids were planned as every unit wanted to have the greatest success. 

In February 1917, the Canadians set their sights on raiding the first lines of Vimy Ridge. Vimy was a fortress; seven kilometres of defences, uphill, littered with barbed wire, trenches, defensible positions and a heck of a lot of Germans. Both the French and the British had tried to take Vimy previously and failed miserably, taking many casualties in the process. The Germans held the territory for a full two years. But this wasn't a full-scale assault yet; they just wanted a raid.

Respirators, while life-saving in a gas attack, made it
incredibly difficult to breath. Which... sounds kind of
counter-intuitive.

The plan was to use the weapon that many still saw as almost mythical: gas warfare. The more experienced front-line commanders argued heavily against its use, as it was uphill (the gas was heavier than air, and would therefore fall down towards them), the Germans and Canadians both had respirators they could use against it, and wind was, of course, rather fickle. Ignoring the pleas of the men at the front the command went ahead with the plan anyways, that at this point had lost all semblance of a surprise attack as it had been delayed for days due to a lack of wind. The chemical assault did essentially nothing to damage the defences, and in the first five minutes of going over the trenches and rushing, Canada took 190 casualties, a number that would rise to 687 by the end of the day. 

The Canadians learned an important lesson that day: preparation was everything, and poor planning leads to many lost lives. They would attack Vimy again in the months to come, but only after months of preparation. 

Roman Gladiators: Part 3 - Lions, Leopards and Bears - Oh My!

There are a few similarities in going out to a sporting event today and going to a gladiator spectacle back then. First, it was for the consumer, so they did their best to make it pleasant. Amphitheaters had cushions and awnings to keep it cool and comfortable. The wealthy sat closer up while the poor sat high up in the nosebleeds (I wonder if they had signs up like at a waterpark; "the first three rows may get covered in splattered flesh and blood!"). There were concession stands to feed the people. There was even a halftime show, as the gladiator shows tended to be full day events; the difference here is instead of Katy Perry dancing around with men in hilarious shark costumes, there were public executions. Past or present, that's probably the time I'd step out to take a leak. If it weren't for my abject fear of public washrooms, that is.

An oddly fitting Simpsons line for Christians becoming
martyrs in the arena.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLLOhhi8aU

So, what are they watching? If you remember correctly, I said two blogs ago that many of the fights that occurred in the gladiator arena were far, far more shocking than the traditional depiction you would expect in books and movies. It was the sheer volume of death that was so incredible, and the way the Romans would search far and wide just to provide variety for the bloodbath made it all the more gruesomely spectacular.

By 300 B.C., animals became the newest attraction. Killing a man? Yeah, that's cool and all, and I'm sure it's really exciting, but killing a bear? Now that'll get people talking. Due to the Roman Empire's colossal reach and scope, animals were brought in from all over. Soon, elephants would be fighting while a hundred lions - yes, a hundred - were slaughtered the next day. Next would be rhinos, 150 leopards, and five crocodiles. They would bring in apes, as well. All of this was just one emperor's arena event. Nero, for example, had 400 bears and 300 lions killed in a day. Those are numbers that are so incredible I can hardly picture it. These are animals I think of in small numbers, sparsely populated across large areas of vast forests or open savanna, not all packed into an arena to fight it out with people or each other. In the Colosseum one year, 9000 animals were killed in games that stretched well over weeks. Naturally, this was unsustainable as when you completely wipe clean an ecosystem it tends not to repopulate all that quickly. The excessive hunting displaced the animals, moving them south and out of reach of the empire's deadly grasp towards the end of the gladiator games' run.

The process in bringing these animals was, of course, exceedingly dangerous, expensive, and difficult. First, they would trap the animals in all corners of the empire. That was the easy part. The trick was managing to get a colossal, violent, angry animal onto a boat without having the ease of being able to slaughter it first. Imagine packing an elephant onto a boat created at the time of the Roman Empire; surely no easy task. The requirements of space, food and manpower would severely tax those that had to bring them over, and all of this was before the arena even occurred. From there, they would have to keep them in temporary holding cells before they would release them through a rather ingenious method of lowering them from a platform into a thin hallway in which they have only one direction to go - straight into the arena. None of the animals would survive. The poor may or may not have feasted on the meat of the animals, but that's still up for debate (I'd admit that if I had the chance, yeah, I'd eat a lion. Just to say I have the heart of a lion in me).

In addition to Christians, criminals were also sacrificed
to the animals for entertainment. This criminal had developed
a primitive Segway to try to outpace the leopards, although
it appears ineffective.

The animals were typically reserved for a morning timeslot, a prelude to the main event. Along with the animal fights and hunts, there were comedic bits, competitive athletics, and other such entertainers. Once that finished up, they'd have the public executions until they were ready to bring on the gladiators themselves (Kiss Cam technology for halftime filler was yet to be invented).

Coming out to a flourish of music (an acoustic version of Welcome to the Jungle, I presume), the gladiators would then take the stage. Since there were massive numbers of small amphitheaters all over the empire, many of the fights were simply what one would expect; a small group of gladiators that would fight one-on-one to the enjoyment of a crowd. However, in the larger arenas (the Colosseum and otherwise) there would occasionally be staged battles symbolizing great wars the Romans had succeeded in. Some would have literally thousands of men fighting to the death. Now, this was no Civil War reenactment (which may or may not only exist on television), but it was instead very real. The largest such example was in 52 A.D. under emperor Claudius, in which 19,000 people fought in a massive ship battle, fighting until they would decide to stop it after enough had died. How many that would be is unclear, but I imagine it wouldn't be just a scant few. The Romans liked their bloodshed.

Once the games had concluded, they would call in the next wave; the janitorial staff. Human and animal carcasses were everywhere, and the task of clearing them all out was anything but minor. The lunchtime executions were simply thrown into the nearest river, an unceremonious end and meant to disgrace the dead. The gladiators would at least be buried, but typically in a mass grave. The more successful, moderately wealthy ones could occasionally afford a gravestone.

Years later, humanity would avenge this man's death
by always eating Animal Crackers' heads first.

The last casualty was the games themselves. Once the empire split into east and west, the games died out in in the two segments for different reasons. The west got poor; bringing in animals (which eventually switched to the cheaper option of herbivores, as they were easy to collect but much less fun to watch being killed), feeding and housing gladiators, and the upkeep of the arena in general was an expensive endeavour and eventually they just couldn't afford it. The east was completely different; emperor Constantine was one of the first to favour Christians, and under their influence, he began to weaken the games. Eventually they replaced the pagans, and mauling countless animals and humans in a bloodied mass of violence and destruction just didn't say "Christian values", marking the end of the age of gladiators.

It was, however, the birth of the Christian party-pooper.

Roman Gladiators: Part 2 - Who are They?

Surprisingly, the prospect of being ripped to shreds by people or animals in front of a cheering crowd of thousands didn't bring in many applicants. So how did they manage to find all these gladiators to participate? Considering the nature of the work, they would have to hire a lot of new people. The gladiator industry has a high turnover. 

To fill the ranks they would grab people from all over the Roman Empire. A large number of them were slaves and others were defeated warriors that refused to capitulate to Roman rule. The gladiators tended to be the lowest of the low in the Roman world; people to look down upon and not feel for when they're being gutted in the arena. Yes, a man may be getting killed in a violent, terrible fashion in front of you, but... he's a bad man, so it's at least moderately OK. At the very least, it allowed those at the bottom to work their way back - albeit rarely and with great difficulty. The pay was exceedingly low, but you could develop a modest living and free yourself from the title of slave if you win enough matches. You may not be considered a person in good standing, but people like their winners, and you would no longer be the bottom rung. 

A grossly misshapen man (left) lightly strokes his opponent on the back.
A soon-to-be-victor (right) utilizes the ramp that was recently
installed to get an advantage on his adversary. (Background) A
model flexes his hot bod.

Oddly enough, the thoughts of higher-ups on gladiators was mixed. While most looked down upon them as the scum of the empire, many looked at their bravery in the face of death as admirable. Since Romans valued strength and combat prowess so heavily, it was sometimes hard not to look at a gladiator and feel they did have some redeemable characteristics. 

Eventually as time passed it wasn't only these lower people anyway. A few went willingly, thinking they could have a shot at fame and fortune that the rest of life couldn't provide. A few were wealthy members of the upper class that for one reason or another upset the emperor. For the aristocrats it wasn't just a risk to life and limb, but a means to shame and degrade them, putting them in the realm of those that are well below their station. (Personally, I'd be more worried about death.) 

Regardless of where you came from, you would first sign an oath. It would be a pledge to the god of the underworld, accepting death in the arena, and saying you will train to fight as a gladiator. Naturally, most of these were signed under duress, save for those that decided that this veritable death sentence sounded like a reasonable business venture. Once you've signed, it wasn't like you were just tossed into the arena right away; the gladiators were an industry, and you would be shipped off to a lanista, a man who would house, train, buy and sell gladiators as a commodity. 

From that point on all the gladiators would do was train, eat and sleep. To be fair, they were typically pretty well taken care of. Purchasing gladiators didn't come cheap, and if the purchaser spent good money on them they would want to assure that they survived. That meant training them well, feeding them a large amount of food to make up for the excess of training that would surely burn up plenty of energy, and keep them medically fit and capable of fighting. Winning gladiators cost more and would be around the next time they were needed, assuming they won. It was a delicate game; a lanista would want them to battle difficult opponents, as that was where the money was. However, a loss meant the possible annihilation of one of your prized fighters. It was a game of having them shoot as high as they could but still win the fights, which was a difficult level to hit. As for the gladiators? They would keep about 25% of the winnings. 

A retiarius on the left fights a man sporting
his finest battle-diaper.

As for the training itself, it wasn't simply getting in top physical condition. They would learn how to fight in one of a number of different styles, typically based on what weapons they held. While in the early days of gladiators every fighter would have a spear and shield, other styles came through to bring a variety to the battles (seeing someone stabbed with a spear became old hat, so now it was time to see someone stabbed with a sword!). A laquearius, for example, used a lasso. A retiarius, a net to ensnare their foe and a trident to stab them. Others simply had a sword and shield, or, if you're going for looking cool rather than practicality, two swords. Usually these brackets wouldn't fight each other, as some styles were superior to others and wouldn't make for fair fights. (I can't picture the lasso guy would have won very many.) Their armour was typically pretty light; a helmet, leg and knee protection, but little on their chest for the dual purpose of showing off their masculinity as well as showing submission to the emperor through a bare, unprotected chest. 

It was a different time. I don't get it either.

The fighting tactic of lying facedown in the dirt
was quickly abandoned after poor performance.

Obviously, with all the weapons and nature of the fights and regardless of how carefully a lanista would plan, gladiators would die. Talking strictly numbers, you would have about a 10% chance of death upon entering the arena. Later, it rose to about 33% when bloodthirsty fans became more ravenous. The reason why it's not 50/50 is because there were a number of ways it could go: the first is simple, in that you go and win; the second is you're killed; the third is you surrender defeated and are subsequently killed anyways, for not putting up a fight that was deemed entertaining enough for survival; the fourth was you were shown mercy and survive, typically for fighting hard and bravely but just not having what it took; the final is a draw, where both sides leave battered but alive. Obviously it's a painful survival rate, but all things considered I expected lower. The average fighter would fall somewhere between 5-35 fights in his lifetime, probably a few a year. One man, Asteropaeus, won no fewer than 107. 

So, we have a number of hyper-manly men fighting it out for glory and honour, but where are all the chicks, right?! Well, they did exist, but it was few and far between. Many didn't like the prospect of it as it was an insult to masculinity, but sometimes they were trotted out to fight as comic relief. It wasn't a very... progressive time, so to speak. They probably didn't even allow members of the LGBTQ community to participate either. Ugh. Disgusting.

Roman Gladiators: Part 1 - From Private to Public

There are plenty of the "cool" parts of history that don't live up to the hype, usually due to entertainment media that skews how the facts were to liven it up a little. Typically those things become associated with the actual history, waiting around until some jerk who hates fun pipes up and says "well, actually, that isn't how it is". Vikings are a good example; they weren't massive people with horned helmets, but rather average sized, and had helmets that were most definitely not pointy. However, muscle-bound warriors yelling and helmet-stabbing is far more entertaining, and that's the image we have of them. See: the Minnesota Vikings. As for stunningly large moustaches, that may only be associated with that logo. For more examples, look to 90% of movies that have "based on a true story" at the beginning. People take liberties. That's not necessarily a problem, but it does make learning the real history a downer more often than not.

There are, however, a number of historical ones that most definitely live up to the hype. The historical concept of gladiators not only reaches it, but exceeds it. We're not talking one-on-one battles between a few guys, which is personally how I pictured gladiator fights (although that did, of course, happen) but we're also talking massive pitched battles, occurring only for entertainment; animals from all over the empire brought in incredible numbers to fight against both man and each other; emperors going into the ring to show they're as tough as anyone else; and, for the ladies (or for those gentlemen that were more focussed on Gerard Butler's abs during 300 rather than his killing ability), we're talking men that were such perfect physical specimens that they would wear armour around most of their bodies but their torso, just to show how jacked they were. A gladiator fight as they're seen in the public imagination would be tiresome and mundane compared to the real thing.

I'm sorry ancient pottery makers,  but your depiction
of gladiators standing and idly having a chat
is not helping my "gladiator fights were crazy over
the top" argument.

To be fair, that's how they were at their peak. Their beginnings were much more humble, an idea stolen from other civilizations than the Romans - which is why we know little of how it started, as they wouldn't want to admit it - that was all about a few people fighting to the death at funerals. They believed the blood of prisoners would help ease the passage into death for more important or wealthy folk. Back then, at a funeral, everyone was apparently wishing for more death.

Having a gladiator match at your funeral meant you were somewhat of a big deal, similar to having a large, expensive funeral would be now. Replace "number of flower bouquets" with "number of slaughtered prisoners" and you're on the right track. It was a social symbol, a means to show that the deceased had money, lived a good life, and the people who had the dead's legacy passed to them would show that by throwing a big gladiator party, so to speak. The more gladiators there were, the more popular the person; the real big-wigs at the time would have hundreds of gladiators fighting to the death at their funerals, presumably making it so their spirits would float to the afterlife on a sea of cries of pain and a river of blood: a most pleasant passing. I can see why that was so popular.

"Pardon me, gentlemen, but were we allowed to wear armour?
Oh, woe is me, I don't think I'm getting out of this one", said the
man second from the right.

Around the third or fourth century B.C., the Romans decided that they liked these fights so much that they should start making it a public event. After Julius Caesar's assassination (who personally held a gladiator match with as many as 320 fighters to honour his father during his reign), they used gladiator fights to appease a public that may not have been overly pleased with the assassination of their leader. Suddenly, watching two prisoners battle to the death for the amusement of those watching was no longer just for high society.

One of, if not the only, pre-1900s painting that
doesn't instantly bore me to tears.

All the blood and guts turned out to be a massive success. The games became so popular that amphitheatres were in almost every decently sized town, and visited by people from all walks of life. The emperor would put on the games as a show of solidarity with the people (well, save for those that were killed, I guess) as well as to demonstrate his control not only over the people of Rome but over the animals in the empire.

 In the largest cities the fights would typically be run by the emperor himself, but in smaller ones a wealthy man would take the reins and hold a show. It had to be in the smaller towns because if the fights grew too large, you may be falling out of the emperor's favour; the people who held gladiator fights tended to be rather popular, and growing too popular was taken as a threat. That meant that the largest, most grand fights were held typically in Rome and always on behalf of whomever was the emperor at the time. Under Augustus' rule, his show was said to have had ten thousand fight each other, and 3500 animals killed as well. With the eventual building of the colosseum, 50,000 would come to watch the fights.

So, who was fighting? What kind of fights did they have? Was that loser from the Spartacus television show who fought with a net a real thing? Tune in next time.

Hunting bin Laden: Part 3 - Storming the Compound

So, they've found his courier, the Kuwaiti. Obama is in office. America seems unlikely to employ a "forgive and forget" policy. What's next?

Well, it's the final stretches now. They didn't know it at the time, but finding the courier would be the key to the final location and putting the whole issue to rest. The States started by talking around a little, and managed to find out the courier's real name (Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed) from an unnamed third country. Managing to track the man down, an asset in Pakistan saw the man's truck and followed it back to Osama's compound.

It's location was in quiet Abbottabad, a place where there are plenty of schools, a low crime rate, and as far as Pakistan goes, a quiet retirement community. Considering that a very real possibility was Osama hiding in a cave, he seemed to have done quite well for himself. He had the place built especially for his needs (well-defended, secretive compounds don't just spring up), designed as a two-story and adding on a third specifically for Osama and his wife (well, one wife). In the compound he had four wives, aged 29-62, a dozen grandkids, as well as the Kuwaiti, his brother, and their families. It was a veritable community inside a single compound.

A view of the compound; it's a bit of a fixer-upper, but
location, location, location.

Naturally, it was well protected; twelve foot high walls, barbed wire, security cameras... the works. The kind of place where "Ocean's Fourteen" might take place. Oddly, the high security and tech stuff goes against the bin Laden style - a very stripped down, spartan existence. Both air conditioning and heating were low, the beds were made from boards hammered together, and there weren't any pictures or paintings.  There was one particularly memorable item, however. To make sure he kept his youthful appearance, he used "Just for Men" on his beard and hair. I guess he wanted to be...

A jihadi and a hottie.

Now, most of this stuff couldn't be discovered from the outside. They could only get so much info, and no one in the surrounding area had any idea of what was going on inside the mysterious, well-protected house/fortress hybrid. Worried about a major international incident, the Americans desperately wanted to know who was inside before storming it. Their ideas for figuring out who was inside ranged greatly from realistic and practical to hairbrained schemes that the most ridiculous television plotlines wouldn't come up with - one was to lob stink-bombs into the place and hope they come out, and another was to place loudspeakers near the compound and pretend to be the voice of Allah, calling for them to leave. Unfortunately, they would have to deal with copyright issues with the latter. As for definitive proof, there was little; just a lot of circumstantial evidence. They believed Osama to be a man they called "the pacer", who would walk the compound daily, providing only the image of his shadowy silhouette obscured by drapes above him.

Even though bin Laden's influence was fading (even pro-al-Qaeda people didn't like the fact that they were also killing Islamic citizens and offered few solutions to their difficulties) the U.S. was still willing to risk a lot going after him. Fortunately for them, they were now allowed to do covert missions without letting congress or the public know, and this would certainly be one of them. The fallout of saying they think they know where Osama is, having everyone get hyped up, only to have it blow up in their face would be catastrophic. With mounting pressure to capture him, the knowledge that intelligence only lasts for so long, and the fact that if anything leaked to Pakistan it might find its way back to Osama they had to act and they had to act quickly.

Not pictured: popcorn and pizza for the bin Laden hunting
viewing party.

One option was to bomb the city, but that was less than desirable. It would mean civilian casualties and uncertainty whether or not bin Laden was actually there. A covert, secret surprise attack would be much safer, and ideally one that had some variety of deniability. That would mean they would have to get in, kill whomever they needed, and get out without leaving much of a trace - especially if they were wrong. If they were right, they could pretty well get away with it, albeit with a little bit of damaged relations but nothing they couldn't fix later. Now, this is all contingent on if they wanted to go in at all; most people were sitting at about seventy percent certainty, but a number were about fifty-fifty on it, which aren't exactly odds you want to bet something of this great importance on. After careful deliberation, they decided it was worth it. It was just a matter of how and when.

Going in at 11:00 p.m. local time, picking a week without a moon and a day where Pakistani guards would be on the lighter side, they sent in the SEALs, America's cream of the crop in regards to their special forces military. Flying in with stealth helicopters just a few feet above ground level, navigating through trees, they arrived at the compound.

It was probably really, really cool.

Initially the plan was to drop off two dozen mend and fly away, returning to pick them up a short time later. However, bad weather caused the helicopter to clip a rotor and have to make a rough landing, no longer able to fly out of there. They would have to call in a reserve helicopter, and, in order to not let the technology fall into the wrong hands, blow up their massively expensive plaything. The downed helicopter wasn't just a money issue either; when it fell the whole plausible deniability idea went out the door with it. Mind you, I can't see how they could cover up a large contingent of highly trained men storming a compound in Pakistan, but... what do I know.

People cheering in the streets outside the White House
following the news. If they were wearing SEAL jerseys
it would look exactly like a sporting event.

Now was the time to storm the compound, shooting everything in sight. Inside, they found the Kuwaiti, shooting him in the head twice, also shooting his wife in the shoulder. Next up, they shot the Kuwaiti's brother and his wife - both unarmed. Next was bin Laden's son, who was also likely without a weapon. None of that really mattered, though - it would all be for naught if they couldn't find the head honcho.

He was next on the list. Finding him in his bedroom as he was listened to the events unfold, they barged in, shot his wife in the calf (who then fell unconscious) and shot him twice, killing him. The pictures were never released as they could serve to spark retaliation as they could use him as a martyr. It was May 2nd, 2011, almost a decade after the initial attacks. Shortly after, Obama announced they defeated Osama bin Laden after long last. Never before had a president walked up to a podium with such a cocky strut.

And the Middle East and the the United States never fought again.

Hunting bin Laden: Part 2 - Regruping

After the mishandled attempt at capturing bin Laden so shortly after his attacks, al-Qaeda managed a bit of a resurgence. They began recruiting oversees, showing they can hit targets abroad and not just in their territory. The most notable attack was in 2005 when suicide bombers attacked the people of London on the trains for their morning commute, killing dozens. Especially in recent years, that's kind of the tone for terrorism; crazed individuals killing typically less than a hundred (well, at least in the Western world), but increasingly large amounts due to the fact that weapons are more dangerous than ever and the only major hinderance to committing atrocities is a sense of basic morality.

America's response to this has been to amp up the drone program, effectively increasing what Osama claimed he was trying to prevent - an increased presence of Americans in the Middle East. Eventually, around 2007-2008, America simply stopped asking Pakistan for permission to drone-strike certain areas and began doing it on their own accord. Bringing out more controversy was their decision to also do a cross-border raid that killed mostly women and children, damaging relations with Pakistan and covering the face of the Americans with many an egg. However, at the core of it all they were still eliminating al-Qaeda leaders left, right and centre all from the safety of places hundreds of miles away. It suddenly became very dangerous to be a leader al-Qaeda, but the most important one was nowhere to be found. All the while, terrorists were citing him as their major influence the way rock stars say they learned from some past musician. Osama was the Beatles of modern terrorism.

The search for him never died down, in spite of the fact that they had very little evidence on

Osama bin Laden's father; siring 55 kids. It was
his winning smile and devout religious extremism
that his wives just couldn't resist.

where he might be residing. It mostly came down to where he couldn't be. Initially they believed it couldn't be Yemen as he would be too recognizable, and most likely Afghanistan or Pakistan. From there they searched the history books. They searched where his father hid when he was on the run, hoping he would be in a similar situation (in searching up his father I discovered that bin Laden's dad had over twenty wives and 55 children, which would make keeping track of birthdays a tiresome issue). They discovered he had a network of safehouses everywhere, leading them to believe he could very well be in an urban centre.

From there, they looked for what they referred to as "four pillars" - his family, hints in his messages to the media (if there was a plant, a bird, voices in the background, anything that could lead them in a direction), communication with the other leaders, and his courier network. It was the lattermost of these pillars that eventually led to his capture.

Aguilera: proudly doing her part in the
war on terror.

We know now that bin Laden was holed up in a compound in a quiet town in Pakistan (more on that later). It was isolated; with cell phones being tracked, messaging was very slow in the al-Qaeda world. That meant that much of the messaging had to be done by a courier, transporting whatever had to be transported in and out of the compound to the beck and call of Osama. The courier himself, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, with his real name being Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed (we'll refer to him as the Kuwaiti for brevity, and so I don't have to keep double checking the spelling) had been close to bin Laden for ages. Eventually, the U.S. Jack Bower'ed just the right people - meaning torture - until a few coughed up information about the Kuwaiti and what he might be doing.

So, does that mean that torture works?
Sort of. First off, it was pretty brutal; one man was kept awake twenty hours a day, stripped nude, left cold and isolated, and, interestingly enough, subjected to hours of blaring Christina Aguilera music - a fate typically reserved for suburban fathers of white teenage girls in the 2000-2010 decade. Another man, also tortured (although not as heavily - perhaps with smooth jazz) led to the Kuwaiti as well. Certainly, it looks promising; that is, until you consider that another high ranking member was waterboarded almost two hundred times and still told the Americans the Kuwaiti had retired - another provided only disinformation. So, the answer to the original question is... maybe?

Barack, after being asked where the drone strikes
 are coming from.

It was right around this time finds the end of the George Bush era. New to the warfront is Barack Obama, the first black president that has one letter off the name of the terrorist he's hunting (considering how America looks currently, that's nothing short of a miracle). Being fiercely anti-war on the campaign trail and before, he shifts the tone from saying "war" to "policing", putting a fresh new spin on it. He then took the drone program, amped it up to never before seen levels, and declared stronger than ever that it's Osama season. After what seems like ages, they have their first real lead, and he was feeling like they just might get 'im. American style.

Hunting bin Laden: Part 1 - First Attack and a Chance at Capture

I'll admit it is a little eerie - but not so much that it's worthy
of a conspiracy theory.

(I suppose I should preface this blog by saying that writing this on September 11th was purely coincidental. I read books and write on them at my own pace, and it just happened to land like this. Nothing more than a coincidence, but hey, so is the picture on the right, but it's always a little interesting nevertheless.)

I was in grade six when the Twin Towers went down. It would have been a normal day I wouldn't have taken note of, but there was a stark difference; Garfield wasn't on the TV when I got out of bed and came downstairs. Instead, my parents were watching the news of the worst terrorist attack on American soil before or since with ten times the loss of life on the second on the list. I didn't know much of what the attacks meant or why they happened, but even as a child I knew whatever it was, it was big. I feel it's the only time when watching the news I've witnessed a major world-changing event that will define how the following decades will proceed. Also, it left me without a compass for my thoughts on lasagna and Mondays for that particular day of school.

Soon after, Osama bin Laden became perhaps the most notorious person in the world after revealing it was he who commanded the attacks under the terrorist group al-Qaeda. He couldn't immediately reveal it was him because that would force the hand of then Afghanistan President Mullah Omar. If he showed himself to be the mastermind behind the attacks and Omar wouldn't hand him over, the repercussions of it would pretty much mean a flat out war between the two countries, and Omar couldn't afford that. Knowing this, Osama laid low for a while and didn't immediately take ownership until he was hidden well enough - and once they started bombing Taliban targets and the cat was out of the bag.

I was really hoping to find a picture of Osama
bin Laden not smiling politely, but you take what
you can get.

Ironically, Osama carried through on this plan to get the Americans out of the middle east, thinking that if they struck the United States at home they would surely have to back out of there. It wasn't the greatest plan; striking at the strongest military in the world and thinking their reaction would be to slink away like a wounded animal was perhaps being a touch optimistic. To be fair, there were many that thought this way - specifically, the Taliban, al-Qaeda's older brother. They told him it would be unwise to start a war with the U.S. and attacking them would have massive, bloody repercussions at the expense of Afghanistan. Since al-Qaeda still had to listen to the Taliban, they offered them a deal; they would assassinate the leaders of the remaining anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan to earn the right to go after the States. Of course, Osama's plan backfired terribly. It only took until September 17th for President Bush to sign the plans to overthrow the Taliban and hunt down and if need be kill the leaders of al-Qaeda, with the big prize being Osama himself.

When the United States went hunting for them they came with all the might of a rich, powerful and bloated military budget paired with a thirst for blood the Americans haven't seen in ages. They absolutely devastated al-Qaeda, using drone strikes, the use of torture, and a willingness to bend the rules on what they can and cannot do in foreign countries. Pre-9/11 al-Qaeda was doing quite well for itself, with a very almost mundane bureaucratic air about it: they had disability insurance and vacation time, media outreach, and thirty-two pages of bylaws (The Office: Kabul?). Afterwards, their economy was in shambles, their infrastructure literally exploded and their allies either dead or scattered. With the major population centres no longer being safe they resorted to moving to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan where they had to deal with very limited amounts of communication due to the lack of infrastructure in the area. For Osama personally things were faring little better. Two months after the attacks, he had lost his longtime military commander, a whole bunch of his family was fleeing into exile, and since al-Qaeda's funds were running out he had little financial support.

The Americans reducing Tora Bora to a fiery hellscape
significantly reduced its ratings on Tripadvisor.

He decided to flee to Tora Bora, a complex of caves in eastern Afghanistan where he had previously used the mountainous terrain to hold off the Soviet Union in 1987 to great success. His battles there had made him somewhat of a military hero, and he was hoping to relive that and once more stand against a more powerful army using the tactical advantage of a difficult terrain in which he and his forces were familiar. Quickly, the Americans discovered he was there and pressed their attack - but not as heavily as one would imagine.

Fearing political retribution of the dangers of bringing a large number of soldiers into remote Afghanistan, already hostile to the U.S. and likely to get in skirmishes with civilians and villagers, they refrained from sending in too many. Instead, they opted to pay off the local Afghani warlords in the area and supported them with American firepower in the form of bombing runs in lieu of personnel. It appeared to be working at the time (at least somewhat) and a number of audacious military plans were denied - one of them being a plan to scale the mountainous region around them and descend on them from above, sandwiching them between the friendly(ish) Afghani warlord fighters and themselves. I believe the planning for that was a number of fifteen-year-old consultants getting together and considering what would be the most "awesome" way to take bin Laden down. The Americans, however, decided to lean on the side of caution and rely on planes and bribes. There were more journalists there than western soldiers.

It didn't pan out.

Much to the dismay of the Americans that paid them, the warlords agreed upon a ceasefire between the two, and Osama ordered his men to retreat. His closest bodyguards scurried away to Pakistan where they were promptly arrested - but Osama wasn't with them. He remained in Afghanistan and found shelter elsewhere. It was only December of the same year as the tragic, fateful events of September 11th, and they were so close to bringing the perpetrator to justice. Considering the cost, effort and time that would be put into finding him over the next several years, it's incredible to think that the Americans lost him by putting too much restraint on their efforts in the first few months.

American Counter-Terrorism: Opinions

This is my third post putting my personal opinions on whatever subject I may be delving into up for you to read, and it's the first time I'm not entirely sure how to feel. Regardless, I'll do my best to put my spin on the tough questions, as who else would be more qualified than a twenty-five year old who has read one book on the subject? Well, at least that makes me more qualified than the average internet opinion.

Should the U.S. and the rest of the world continue to use drone strikes?

This is a complicated one. I hope I've helped show that drone strikes are left wanting in accuracy and purpose, frequently hitting targets they don't wish to hit and removing the valuable asset of information from captured terrorists, as capturing someone after a drone strike is far less beneficial. However...

Looking from the States' perspective, sending troops is bad for business. No one wants fallen soldiers and it's hard to deny a process that removes the risk. They are still effective at hitting their targets, just not so great at hitting only their targets. For that reason I'd say they should probably keep using them, but perhaps a little less recklessly and a little less often. The problem is they've put themselves in a tough position, lending itself to a drone-strike heavy option. Obama has been big on the idea of keeping soldiers out of the war zones, which, in a roundabout way, indirectly states they'll be up in the sky rather than on the ground. However, with fewer forces on the ground, accuracy for drone strikes decreases due to a lack of information coming in (coming back to the lack of prisoners, thus a lack of interrogation). It seems drone strikes are things to be used in tandem with regular forces. A weapon to be used to hit specific targets that cannot be safely (well, at least relatively) reached otherwise. Let's not ignore the fact that drones are high powered death machines that above all else get the job done.

Going all-out on drone strikes seems like it won't really solve the problem, and if anything, it'll perpetuate it. Taking out groups of people that may or may not be enemy combatants is going to inevitably rile up an already strong anti-American (anti-western world, really) sentiment. You may kill a terrorist, but you make him a martyr and two pop up in his place. Taking out soldiers who are shooting back is one thing, but a flying death machine wiping out a building is another. It'll breed hatred, and it's a nasty cycle. However, they can't really back out now so it looks like it'll just continue for a while.

Yeah, it's a downer.

Final answer? Yes. Use drone strikes. But stop using them all the freaking time. 

So what really is the civilian count on the death toll?

This seems to vary widely. Like, ridiculously widely. We're talking some sources saying 2% of the kills are terrorists, while others say 2% of the kills are civilians. This is due to a number of factors, and the answer probably lies in a middle, shady grey, as most things in life tend towards. First off, it's incredibly hard to actually count up who is being killed. Typically a drone strike is done because they don't have any forces near it, meaning they can't just waltz in afterwards and count out who's dead. That means it comes through other sources, often local ones, and numbers can be fudged to push an agenda - positive or negative, depending on where you sit. So, that's problem number one - the info is loose, at best.

Problem number two is deciphering who is a terrorist. In my first blog in this series I spoke on the The Economist. It's a year old now, but it details (with cool graphics!) the drone deaths in Pakistan from when they started to now (if now was a year ago). In case you can't read the picture on the right, the numbers at the end are as follows: 190 children, 534 civilian, 52 high profile, and - here's the big one - 2565 other. What the heck is other? Other could mean so many things.

The prettiest way to demonstrate a massive death toll.

fact that any male of a certain age that's caught talking to a terrorist and gets caught in the blast of a drone strike blast is labeled as an "enemy killed in action", or more honestly, "probably an enemy because of association."  The problem is that final category is massive, making up the majority of drone strike deaths and it's not really clear who exactly they are. Watch the video on this article from

From what I can tell, it's the vague "enemy killed in action" designation with maybe a few unclear hits mixed in. All of these numbers are fairly unreliable so they have to be taken with a grain of salt, but it does paint a fairly clear picture - they don't really know who they're killing, but they're probably bad. The question is, are they right to believe so?

Once more, it's a shade of grey. I'm going with a hardline stance on this one, and saying "yeah, probably".

Let's go through an example. They hit a terrorist training ground, hoping to kill one well known, verified terrorist. They blow it up, killing, say, fifty people. They're all males, between 18-35 years of age, and thus get tossed in to the "enemy killed in action" category, explaining why that's huge in comparison to the rest. If they're there, with a known terrorist, and they're all males of a certain age, there's a pretty good chance they're not exactly good-guys. Of course, this isn't always true - and they definitely make mistakes. Plenty of them. Once more, it's hard to form an opinion without all the information on the table - but I guess that's part of the problem, isn't it?

But they need to be verified or else it's an assassination. Right?

A big complaint is drone strikes shirk international law as the enemy is frequently not in a designated war zone and they're not brought to a full trial, deeming it an assassination and thus against whatever codes are in place for that. The response to this from the United States is a bit of a shrug, a bully on a schoolyard saying "well, what are you going to do about it?".

Anyways, I don't really buy this argument. There is always going to be collateral damage, always going to be unwanted, unjustified deaths and there will always be mistakes. It's the sad, terrible truth of war. The goal is to minimize these risks while still being able to achieve the goals the military is putting forth, but minimizing them is not a perfect science. (If I sound callous, remember I'm in favour of reducing drone strikes, just not eliminating them entirely.) Giving every enemy combatant a fair trial would be the ideal, but an impossible one considering the circumstances. As for hitting them outside of designated war zones... well, I hope they vet their targets well. Sadly that's not always true. But, that's not an inherent problem with drone strikes - that's a problem with using them too recklessly.

*I published this, thought on it harder, and immediately came back. To really make an educated statement on this, I feel you have to know so many outside factors. How do they designate war zones? What are the international laws in place? How are they enforced? Is the U.S. breaking them, and if they are do they do it brazenly? Battles are complicated, and nothing is ever as obvious as it seems. However, at the core, if they know a know there's a terrorist that's planning something and they have an opportunity to act on it... well... that's a tough one.*

Hey, we talked about surveillance, too.  What's up with that? Is it bad? Will Edward Snowden soon be canonized?

You know, I'm going to take an unpopular opinion here and say that much of the surveillance technology is overall positive, although not necessarily used particularly well. Yeah, I know, I'm a government shill.

I'm not in the slightest worried about anyone reading, storing, or hacking my emails, texts, or what-have-you. Mass data collection means that inevitably no one will actually read it, save for if they're searching for someone or something more specifically. The more information there is, the less likely someone is going to see me text whatever mundane garbage I'm sending that day to my friends or the emails I keep getting from that shoe store I got something from that one time. I know it could have deeper consequences later, but the fact of the matter is it's not there yet. It's not that much of an issue for the average person right now, and honestly, I don't believe it will be. Yes, slippery slope and what not, but we can cross that bridge if we get there. If it legitimately helps to keep the peace I'm all for it.

However, it does have to be kept in check. Warrants should be needed, laws should be made for it, blah blah blah. Anything new will come with difficulties. As for the eight year old who was the suspected terrorist? Well, people just need to use some common sense and we'll all be fine.



Closing it out, a summary:

Drones are effective military technology, used far too often.
Bombing the middle east isn't really going to solve anything, but we're pretty much all in on it now so there's no way out now.
The surveillance state issue is an unnerving one but ultimately it just doesn't effect me enough to care.
The United States is probably evil, but not as evil as we're making them out to be most of the time.

Admittedly, I'm probably wrong on all of this, but I'm blessed with the knowledge that no one really cares what I think on it anyways. Nice.

American Counter-Terrorism: Part 2 - Watchlists and Surveillance

In 2013 talking about government surveillance was all the rage. Edward Snowden had just spread leaks like a drunk at a urinal, and while the general public didn't really read any of the papers (there are thousands of them, so I hope there's a sparknotes somewhere) the main point of it was the American government is spying on you. Americans were angry, they felt betrayed, and the sales of George Orwell's 1984 shot up. (I looked it up - that's actually true.) Unbeknownst to the American public, the National Security Agency - the dreaded N.S.A. - has been collecting telephone messages, emails, and, I don't know, maybe Tinder profiles, all under the blanket purpose of fighting terrorism.

An American spy rocket chose this as their logo.
It looks like it belongs to the stereotypical evil
organization in a Michael Bay movie.

I'm talking about this in a drone strikes blog because finding terrorists at home and abroad falls to many of the same agencies with many of the same lists and programs. Further, military technology oftentimes gets passed down to local police departments, and counter-terrorism stuff is no exception. No, it's not the missiles (although taking out drug lords with drone strikes sounds kind of cool, albeit in a terrifying way). We're talking the surveillance equipment; they have the technology to retrieve deleted text messages, spy on SMS (essentially texts), eavesdrop on calls, extract media files, address books and notes, and so forth. Most of it is done through cell-site simulators (also called StingRays, if you want to sound cool) which function as a mobile cell tower that people can inadvertently use, thus allowing them to track the information coming in. Initially this was used to target the terrorists' devices, thus allowing for more information, locations, and so forth. However, since 2007 they've been used on American soil 4,300 times - and that's just the Baltimore Police Department. I'm glad the only text messages I send are either mundane or childish. I'm also glad I live in Canada.

The problem with this technology is it tends to drag a net across an area and brings in way more information than it wants or needs. They don't specifically target one phone; it'll sweep, meaning whomever happens to be using their phone around a StingRay will suddenly have their information put into the system. While that sounds pretty doom and gloom (I'll admit it's a little disconcerting) let's not forget that no one's really reading any of it, unless they're hunting you specifically. I sincerely doubt there are a bunch of CIA guys reading your stuff and laughing at you - unless you said something really embarrassing, (and you know what that is!) in which they totally are for sure.

So yes, a lot of data is being collected (all but an infinitesimal percentage surely completely useless). However, if they do find something about you - either at home or abroad - there's a chance you'll be placed on the terrorist watchlist. You've probably heard the terms "no-fly list" and that sort, and that's basically what we're talking about here. You would think that it would be fairly hard to get on the watchlist - and to be fair if you're a law-abiding citizen, again, the chances you'll be on it are so, so small - but in countries the States is casually bombing you have a pretty decent chance. The laws at home don't apply to the U.S. overseas (or more accurately they just kind of ignore them most of the time) so the whole "fair trial" idea doesn't really hold water. Concrete facts and irrefutable evidence would be nice, but they're far from necessary and pretty rare, meaning that if you're suspected in any way you're essentially seen as guilty enough to be placed on it. That's why there are so many on the watchlist; 680,000 as of 2014, 280,000 of them not belonging to a terrorist organization. The no-fly list is smaller, but rising at the same dramatic rate over the past ten or so years.

This is Marvel's logo for Hydra, the
fictional terrorist organization. Now, my
question is does this look more or less
evil than the world-consuming octopus?
My follow up question is how disturbing
is it that it's a tough call?

TIDE, or the Terrorist Datamart Environment, (not to be confused with the rise and falls of sea levels, or detergent) is even larger - holding over a million names. Basically everything gets funneled through TIDE, splitting into different organizations, groups, programs, etc. - some of them with names that are seemingly designed to sound as villainous as possible. The best example is Hydra, which "utilizes clandestinely acquired foreign government information" to find more info on TIDE members. Holy crap. Type "Hydra" into google and the first thing that comes up is the Marvel universe's terrorist organization of the same name. That's unfortunate.

So what we've established here is the databases are huge, the networks for collecting information are

Cub Scout Mikey Hicks immediately
regretted getting his merit badge in
bomb-making.

 massive and wide reaching, and reasonable doubt is an archaic method of justice. What we haven't talked about yet is how you get on the no-fly list while being a resident of the United States. Fortunately, it's not particularly easy to do, and I'm sure that most of the people on there are written up for a good cause - but errors do happen, like the case of Mikey Hicks. Hicks shared the name of a known terrorist and was mistakenly put on the no-fly list (so I guess there was a terrorist named Mikey out there) and was taken aside for a pat down at an airport. At first that sounds upsetting and inconvenient, but there's a troubling twist.

Mikey Hicks was two years old. They gave a pat down to an infant. (I really hope whoever gave the pat-down said "he's clean - except his diaper" once they were done.) By the time he was eight, he was still on it - and still receiving pat-downs at the airport - and that's mostly because once you're put on it it's awfully hard to get taken off. You can apply, get your information put through and so forth, but there's no actual confirmation if you're removed, leaving the possible watchlisted to sit in a state of unknowing whether or not the government sees them as potential mass murderers. Obviously with Hicks it was a case of mistaken identity, but it's not entirely uncommon if you share a name. If anything, that exposes a problem with the system where they're accepting so many names and not properly vetting them or knowing what exactly to do with them. In 2013, 468,749 "Known Suspected Terrorist" nominations were put forth, and all but 4,915 were accepted, putting it at about 99%. It certainly makes you wonder.

I know I've already used one picture of this poor kid,
but this has got to be the funniest picture I've ever seen.

Now, I tried to keep this neutral, although I'll readily admit that the book I got this information from is obviously leaning. Personal opinions on this will come in the next post, but at the very least it's information that the falls in that category of "you should probably know this is happening".

___________________________________



The information for this blog has been taken from "The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program" by Jeremy Scahill. It's... OK. The problem is it's written as a number of news stories compiled into one volume, meaning plenty of the information doubles up and makes for a frustrating read. Nevertheless, it's an interesting one.

American Counter-Terrorism: Part 1 - Drone Strikes

We're in the age of splits: American politics has become so vitriolic that both sides not only disagree but seem to vehemently hate each other; police shootings, and by that I mean both parties being shot, has furthered a racial divide (well, in the U.S. specifically); the UK leaving the EU hoping to stimulate their GDP through DIY self-reliance, causing the PM, AKA David Cameron, to step down ASAP; but most importantly is the age old battle between east and west, sparking the worst tragedies. Terrorist attacks are becoming disturbingly common, and the world can only change the lighting on buildings in solidarity so quickly.

The response from the United States, the self-proclaimed police of the world, is to bomb the enemies with precise missile strikes from unmanned aircraft because, yes, we live in the future. The bombings happen frequently, most often with little to no media reporting, and a public that knows little beyond the fact that they are indeed blowing things up and that they're probably killing the right people.

"No! More drones!"

or...

These people drone on and on.

Drones have come out of a time where warfare isn't what it used to be. No longer can a country defeat another simply by having more men and greater firepower. If that were case, considering the size of the U.S.'s arsenal, we would possibly be having Trump running for World Emperor rather than president. Instead, they're fighting not against a unified country but smaller forces working within it, making the victory much more complicated. If Vietnam taught America anything it's that you can't win off strength alone. The result is an American turn to technology to do their bidding.

The purpose behind drone strikes is fairly simple. America has grown weary of war, and no one wants more "boots on the ground". They want as little American blood spilt as possible, and drone strikes seem to be that solution. Attacks can occur without any risk to friendly forces, they can be swift and massively destructive, and the prospect of being just about anywhere and having no warning before being suddenly deleted from the planet is surely a worrying one for any who would poke the American bear. To ensure that they hit exclusively the right targets Obama released policy guidelines stating they'll only hit "continuing, imminent threat[s] to the American people" and that the strikes will only happen with "near certainty" that no civilian casualties will occur. Honestly, at the core this sounds darn near perfect. Minimal risk, low civilian casualties, and surgical strikes that knock out exactly who you're gunning for. The problem is that's not really how it goes down.

In 2015 information was leaked to the website The Intercept about the drone program in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. It showed the manner in which drone strikes were carried out, the casualty counts, how the targets are vetted, and how often drone strikes occur. The results were not what one would call inspiring.

Wait, there are drones with guns on them too?!
Is this one real? Wikipedia wouldn't lie to me,
would it?

Civilian casualties can be as high as 90%. Operation Haymaker, a series of drone strikes in Afghanistan, killed over two hundred between January 2012 to February 2013, but only 35 of those were intended. One study states that unmanned aircraft are ten times more likely to kill civilians than traditional methods. Now, a simple google search will look as if those are incorrect statistics, but there's a reason behind it. If it's a male of the right age among the dead they're labeled "enemies killed in action" regardless of a lack of evidence against them, skewing the statistics. Essentially they don't know all that much about the people around their target but they get a post-mortem decree of guilt by association. This works out beautifully for the government: it allows them to put out at least relatively pleasant sounding statistics; there's a good chance that if the men killed are hanging out with terrorists they are terrorists themselves; and they can justify their drone strikes if they use words like "enemy combatant" even if they're not sure if there's truth behind it. However, this gets a lot of blowback from human rights groups and international bodies because most of those killed in drone strikes have not received a proper judgement. The information on them is limited (in part due to the strangling of information from drone strikes, as I'll explain later). The judicial process has basically come down to "you're near someone that's bad, so you're bad". But, to be fair, it's war. I'll give my thoughts on it in the third blog of this series.

So let's say it hits the target - called a "jackpot" if it's successful - what happens then? Unfortunately, strictly killing terrorists causes problems in and of itself. Drone strikes leave no chance for captures, which means that interrogations are all but impossible. Information on the ground is a critical component, and with a lack of prisoners coming in knowledge is in short supply. Dead terrorists can't speak, can't make deals, can't really do much of anything except serve as a martyr.

Ah, drone classic. Like most young men I know how these
look because of Call of Duty.

At this point you must be wondering how the targeting can be so unreliable, and if you're like me, you're surprised at just how often it hits civilians instead of who is being intended (or both). The reason being is it all comes down to fairly unreliable data. As it turns out, they're not really doing what you would expect them to do - spot a terrorist, say "bomb him with the aerial death robot" and then move on to the next. Instead, it's more like "this is probably that guy's cellphone, and we haven't seen him use it in a while but it's his cellphone so he's probably there with it, so bomb that." Really, they're not bombing people - they're bombing phones, specifically their SIM cards. The information comes through "metadata", which is essentially cell phone records and who they're linking them to. This of course lends itself to a whole world of problems, from people lending out their phones, to leaving them somewhere, to terrorists getting smarter and having sometimes as many as sixteen separate SIM cards to throw the Americans off the trail. (We'll delve more deeply into how they find out who is a terrorist, but that'll have to wait until the next blog.)

So what we've established here is drones are far from surefire. Well, in the sense that it might not always work as intended, but they are surefire in the sense that they'll certainly annihilate what you lock them on to. They have high civilian casualties, prevent the use of interrogation techniques, and it's reasonable to say that they're fueling the fires of hatred. However, it helps keep the numbers of soldiers on the ground and in danger to a minimum and specific known terrorists can be taken out quickly and effectively.

Right or wrong, their use is not only increasing, but skyrocketing. Obama has made drone strikes a commonplace part of his foreign policy in spite of railing against it as a senator, claiming there needs to be judicial process and that America can't be an executioner. He took what Bush laid out and then stepped it up. Unfortunately, the drone strike process is simply not as clear-cut as we would like it to be.

Louis Riel: Opinions

Frequently teaching grade seven history class means that I hear the name "Louis Riel" on a regular basis. It makes sense; he's an important part of our history, his blood makes him a rare double-whammy in the sense that he's both French and aboriginal (the textbooks really stress having high representation of both) and he's a symbol for Canada's stand-up-for-the-little-guy attitude. But...

He's a little more controversial than he may seem. This is a far more nuanced issue than most of what you'll see, typically showing Riel as a picturesque hero that can do no wrong against a massive, evil entity. While he's justly seen as a crusader for equal rights, there are plenty of issues that arise that take him down a couple notches. I believe it's right to look into those.

But why?

Take a look at Christopher Columbus. He's been hailed as a hero in the States for so long, until relatively recently when people started remembering some of the terrible stuff he's done. Previously, only the positives were remembered, a bit of revisionist history that had him only as a great explorer who found the New World and... that's all. Never mind the other stuff.  Riel is the same way but to the opposite extent. He's remembered as a champion of the minority, but any negatives are forgotten or pushed to the side to better fit the narrative we wish to put forth. History shouldn't take sides. All facts should be presented and opinions should come through once everything's on the table. We can't laugh at Fox News in the south for only showing one side and then do the same here because ours sends a positive message.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Riel. But let's go through a little bit here.

The whole Thomas Scott execution... just, or not?
The book I read for this blog and the previous three, "Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont" in the Extraordinary Canadians series, while well written, was about as biased as a book could be. To soften the blow of the execution, Thomas Scott was called a dog, some wretched human being that had to be put down due to his behaviour.

Well...

He was undoubtedly a belligerent, racist jerk. There's no denying that. But lets keep in mind the circumstances: he's still locked up, by all means he shouldn't be able to escape under their watch a third time, he has no weapons in there (I mean, he's in jail after all), and he was put to death for defying the provisional government. Execution seems an overly harsh penalty. We can't just bump off people we don't like just because we really don't like them.

Just as a side note, I find this whole event very strange. Not only is this an incredibly poor decision as I made clear in the other blog posts, but it's wildly out of character for Riel. Louis was big into not spilling any blood through this rebellion, at least as little as possible. In fact, that belief is what caused Dumont to have so many difficulties mounting an army, supplying them, and using appropriate tactics once there were no other options. Why was it then that he broke and allowed the execution? That guy must have been really just spectacularly obnoxious. It's kind of funny in a morbid, sad way - the guy goes down in history as being so horribly annoying they had to kill him. And nowadays the reaction to it is "well... yeah. He had it coming."

Some of Riel's ideas were... well, crack-pot like. 

Riel certainly had his strange moments, that's for certain. He would sometimes go around naked (nothing to hide in front of God, sure, but please, hide a little in front of the general public), he wished to rename the days of the week (looks like someone's got a case of the "Christ Aurores") as well as believing that the resurrection of an American politician would somehow help his cause (the book didn't go into greater detail on this but I really wish it did). It's a little more difficult to support him when you start hearing about some of his plans, let alone the whole divine prophet thing. There's a reason he spent two years in an asylum, after all.

That being said, I can understand the reason for his popularity now. In many ways he was well ahead of his time, fighting for equality among Canadians regardless of race - surely a worthy cause. For that, he's commendable, and perhaps the Metis people just needed what he most certainly was; a charismatic, charming leader that without doubt believed wholeheartedly in his convictions.

Is the Canadian government the big, evil entity that it seems?

Well... kind of.

John A. and Co. don't exactly come out of this sparkling clean. Time and time again the Metis asked for fairly reasonable claims: a decent plot of land they actually own, a means to divide the land to make it fair for their people, and a reasonable set of basic human rights for them and theirs. A little acknowledgement at the very least would have stymied the necessity of a revolt. Surely, that looks bad on Johnny Mac. I won't argue that.

However...

MacDonald is put in a very difficult position here. The Americans are going to take the west if he doesn't move first. Not only does he need to get settlin' out there, but he has a very strict time limit in which to do so. Failure would mean the likely collapse of his whole country not too far down the line. Lets not forget that Riel himself actually hoped for American expansion as he believed that would help his cause. Cut the guy a little slack. He's between a rock and a hard place on this one.

As for attacking a small community of Metis with the full might of an early ages Canada? Think of the circumstance. The first group of Canadian foot-soldiers went west to respond to the execution of an English speaking man. I'd say that's fair, at that point. There's blood, you have to respond. The second followed the Frog Lake Massacre. It has massacre in the title, so I believe that's just ground for government intervention once more. They made plenty of mistakes, that's for certain, but their use of force, specifically, was justified.

OK, OK, so here's the big one. Is Louis Riel a hero?

Yes.

He fought for the rights of a disenfranchised group and stood up to a larger power he had no chance of defeating. Through and through, he worked selflessly for the Metis, right up until the very end where he quite possibly sacrificed his life in denying the insanity charge and pushing for a different defense because otherwise it would make his cause seem less worthy. Louis theoretically may have even avoided capture had he tried to escape but he turned himself in for leniency for his people. He was ages ahead of his time in what are now common Canadian ideas of equality and racial harmony. Hats off to Louis Riel. He deserves his place in history.

The purpose of this blog isn't to tarnish Riel's legacy, but rather to show that with all coins there are two sides. MacDonald was not some ruthless dictator, but a man having to deal with battling two vastly different forces; a great, imposing giant to the south and an aggravating colony to the west. Something had to give. As for Riel himself, yeah, he was probably more than a little crazy (or looney - like our coin! Pun! Yes!) but his ideals weren't. Except for the whole changing the names of the days of the week, and the New Rome in Saskatchewan thing.

So what should Riel's legacy be, o humble Idiot Historian?

Well, pretty much what it is. A great leader that fought a good fight. I just wish it wasn't always painted as a black and white narrative, where the Canadian government is an evil force that means to squash any resistance that dares say anything against them, always stepping on the weak and disenfranchised. They're still just people here, not monsters versus heroes. I guess it's just my way of saying I'm growing weary of how we learn our history only through how our government and people have done so many things wrong. Just look to Trudeau - he's probably apologizing for something historical as we speak.

Well, once he's done with the whole elbow thing.