Canadian Armed Forces - Self Destructing?

Here is hoping that reason will prevail and that Capt. Robert Semrau, formerly with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, will be released from guilt in the dispatch of a mortally-wounded or perhaps already-dead Taliban guerrilla. The Canadian Armed Forces appear to be in the grip of a death wish.

Granted, it is a civilian criminal court that will be prosecuting Col.Russell Williams for the atrocities he has committed. Within Canada. His case is an anomaly. That of a psychopath whose hold on reality was breached when he succumbed to the allure of his psychotic neuroses.

His hidden life was revealed and he will stand trial for a wide range of criminal offences, not the least of which is murder. The man does not represent the wealth of Canadian men and women who enroll in the Armed Forces and serve with honour and distinction.

But, of course, there are others who have been recalled from active duty in Afghanistan and in Haiti, held to have dishonoured their pledge in very human ways when they permitted their emotions to embroil them in intimate relations, potentially impacting on their ability to discharge their duties at critical times of both war and crisis-amelioration situations.

With Capt. Semrau it is vastly different. He was discharging his assigned task as the leader of a four-man contingent tasked to mentor and support Afghan soldiers in a joint operation opposing the Taliban insurgents. Taliban aggressors. Taliban terrorists, for they do, after all, terrorize woman and children and female children in particular. Apart from setting IEDs.

Religious fanatics are a breed apart; steadfast in the overwhelming righteousness of their cause which nothing can deflect them from pursuing, sowing death and destruction in their wake. In reflection of what their Islamist counterparts in Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia also perfect; martyrdom through conviction, communal death by deadly design.

Capt. Robert Semrau, in a very particular place at a particular time - when an air ambulance could not be called in, witness to the death agony of a man who had been shot out of a tree by an attack helicopter and sustained mortal wounds that medical attention likely would not have been able to ameliorate - decided to take battlefield mercy on the man.

There are those, the commander of the Afghan group with whom he was associated - who testified that the man was close to death, and he ordered his men to give the Muslim prayer for the dead over him - refusing him any medical attention. There are those who recognize what occurred as a mercy killing. There is no body to be identified.

There is nothing but battlefield concepts of valour, compassion and honour.