Preparing Chaplains For The Next War

As my current duties include directing a course designed to prepare new Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) chaplains for their first operational deployment, I try to keep an eye on the professional literature.   As geopolitical tensions continue to rise, I have been thinking quite often about the possibility of a conflict with a near-parity opponent, meaning, most likely, Russia.  This reading has led me to offer some thoughts which are predominantly intended for my chaplain colleagues.  Of course, these thoughts are entirely my own and do not reflect the positions of the Royal Canadian Chaplain Service, its School, or the CAF.

CAF personnel from all three services participate in OPERATION REASSURANCE "in Central and Eastern Europe as part of NATO assurance and deterrence measures."  We also have an ongoing assistance and training mission in Ukraine as part of OPERATION UNIFIER.

Glebokie, Poland. 31 July 2015 – Corporal Philippe Lyonnais carries a Carl Gustav recoilless rifle (M2CG) followed by Corporal Emilie Gauthier-Wong carrying the 84mm rounds for the M2CG during a live fire exercise at Mielno range in the Drawsko-Pomorski training area in Glebokie, Poland on July 31, 2015 during Operation REASSURANCE. Photo: Corporal Nathan Moulton, Land Task Force Imagery

The training we are doing in REASSURANCE, not to mention our military posture in Eastern Europe, is significantly different from the stability and counterinsurgency (COIN) operations that the CAF was commonly practicing when I became a chaplain a decade ago.   During the Afghanistan era we focused primarily on asymmetric warfare, (a notable exception was Operation Medusa in 2006, which was the Army's largest set-piece engagement since Korea).  Our chaplain training assumed a battlespace that featured:

- robust and extensive logistics and secure rear-area base networks made possible in large part because of private contractors and local labour.

- complete air-superiority, including the ability to insert, evacuate, and rotate troops as required.

- significant technological advantages over the enemy, including night-vision and thermal capability. precision guided munitions, long range artillery and armour support, UAVs and aerial surveillance, and close air support (CAS).

- uninterrupted command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) capabilities.

- a comprehensive commitment to soldier welfare, including regular and dependable home leave allowances mid-tour, and regular communications, including via social media, with loved ones at home.

- the luxury of being able to focus on ministry to a relatively small number of Canadian casualties.

- an emphasis on civil-military cooperation (CIMIC), perhaps more so than on combat operations

- a relatively low-threat environment.

None of these points is intended to minimize the impact of what chaplains experienced in Afghanistan, or to suggest that they did not experience hardship, difficulty or danger in their ministry.   I know colleagues who suffer to this day, mentally and physically, because they were exposed to mortal danger or gave to much of themselves in ministering to others.   If you are nearly blown up by a rocket attack or by a primitive IED, the trauma is still real, even if it is incurred in an asymmetric conflict.  While no CAF chaplains were killed or wounded in action in Afghanistan, the number of those suffering from PTSD, from my own, admittedly anecdotal knowledge, is proportional to rates in the CAF as a whole. 

 

Nevertheless, chaplains enjoyed significant advantages and resources in their ministry that their predecessors did not enjoy in Canada's previous wars.   Our padres had a high degree of mobility and movement to allow them to reach troops, even in Forward Operating Bases.   They had access to support from bases and rear-party ministry teams in Canada when arranging repatriations or aiding a deployed soldier's family in times of crisis.   They worked in interdisciplinary teams with civilian helping professionals such as social workers, and so did not have to bear the load of maintaining soldier welfare by themselves.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as the Afghan mission evolved from combat to aid and training, padres were ministering to soldiers with a very high probability of coming home alive and in one piece.   We cannot expect a future conflict to have these characteristics.

It is a truism that armies train to fight the last war.   However, the literature I am reading suggests that strategists, particularly Americans, now believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were sui generis, one-of-a-kind conflicts, and were even poor preparation for the kind of war fighting that a conflict with a near-peer adversary would require.  Should "assurance and deterrence" fail, and

Canada  become involved in such a conflict, perhaps through invocation of NATO Article Five after a Russian attack on a Baltic country, our recent military experience may be of little use to us.  For the  CAF, the transition to a war with a peer opponent might be historically analogous to its participation in the South African war, in which Britain's professional army enjoyed significant advantages over their Boer opponents, and 1915, when our small Expeditionary Force went up against a huge, well equipped, and professionally led conventional Germany army.  While images of Canadian gallantry at Second Ypres adorn many a CAF mess today, our first battle of the Great War was a significant shock for an army hitherto only experienced in garrison life and colonial warfare.

  



Fighting a peer opponent.  Richard Jack's painting of Canadian troops holding the line at Second Ypres, courtesy of the Canadian War Museum.

Chaplain training for the next war needs to pay attention to articles like this one, in which strategic leaders like Tom Mahnken, president of the US Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, is quoted as saying that  “Like the European powers at the start of World War I, we could find ourselves tremendously unprepared ... surprised, and unpleasantly surprised.”  In a speech that has been widely circulated in military social media circles, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley has warned that the battlefield of the near future will be decidedly unpleasant, an environment where being surrounded and constantly on the move will be normal.  "There will no clear front line, no secure supply lines, no big bases like Bagram or Camp Victory with chow halls, air-conditioning, and showers. With enemy drones and sensors constantly on the hunt for targets, there won’t even be time for four hours’ unbroken sleep. So, says Milley, “being seriously miserable every single minute of every day will have to become a way of life.”

For chaplains, our training should demand that we think about the demands of doing our ministry in a battlespace with these characteristics:

- no safe bases from which to minister.   Tactical and brigade level chaplains, normally attached to service and support, B echelon or HQ elements, will be frequently on the move.  Fighting and support units will all be at some degree of risk from from artillery, air attack, or even from tactical nuclear missiles.

- air superiority may be contested or even denied by enemy anti-access /area denial (A2/AD) weapons systems.  C3I capabilities may be degraded by enemy Electronic Warfare and jamming operations.  Chaplains may find themselves part of a force cut off from Canada for long periods.

- casualty ministry will be the norm.  The ornate ramp ceremonies practised in Afghanistan will often be impossible when airspace is heavily contested or even dominated by the enemy.  Lost arts from the mobile battlefields of World War Two, including grave registration and hasty casualty collection ministry, will need to be relearned. 

- battlefield ministry will be the norm.  This task will be complicated by the social impact of secularism and pluralism.  The twentieth century padre had the advantage of ministering to soldiers from a culture shaped by Christianity.   However, the old axiom of no atheists in foxholes will likely reassert itself and hasty prayers before and after actions, another chaplain skill from twentieth century conflicts, will doubtless be valued by soldiers whom we previously thought of as quite secular.

- self-directed ministry will be the norm.  During Afghanistan the CAF chaplaincy developed elaborate command and communications protocols for events like casualty notification, with each step in the process being reported to a host of persons back in Canada.  In the event of war with a peer competitor, with communications severely degraded, chaplains will need to function independently for days or weeks at a time.  It is doubtful that chaplains will have the assistance of civilian helping professionals such as social workers.   Other than their partnerships with CAF medical personnel, chaplains will be working on their own to support morale, welfare and mental health as best they can.

- military skills will be paramount.  The highest honour troops can give a chaplain, that he or she is a "soldier's padre", must be the norm and not the exception.  Chaplains will be as dirty, unfed, cut off, scared and miserable as anyone else.  They will need to know how to use a map and compass, conceal their positions, give first aid and even drive some military vehicles as required.  They will need to do all these things while effectively giving spiritual aid and morale comfort to their troops.

- chaplain casualties will be normal.  In late World War Two, the British and Canadian armies, chaplain casualties (KIA and WIA) were proportionally as high as that of the combat arms.  If the first stages of a future war go badly, as they did in WW2, chaplains will almost certainly become POWs and will need to minister in austere conditions.

Battlefield ministry in 1944.  A Canadian Army chaplain aids in the evacuation of the wounded in Normandy.

Much of the training that these points would require would have to be delivered in the field, either on regularly scheduled exercises or in whatever workup training was possible in the event of or after the start of hostilities.   Training at the Chaplain School, which is predominantly academic in nature, would have to be significantly reimagined in a conflict of any significant duration.  In focusing on ministry in theatre, I have not discussed what domestic or rear-party ministry would look like.  The amount of pastoral work required to notify next of kin in Canada after a significant engagement, with large numbers killed, wounded, missing or taken prisoner, would be a herculean task in itself.

Finally, we need to consider the enormous spiritual and psychological demands that ministry in this type of conflict would make of chaplains.   In garrison ministry, or even on some deployments, our chaplains have not always met the mark.   In the battlespace of the near-future, chaplains will be conspicuous in their successes and failures, at a time when they will be needed more than ever.  Success will depend on the cultivation of physical fitness, military skills, fieldcraft and, above all, highly intentional and meaningful spiritual preparation.

The Interrogator's Confession: A Book Review of Consequence: A Memoir by Eric Fair

Consequence: A Memoir is the confession of a good man who became complicit in evil.   Eric Fair, an American and a Christian with a strong sense of vocation to God and country, found himself working as an interrogator in Iraq, where he became involved in torture and war crimes.    With unflinching honesty and a total absence of self-pity, Fair tells the story of his time as a private contractor tasked with extracting intelligence from Iraqi detainees during the American occupation of the mid-2000s.  While never asking for our sympathy, he shows how a seemingly decent person can continue to make compromises and excuses for their moral failures until they find themselves in a spiritually catastrophic place.

 

            Born to a middle class family in a depressed Pennsylvania steel town, Eric Fair was a timid child who found a refuge in his family’s Presbyterian church.  While he became more robust in high school, his childhood left him with a profound respect for protector figures and a sense that he had a calling to a career in law enforcement.  In 1995, after university, Fair chose enlistment in the army as a brief means to an end, since training as a military policeman would make him an attractive candidate to civilian police departments.  Instead he was selected to become a linguist in Arabic. 

 

            In describing his time as a young NCM in the Army, as a member of a conservative church, and as a civilian police officer, Fair reveals a sense of disquiet and even alienation from cultures that were intolerant and violent.  The murder of a soldier in his unit, who was suspected to be gay, haunts him.  The violence of being a street cop proves disillusioning, while the judgemental culture of his church culture alienates him.   As he finds himself estranged from the institutions and ideals that gave him his moral purpose, Fair struggles to find purpose and meaning in his life.

 

 

            In 2003, a diagnosed heart defect left Fair unemployable as a policeman.   By then the second Iraq War is underway, and friends are encouraging Fair to go there as an Arab linguist, while his wife is encouraging him to go to seminary because she admires his sense of compassion and thinks he would be a good pastor.   Driven by his sense that he was called to serve and protect his country, he begins to research civilian contractors and government agencies that might employ him as a linguist.  “I don’t listen to Karin, and I don’t listen to the voices telling me to be patient, or consider changing course.  I apply to seminary to appease these voices and silence the advice.  In the meantime, I chart my own path back.  I intend to make Iraq the first step”.

 

            It’s not uncommon to see men, still young and vigorous, who deny the betrayal of their bodies after a heart attack or similar illness.   In 2003, as the US was hiring a legion of civilian employees to administer Iraq, it was easy for Fair to get hired without a medical exam.  While he may have wanted to recover his self-image as a soldier and protector, the disorganized and unprofessional nature of his private-sector employer troubles him.  He is assigned to Abu Ghraib, a former prison of the Saddam regime now used to warehouse the many Iraqis being rounded up in US sweeps, where Fair’s job will be to interrogate these men and decide who poses a threat.   The assignment fills him with dismay and leads him to this disturbing revelation:

 

“In Scripture, God often works in prisons, but he is never on the side of the jailer.  He is always on the side of the prisoner.  The realization brings on a physical reaction.  My hands shake.  My face warms.  I feel nauseated.  The sensation is terrifying.  Prayer in Iraq is dangerous.  I am beginning to realize that I’m not on God’s path.  I’m on my own.”

 

            What happened in Abu Ghraib is well known.   While Fair was not involved in the worst excesses that were documented in now-infamous images, he is honest about his own role there.   Extreme methods of interrogation, including sleep deprivation, stress positions, and physical intimidation, were standard and he participated in them.   Fair’s time in Iraq, his return to the US and subsequent physical and mental collapse are honestly described and make for harrowing reading. In 2006 he spoke to the media about his role in Iraq and was involved in the US government investigations into torture in Iraq.  Some of the final pages of the book are redacted, the blocks of black ink testifying to the official secrecy and even guilt that lingers over this period.

 

            An opening quotation from the medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, seems to signal Fair’s purpose.  Maimonides wrote that “a person is not forgiven until he pays back his fellow man what he owes him and appeases him.  He must placate him and approach him again and again until he is forgiven”.  The reader may struggle to decide if he or she is indeed placated, or if Fair is even seeking our forgiveness.  At times the book feels like nothing more than an extended confession, to which our task is only to bear witness.   In April of this year, after the book was published, Fair told National Public Radio that while his book offers “long discussions about why those things happened ... and how difficult it was to sort of break from those expectations of being a soldier  … none of that matters. I made horrible mistakes. ... I have a responsibility to confess those things openly." 

 

            For military chaplains, Fair’s book offers much food for thought.   It invites us to reflect on the vanities that may lie concealed in our sense of vocations, and whether our projects and identities come from ambition rather than true calling.   Fair’s confession shows how easy it can be to rationalize our involvement with evil, and how we can compound the moral damage by cutting ourselves off from God when we persuade ourselves that our prayers are unworthy of him.  Finally, as moral and ethical advisors in these dangerous and alarmed times, Fair reminds chaplains of the need for truthful language about how we humans injure one another, rather than using dishonest words such as “enhanced interrogation”.  As Fair told NPR, “I think that the minute you violate another human being's will … we have an obligation to call that torture.” [i]

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[i] http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/04/04/472964974/it-was-torture-an-abu-ghraib-interrogator-acknowledges-horrible-mistakes

 

Friday Theology: Is It Heretical To Wonder 'What Would Jesus Pack?'

Today's Friday theology takes the form of two questions.

1) Is the question "What would Jesus pack?" heretical?  Show your work, and be sure to reference Matthew 5 (those pesky Beatitutdes!).

2) According to your answer to (1), discuss the merits of these Texas pastors' positions on firearms vice those of the Catholic Church in Texas.

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Escape From Waithood: One View Of Terrorism And Its Causes

 

A street scene in ``Waithood``

 

If there has been a theme in some of my recent posts, it`s about the importance of religion as a motive for human actions.

Twitter today introduced me to a Somalian entrepeneur/activist named Mohamed Ali who gave a TED talk in 2013, found here.

The TED talk is more like an inspirational secular sermon than it is cogent analysis, but it has the merit of limited a speaker to a few powerful idea.  Ali`s central idea is ``waithood``, meaning the limbo of economic hopelessness by which young people are left hopeless and ripe for manipulation by terrorist groups like Somalia`s Al Shabab.  Here`s an excerpt.

It is the story of the disenfranchised,unemployed urban youthwho sparks riots in Johannesburg,sparks riots in London,who reaches out for something other than waithood.For young people, the promise of the city,the big city dream is that of opportunity,of jobs, of wealth,but young people are not sharing in the prosperity of their cities.Often it's youth who suffer from the highest unemployment rates.By 2030, three out of five people living in citieswill be under the age of 18.If we do not include young peoplein the growth of our cities,if we do not provide them opportunities,the story of waithood,the gateway to terrorism, to violence, to gangs,will be the story of cities 2.0.And in my city of birth, Mogadishu,70 percent of young people suffer from unemployment.70 percent don't work,don't go to school.They pretty much do nothing.

I agree with this argument to some extent.   I am sure that slums and refugee camps breed terrorism in ways that affluent suburbs do not.  Giving people a sense of ownership in their lives, neighbourhoods, cities and societies is undoubtedly the way forward.  

But does Ali`s argument explain why someone would want to become a suicide bomber?  In his scenario, what happens in the young person`s mind between when he is recruited from Waithood and when he blows himself or herself up?  What of the educated and relatively privileged, like the young Saudi hijackers of 9/11?

It seems to me that there is more to terrorism and fanaticism than a materialist analysis can account for.

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What`s Religious? What`s Political? Religious Literacy And Current Events

There has been some shop in my office this week about an interview in the Ottawa Citizen with Andrew Bennett, Canada`s Ambassador for Religious Freedom.  

In the interview, Bennett argues that diplomats and foreign service officers need to be more aware of the role that religion plays in politics and international affairs.  Bennett is quoted as saying: “We need to ensure that if we want to be really nuanced and winsome in how we engage countries that are deeply religious, that we can actually employ language that enables us to have a deeper engagement,” he said. “If we can’t do that, then we risk developing or having a serious diplomatic blind spot.”

One could argue that the same can be said of Canadian Armed Forces personnel operating in environments where religion has a prominence that is far greater than one would find in secular, pluralistic Canada.

Since Saudi Arabia and Iran broke relations last year following the Kingdom`s execution of a dissident Shia cleric, I`ve heard and read several media explanations of the differences between Shia and Sunni Islam, dating back to events following the death of the Prophet Mohammed, and how this split in Islam maps over the contemporary Middle East.

I am sure that this sort of background is useful, particularly in North America where most people have only the haziest of understandings of Islam.  But is it true, as Mr. Bennett suggests, that we can`t understand the world unless we understand the religious factors at work in societies and conflicts?

The answer is probably a qualified yes.   A round table of scholars assembled by the US Council on Foreign Relations discussed the Saudi-Iran split yesterday, 6 January, and focused mostly on the geopolitical rivalry between the two regional powers. 

One of the participants, Philip H. Gordon (a CFR Senior Fellow)  noted that this conflict does break along sectarian lines, but was reluctant to dwell on it.  He said ``... this notion of sectarianism and eternal hatred, you know, it has not been an all-out war between Sunni and Shia for 1,400 years.  There have been times when they have been able to cooperate.  And those times end when there are political reasons for them to end, you know, after the Iranian revolution, when whether within a country or between countries there`s some change in the regional order.  So in the `79 revolution in Iran, after the US 2003 invasion of Iraq.  If you change the balance between Sunni and Shia, again either between countries or within countries, you get the rise in tension.''

Writing in The Nation yesterday, Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, described sectiarianism as ''a recruiting tool'' used by regional rivals, and pointed to the complexity of the religious landscape.

''Just as the political collapse in Yemen and the takeover of Sana by the Houthis over a year ago pushed Saudi Arabia to intervene there, the prospect of the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad being overthrown pushed Iran to send aid and troops to Damascus. Tehran also convinced Lebanon’s Hezbollah to enter the fray on the side of Assad, preserving the Syrian land bridge for Iranian resupply of munitions to its Lebanese client. The Iranian investment in Syria has nothing to do with Syrian Shiism. Iran’s allies in Syria are an assortment of Christians and Sunni secularists and New Age Shiites (the Alawites) with a gnostic and mythological approach to religion that bears about as much resemblance to clerical Iranian Shiism as Theosophy does to Episcopalianism. Besides, the Alawites who run the Baath regime in Syria are atheists.''

On the other hand, for those who suspect that all conflict in the Middle East is driven by oil, Jon Schwarz in The Intercept analyzes a fascinating map of oil deposits overlaid with sectarian divides and suggests that it`s not a coincidence that most of Saudi Arabia`s oil weath lies in the part of the country dominated by its Shia minority.https://theintercept.com/2016/01/06/one-map-that-explains-the-dangerous-saudi-iranian-conflict/.

Closer to home, one can ask if religion helps to understand the armed ranchers currently occupying a federal wildlife centre in Oregon.   Writing in the New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells analyzes the political motivations of the occupiers, and suggests that they arise from frustation arising from rural poverty in the so-called ''flyover states'' and the rule of far-off elites.   In that respect, the white protesters in Oregon may have more in common with the Black Lives Matter activities in US cities than either group would care to admit.

However, a religious studies scholar, Mark Silk, looks at the role of Mormonism in the Oregon event.  Silk notes the ties between some of the protestors' thinking seems indebted to the ''Skousenite''offshoot of Mormonism, which combines libertarian thought with apocalyptic expectation, and believes that Mormon warriors will cleanse the US and reclaim if for God. One can only hope that the law enforcement officials tracking the Malheur occupation are talking to Silk and people like him to better understand what is going on here.

These two contemporary examples suggest that religion is complex and can often underlay political conflicts.   To dismiss it in the way that some liberal commentators do (I`m thinking of Bill Maher, who I otherwise enjoy), assuming that religion is a vestigial remnant of our prehistoric superstitions, is to grossly over-simplify.  At the same time, religion does not by itself explain the essence or persistence of some conflicts, and we should not allow our conflict analysis to reinforce notions that religion is a negative, destabilising force in the world.   Religion is an aspect of human behaviour that plays a role from the simplest of everyday rituals to large-scale conflict.  Diplomats and military personnel are well-advised to keep this in mind.