Speaking Of...

Must be some kind of fever going around making normally intelligent people commit hara-kiri. People whose ordinary sense of self-awareness and avoidance of conflict that would impinge on their professionalism, their positions of public prestige, suddenly unleashing their tongues and letting their subconscious run away with their thoughts (and misgivings). So what is this dread disease, and who can we next anticipate will submit to it, and watch, helplessly, as their tongue outruns their ambition and the rooster of inevitability comes to crow at their wake?

Is there anyone out there who mightn't believe that General Stanley McChrystal would not understand the repercussions for dissing his Commander in Chief, let alone that commanding chief's high-level subordinates? He may have been resentful to the point of being right royally pissed off that he was given a command with expectations that he would apply his professional expertise to bringing an insurgency that had dragged on far too long, to an end. This was a precise enough charge for a consummate warrior. He was even given the due date for wrapping it up.

Uh, yes, that due date. Given that the troop surge numbers that did not quite match the numbers that General McChrystal originally sought, and that the Taliban were inordinately successful in recruiting additionally unexpected numbers of their own troops from the warrior hill tribes and Waziristan so immersed in fundamentalist Islam, as to create their own matching surge, one could see where the due-date could present as a major irritant. However, the die was cast, and indiscretion has its price. The general is due to retire from service.

His unfortunate malady infected someone across the border, an agent whose stature and professional enterprise most certainly matched that of the general, (the dearly departed; depending on whose circles one quotes). As though Canada hasn't experienced more than enough problems with its own military men; a commanding officer who turns out to be a rapist and serial murderer, another of higher rank who presented as a sexual predator of a more gentle persuasion, but still representing a statutory (military) offence.

Two down and number three to go, for Canada. Number three is none other than the current director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, a man whose experience and professionalism has the respect of the establishment. Perhaps that should be stated in past tense. Things have become quite tense, in fact, as Richard Fadden looses statements shocking in their ramifications, then retracts them with equally-shocking aplomb, as though it is a common occurrence for someone of his rank and his profession to candidly inform the nation it is on the cusp of a nasty catalyst.

To the effect that some of our highly placed elected politicians have been suborned by foreign interests. He is talking here about the reality of industrial infiltration, espionage, strategic access to some of Canada's secret formulae in technological production, no less. Costing this country millions in lost revenues, due to unscrupulous theft of trade secrets. A year ago he spoke tellingly about the infiltration into Canadian society of other countries' agents on a different kind of mission, one whose purpose was to destabilize society, allow religious terrorists to gain a foothold.

In either instance, an amazingly frank and surprisingly unprofessional airing of what should be considered to be secret state-level files, to be suppressed from the general public's attention, while government agencies work feverishly to identify the details of those threats and to apprehend them, in full consultation with the government of the day. The executive branch of government should be the partner-in-knowledge of what CSIS has discovered through the operation of its mandate; finding covert and apprehending dangerous threats to the country.

Does Mr. Fadden too have an agenda, for unleashing this kind of scandalous and untoward dereliction to duty by going public in such a manner, without first discussing the matter with the PMO? With the Prime Minister, who surely is never too busy to discuss these vital matters with a trusted head of security intelligence? Who would most certainly have been alarmed at any stated intention to speak of these matters aloud, for publication, and at a critical time, when Canada is hosting the G8 and G20 summits where some of those largely unnamed countries whose agents are busy conducting espionage operations here, are present?

Isn't it a good thing that most Canadians are placidly ignorant of these things, and don't quite seem to care very much about what is going on? And what on Earth could conceivably thrust people of this calibre to risk the probity, trust and respect they have earned to issue such inflammatory - regardless of their truthfulness - statements, ensuring the collapse of their careers?