Canada rearms: after a half-century of propaganda arguing armed power to be passe, Canadians are rediscovering their admiration of military valour in the need to defend civilization.

After failing to pacify a war-torn land, Canadian troops are brought home to face scathing reprimands and media reports of their brutal savagery. Their mission turned unexpectedly violent, with a Somali teenager beaten to death. The army's reputation is dragged through the African mud, and the elite Airborne Regiment subsequently disbanded, its members dispersed.

That was 1993, and Somalia was the Afghanistan of the day. After decades of neglect, a disorganized, unequipped and poorly led unit was dispatched to a war zone on an unrealistic mission, with predictable results. Then, adding insult to injury, when troops were deployed to Bosnia's battlefields that same year, delicate politicians looked the other way, refusing to admit that Canadians were fighting in a war zone. Canadian warriors received little or no recognition for their valour.

Retired colonel Don Ethell says the service his comrades then gave their country was simply ignored. "The government buried [Canadian heroism at] the Medak Pocket for two years, because they didn't want Canadians to know Canadians were killing people and suffering casualties--which is absolute rot, considering we did that in Cypress, Congo and Somalia," Ethell says. He says many soldiers suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, yet got little support back home. "The [PTSD] was triggered by [events] over there, but also by the total lack of support from their government. And then people were slam-dunking them when they came home."

Even post-9/11, in 2002, the U.S. army tried to award Bronze Stars to a Canadian sniper team that fought with them in Afghanistan--and racked up the world record for a combat sniper kill at an almost invisible 2,430 metres. The then Liberal government stalled the ceremony, attempting to preserve the mythology that (in University of Calgary strategist David Bercuson's words) "Canadians don't kill."

Today, however, five years into the war on terror and with a new Conservative government, Canada's military and popular culture have changed dramatically. This past holiday saw an unprecedented flood of "For Any Canadian Soldier" cards, letters and gifts to the 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. A Canadian Press and Broadcast News poll named the "Canadian soldier" as newsmaker of the year. And when Rob Hume's son Tom, a King's Own Calgary Regiment reservist, returned from his 10-month combat tour, his welcome included neighbourhood trees adorned with yellow ribbons.

"The people in the neighbourhood ... definitely weren't hiding their support when he came home. People at the bar will buy him drinks, and he's had people pay for his meal at restaurants," Hume marvels.

Political leadership, their soldiers' valour, and the global crisis itself have renewed Canada's appreciation of its military. Billions of dollars are pledged to rebuilding the Forces, helping them emerge from what Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier calls the "decade of darkness," when the Chretien government stripped its equipment and sold off the spares. Scott Taylor, editor of the gadfly Esprit de Corps magazine, says both military and political leadership have made all the difference.

"We woke up and found ourselves at war, when we went from Kabul to Kandahar, and they tried to put the best spin on it," Taylor says. "You have to admit this whole 'We don't cut and run' thing is great. People pick up on that."

One telling change has been the creation of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, which officially stood up Aug. 13, with a mandate to provide a highly mobile force capable of intervening quickly in global hot spots. And this sort of deliberate "transformation" is sweeping the whole military. Cold War "battle groups," designed to re-enforce NATO, are being rejigged as flexible "task forces" of no more than 750 troops, for swift and sustainable deployment anywhere in the world. To keep these smaller, more mobile units effective, the entire military is on a three-year "managed readiness system," with units rotating through training and readiness for immediate deployment. This gives soldiers more career predictability, while ensuring the constant availability of combat units. Hillier adds that he easily expects to recruit 15,000 Canadians over the next decade, boosting the Forces from roughly 65,000 to as many as 75,000 regular soldiers.

Thanks to embedded videographers, anyone with Internet access can see Canadian troops in action in Afghanistan on youtube.com: confident, efficient fighting platoons, clearing villages, fending off enemy ambushes--and wearing Canadian flags on their shoulders. It's clearly a new era, when Canadian tanks rumble down the dusty roads of Afghanistan's Panjwei district, firing their first shots in anger in 50 years. Taylor says it marks a distinct change in the perception of Canadians at home and abroad.

"It's not about PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams) digging wells anymore ... They're combat tanks. You want that kind of mentality, where they will tenaciously fight, regardless of the opponent. They will do their best to protect their soldiers and kill the enemy," Taylor says. "You don't want to back a boxer that's always throwing his own towel in. You want to be the guy ... unconscious and still swinging; that's the military mindset we love. You don't want to abuse that, [but] you want to make sure they can win the fight."

Tools are necessary for any job, so a well-publicized spending spree has gotten underway. One impressive procurement is the $3.4-billion order for four Boeing C-17 Globemaster transports, a strategic airlift capability that eliminates the need to hitchhike on American planes. These jets carry 77 tonnes of equipment--say, three Coyote armoured reconnaissance vehicles--making possible their rapid deployment worldwide. The Forces are so eager for this capability, they've asked the Americans to let them butt in and take delivery of C-17s originally intended for the U.S. air force. They also want fast delivery of 16 CH-47 Chinook heavy helicopters--upgraded versions of the ones Ottawa deemed "surplus" in the nineties and sold to the Dutch.

Mobility is high on the shopping list. Along with the Globemasters and Chinooks, 17 new Lockheed Martin C-130Js will rejuvenate the aging transport fleet. And Sikorsky is building 28 Cyclone helicopters to replace the decrepit Sea Kings. This spending will extend in the next decade to three new joint support ships, modular transports designed to ship specialized containers, to operate as fleet replenishment vessels, troop transports or even helicopter carriers. And the defence staff also hopes to procure a dedicated amphibious assault ship. Thousands of new trucks are replacing rusting antiques. Frontline firepower is being boosted with new patrol vehicles, battlefield computers, and high-tech 155-mm M777 howitzers, capable of firing GPS-guided artillery rounds, and tested in Afghanistan with deadly results.

Like the modular joint support ships, the Cyclone helicopters will be multipurpose, a characteristic of post-Cold War military equipment. With their antisubmarine gear removed, they will be able to insert Canadian commandos almost anywhere in the world within 400 kilometres of a coastline.

The November round of acquisition requests also included domestic hardware: search and rescue aircraft, utility transports, an Arctic patrol ship and--the crest of the high-tech wave--unmanned aerial vehicles. Their sales slips could add $4.5 billion to the $15 billion already approved. Yet Minister of National Defence Gordon O'Connor made no apologies for the expense, saying it was needed to "rebuild the Canadian Forces which had been underfunded, undermanned and under-equipped for more than a decade." Throughout the 1990s, Canada spent less than one per cent of its GDP on defence, a proportionate expenditure larger only than Luxembourg's. And "mobility is an essential capability that the men and women of the Canadian Forces need to get the job done," O'Connor said.

Ethell notes that the new spending would be politically impossible if not for the change in perception among ordinary Canadians. "Because of the increased availability of real-time activities, with embedded [reporters], we're seeing it on the news all the time, so it's fresh," he says. "Canadians are aware our troops are over there, and they see the massive infusion of money and increased protection for our troops. This has caught their attention, and they don't question it. Try and do the same thing during Bosnia, where it was 'somebody else's war,' and it wouldn't have flown."

Dalhousie University professor Dan Middlemiss says Canada's military transformation has been driven by the Afghanistan mission. But there are plenty of other potential conflicts, and some analysts are still uneasy about Canada's readiness for future battlefields. "They see China and Iran [and others with] nuclear weapons ... we're looking just for the guys who are five feet high, instead of the nine-foot guys, and preparing our Forces for that." And yet, Middlemiss admits, "right now a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing."

The Canadian Forces are challenged to maintain their "three block" approach to warfare: operating simultaneously in humanitarian, peacekeeping and combat roles. Yet, while "winning hearts and minds" is a legitimate military mission, victory is the necessity. The Forces remain vulnerable on the public relations front to those unwilling to admit that military virtue remains a Canadian value. Yet the Canadian people themselves are beginning to rediscover that a commitment to our common defence is a necessary and praiseworthy element of our national unity.

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C-17 GLOBEMASTER III

WEIGHT: 266 tonnes

SPEED: 860 kms/hr

RANGE: 9,600 kms

CAPACITY: 77 tonnes cargo

FLEET: 4; $3.4 billion over 20 years

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CH-47 CHINOOK

WEIGHT: 23 tonnes

SPEED: 240 kms/hr

COMBAT RADIUS: over 100 kms

CAPACITY: 12 tonnes or 33 troops

FLEET: 16; $4.7 billion over 20 years

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

M777 HOWITZER

WEIGHT: 4.7 tonnes

PROJECTILE: 45 kgs, GPS-guided

RANGE: 25 kms, eventually 40 kms

CREW: 5

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JOINT SUPPORT SHIP

WEIGHT: 28,000 tonnes

CAPACITY: 300 trucks, 40 helicopters or 60-bed emergency hospital

CREW: 165

FLEET: 3; $2.9 billion over 20 years

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]