Friday, March 17, 2006

Canada's Hero General

Our friends up north haven't produced many stand out military leaders of late, but Gen Rick Hillier is an exception, according to this:

A capital more comfortable with bland, bureaucratic generals is struggling to get its collective head around a chief of defence staff who is neither. The first top soldier in decades to become a household name, Gen. Rick Hillier is a hero to his troops, a mixed blessing for his political masters and a cannonball demolishing Canada's benign military self-image.
Determined, cocksure and media-savvy, Hillier is an endangered Ottawa species. He is a staff officer obsessed by operations, not process, and a civil servant who is a transformational leader.


In the mold of America's Don Rumsfeld, Hillier is a transformational and far-seeing leader:

Instead of muddling along in mediocrity, Hillier argued for a narrowly defined force with the equipment and capabilities to excel in international missions and domestic crises.
Essentially, Hiller argued for an end to log-rolling — the long-standing practice of keeping the brass equally unhappy by spreading too few resources across the military. Structurally and increasingly in its culture, national defence is being redesigned to do fewer things better.


Good luck General. May you have better success reforming your country's military than America has!