Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard leaves an Ottawa courtroom last week. The general plead guilty and accepted full responsibility for accidentally firing his assault rifle.
On Saturday, the commander of Canada’s battle group in Kandahar, Brigadier General Daniel Ménard, was suddenly sacked and ordered to return to Canada. The unexpected firing, almost certain to end the career of a soldier considered to be on his way to the top of the army, came after his commanding officer received reports that the General was having a sexual relationship with a female member of his staff. While these allegations are not proven, the whiff of impropriety was enough to have Ménard yanked. He’ll be replaced by Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance, a man who has already held the top post in Kandahar and was awaiting assignment to a headquarters role in Ottawa.
Should the allegations against General Ménard prove true, it will represent a serious breach of military discipline. An affair might not seem a serious issue to those outside of the military — after all, we rarely seem to hold it against movie stars, politicians (including presidents) and pro golfers. But it isn’t the extramarital sex (Ménard is married with two children) that poses the problem. It’s that it happened between soldiers, in a war zone.
The hypothetical scenario behind the military’s banning of relationships amongst soldiers in war zones is simple, but important: One is unlikely to order someone they’re in love with to risk death. Even if the two participants in a relationship are able to set aside their feelings and perform as professionals, others in the unit who know of their relationship might come to doubt that they would be treated fairly: Gee, what if the lieutenant is only ordering me to charge that position because he doesn’t want to risk someone he cares about more? Such doubts do not an effective, cohesive unit make. And all those bad things can result from a relationship that’s going well. Imagine having to fight a battle with someone who recently dumped you. If ordered by someone who’d just rejected your affections to stay behind and die, might you not be the least bit suspicious as to their motive?
And don’t forget the spouses left behind at home, too — deployments overseas can last nine months or more. In any relationship, that’s a long time to go without physical intimacy, and the least the military can do is provide some reassurance that they aren’t encouraging hanky-panky on the front line. It may be a fiction, but it’s an important, comforting fiction on the home front, an area of operations just as vital to the success of a modern military as the frontlines.
The above scenarios, while hypothetical, are real enough risks that the military decided generations ago that sex amongst the troops, while impossible to prevent, must be officially discouraged and punished when caught. The directives in place are of course broken, but are important to keep in place all the same. Had Ménard been a low-ranked officer or an enlisted man, caught having an affair with a fellow soldier, it’s possible they would have gotten off with a thorough dressing down from an officer, off the record, and an order to be more discrete about it. But since Ménard was the top man, even though he’d never have faced the decision, from the safety of his headquarters, to send another member of the HQ staff into a minefield, he still had to go. A general cannot be judged by a different standard than the troops he commands.
General Ménard himself understands this point. Just last week, he returned to Canada to plead guilty to charges of accidentally discharging his weapon. In April, while loading his rifle, General Ménard accidentally fired several rounds. No one was hurt and no equipment damaged, but the general handled the incident with professionalism, surrendering the weapon for immediate inspection, and when no mechanical fault was discovered, accepted full responsibility. He informed the press directly that the incident had occurred, reported himself to his superiors for discipline, plead guilty at a court-martial and will pay a stiff fine of $3,500. As he left the courtroom, Ménard told reporters, “I did accept, right from day one, full responsibility of my actions. And now it’s something that is behind us.”
The general was right to own up to that mistake in a way that brought credit to him and prevented the incident from becoming a distraction for the troops. If he is indeed guilty of having an affair, then it is only right that this situation be handled as swiftly and firmly as the last.
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