Wrong about Mali? Not Yet

There are now reports that the Canadian Forces deployed its super-secret folks, Joint Task Force Two,* to Mali.  Does that make me wrong about no Canadian troops going into combat there?  Nay.  This unit is being used to protect the Canadian diplomats there, perhaps because of what happened to the American diplomats in Benghazi last year.  While it is possible that these forces might get into a firefight, it does not seem to be the case that these folks will be sent into combat up north where the war is going.

* JTF2 makes me ponder--what happened to JTF1?

Precisely because these folks are usually super-secret (and thus largely assuring message control remains with the Prime Minister), I did provide a caveat in most (if not all) of my media appearances that Special Operations Forces types might be the only folks who do get on the ground.  And given what we learned about Libya, SOF don't wear boots--that is, boots on the ground refers to conventional forces and not SOF.

Some will look at the SOF deployment as a significant escalation, but, as long as their mission is diplomatic protection, it is not such an escalation.  It is not war or going to war.  Saying so stretches the concepts too much.

Still, plenty of opportunity for me to be wrong here as I have been elsewhere.