This is the best summary I could come up with:

“As a mature nation, we must take responsibility for our history,” wrote Sean Maloney, whose detailed, blunt, clear-eyed account of the Canadian Army in Afghanistan during the country’s longest war ruffled enough establishment feathers that it faced a decade of obstacles on the way to publication.

While the publication runs plenty of articles on wars long past and the important contributions made by women and 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians to peace and security, the latest edition is mostly a tribute to United Nations peacekeeping.

Speaking with CBC News about the anniversary of Medak Pocket last September, the country’s top military commander, Gen. Wayne Eyre — who fought in both the Krajine region of the former Yugoslavia and in Kandahar — reflected on the importance of both conflicts.

Recently, House of Commons committees have separately grappled with the machinations involved in erecting a memorial to those who fought in Afghanistan and the disastrous evacuation following the Taliban takeover in the summer of 2021 — an event that sealed the perception of the war as a failure.

Avoiding painful truths seems to be at the heart of the roadblocks thrown up ahead of the publication of Maloney’s Afghan history, and also a wider reluctance — political and social — to remember Canada’s wars as they were: ugly, messy, divisive, heartbreaking and tragic.

For decades before Afghanistan and the chaotic peacekeeping missions of the 1990s, Canadians were able to retreat into the safe, comfortable mythology of victory in two world wars, with well-worn ceremonies and rituals for conflicts that were far enough in the past to not strike any nerves.

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