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There was a news item last week in one of Daily Guide's editions indicating how sad or how angry Lt. General Smith was because some people had, in his mind, attempted to �politicise� the purchase of some five aircraft for the Ghana Armed Forces. Poor General Smith! In the view of the distinguished General the Ghanaian population has no right to ask any questions regarding matters relating to the Ghana Armed Forces, as in his mind any such questions would be equivalent to breaking some non-existent national consensus on the nation�s security. The General�s logic is fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons. As old a soldier as General Smith is, I am sure he will be the first to agree that whatever national consensus that should characterise matters affecting the nation�s security was broken by his party and his president when they were in opposition in 2007. General Smith should most certainly remember the sanctimonious cacophony that was so shamelessly made by people of his political party and especially by men like Professor JEA Mills and Alban Bagbin, currently the Honourable Minister of Works and Water Resources, not forgetting their crowd of so-called social commentators such as the good old Kwesi Pratt Jnr., when the then NPP Government decided to equip the same Armed Forces with just TWO air planes. Their argument then was very simple, indeed some would even say simplistic. They said that because people could not afford three square meals a day, and because we could not afford to pay our children�s school fees, because our roads had plenty of pot holes and because our people were dying of malaria, HIV/AIDS, guinea worm and the rest of all the tropical diseases and because we had not eradicated schools under trees etc etc, Kufuor was the most uncaring president that we had ever had. Not even the fact that President Kufuor, by the Constitution, was not going to ever be a direct beneficiary of the so called comfort associated with the planes was good enough to exonerate him of bad faith. Kwesi Pratt and his gang were in full battle. At the time, General Smith never got either angry or sad, did he? At the time General Smith did not think that national security was under any kind of threat because of the aggressive opposition to the acquisition of those planes, did he? At the time General Smith did not believe that those who raised questions were less patriotic than those who thought that the nation�s interests were being well served, did he? At the time General Smith did not think that we could recoup the cost of the aircraft through hiring them out to the UN for peace keeping operations, did he? One would have thought that the General�s military background would have set him way aside of the sycophants who are manipulating the President. Anyone who had a strong and positive view of the old general should now be sorely disappointed. But they need not be. General Smith has shown all the features and characteristics of the President�s sycophants. It is the same General who supervised the replacement of all those hundreds of young men who had just been recruited into the Ghana Army on the eve of the Mills Administration with party hacks and managed to get away with that act of extreme partisanship with all manner of untruths and fictitious statistics; it was the same General who declined to accept that almost 60% of all new recruits into the Ghana Armed Forces are from one or two ethnic groups of the country. It is the same General Smith who is accused by a section of the press of overseeing the promotion of Officers from some ethnic groups over and above those from other parts of the country; it is the same General who is overseeing the pre-mature retirement of some Officers considered to be non-NDC Officers. It is the same General Smith who is now goading our Armed Forces to get involved in commercial activities against the well-researched advice from very expert Ghanaians. IMANI has clearly demonstrated some major bankruptcies inherent in the Smith Doctrine for our Armed Forces. Instead of listening to those who know, the man is bullying us into toeing his line as if the country is an army barrack. So who seriously should lose sleep over his concerns? He has finally forfeited whatever reputation he earned for his service to his country. He has become too partisan!!! He has only himself to blame. The Minister of Defence should understand very clearly that asking questions about what the tax payer�s money is used on is not equivalent to being unpatriotic. In other jurisdictions, legislators and citizens have every right and opportunity to scrutinise the Defence budget. He may have known that in the most recent standoff between the US President and his Democratic supporters on the one hand, and the Republicans on the other, the Defence budget was as affected as any other programme and at no point did either the President or anybody for that matter consider those who simply sincerely believed that the defence budget was a legitimate candidate for down ward revision, to be an enemy of the United States of America. In the debate regarding the acquisition of the five aircraft for the Armed Forces, the questions that are being posed are simple and straight forward. In fact they are very weighty. We need clear and sensible answers to them without anybody�s sadness or anger. 1. Why are we buying FIVE aircraft at once when we are faced with so many pressing bread and butter issues? Why the seeming haste and urgency? 2. Why are there so many discrepancies in the prices quoted in the official catalogue of the manufacturers and those presented to the poor Ghanaian tax payer? 3. Why are we not being offered well-conceived and evidence-based answers instead of the insinuations and accusations of lack of patriotism being levelled against those who are seeking to have honest answers? 4. Why are we not being told of any strategic calculations that underpin the whole exercise apart from the fact that the Armed Forces Council has asked for the purchases? 5. Why do some members of the NDC Government think that they can tell us anything and get away with it? Why should Baba Jamal tell us that one of the planes was going to be used to fight armed robbery? Why should he joke with us in a matter as serious as this one? And what the hell was president saying? Controlling floods with the planes? 6. What is the evident need for the so-called entertainment facility in one of the planes? 7. How many planes can the US$17 million hangar store? Some of the administration�s spokesmen tell us three, some say two, some say one, and some say zero. Which is which and if what the experts are telling us is accurate, why is our hangar so costly? These are the matters that should worry and sadden not only General Smith, but any Ghanaian who loves this country. The General should not claim any moral high ground on the matter, and if he has to, he must be sure that he is on the right side of the nation�s consensus on the matter. For the moment, he is clearly on the side of the indifferent minority whose day of reckoning is not far away at all. For his information, there was a total national consensus when Dr. Kwame Addo Kufuor, the former Minister of Defence, decided to construct the Office complex for the Ministry of Defence and to re-do the Burma Hall. Now those monuments have become part of this country�s heritage stock. When the history of the Ghana Armed Forces is written in the future, Addo Kufuor will earn his rightful place. The problem that General Smith has created for himself is unpardonable. He is shattering the esprit de corps of the military with his political and ethnocentric promotions and recruitment policy. Now he is saddling the nation with a debt that we have not bought into. These will be part of his legacy after December 2012. It is such a pity that in just two and a half years he has succeeded in destroying the modest reputation that he earned as a Gentleman through the strident partisanship that he has introduced into the Ghana Armed Forces. What a great pity! Airport Residential Area, Accra