When serving in the Canadian Military I was at a reception for high level government people in 2008 . A senior Mandarin at Foreign Affairs was standing next to a very senior Canadian Military Officer. I asked both of them to make the linkage between the Canadian Armed Forces deployment to Afghanistan and the national security interests of Canada.
The response, unsurprisingly but very disappointing, was a master class in desembling with no clear answer to what should have been a very straight forward question
I am also old enough to be one of the last officers in the CAF to have a commissioning scroll signed by a Defence Minister who had medals awarded for service where Combat operations were taking place.