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Let's Talk about Creeping Canadian Militarism
We're signing on to a major shift, without much debate.
PM Harper in Afghanistan
Militarism is seeping into Canadian ideological and institutional life, with highly dangerous short-term and long-term implications. Yet we hear precious little outcry from the public or in the media, and this relative silence only encourages those controlling the levers of power to continue this development.
One can date this departure from Paul Martin's commitment of 2500 soldiers to Afghanistan in 2004. At the time, it was as if no one noted that this deployment was in any way different from Canada's traditional peacekeeper role in various trouble spots around the globe under the auspices of the UN. This time, however, the counter-insurgency role called for front-line troops, fully equipped for war and ready for continuous military action. Peacekeeping this is not.
After Jean Chrétien had refused to send Canadian troops to Iraq, Canada came under intense American pressure to pull its weight in the global "war on terror." Obviously Martin agreed to send 2500 troops to one theatre of military action in part to relieve that many U.S. troops to fight in Iraq. This was an indirect but substantial contribution to the American's Iraq war, contracted in a way that would not alarm Canadian voters.
Eisenhower's Warning
"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential farewell address in 1960
In far more overt ways, Stephen Harper (who almost certainly would have sent our troops to Iraq had he been prime minister at the time, as would have been the case with Michael Ignatieff), has used this dramatic shift in Canadian military posture to encourage the immediate and long-term growth of the Canadian armed forces.
The best way to increase military expenditures and to grow your army is to use it. Far from planning for an eventual end to Canada's role in Afghanistan, Harper is extending it into the uncharted future. Troops on the ground mean that opposing military growth means not "supporting our boys."
The prime minister said as much, once again, during his surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday.
Where's the debate?
During decades of Liberal dominance, Canada cut the armed forces to the bare minimum that NATO would allow. After all, during the long Cold War, Canadians knew that the Americans would hardly permit an invasion of North America. So why not open Canadian air space to the Americans, build joint radar stations on Canadian soil, and spend money on universal health care instead of tanks and ships. If there was an element of cynicism in this strategy it saved money and Canadian lives. It almost amounted to unilateral disarmament.
2001 and the prospectively endless war of several theatres that has ensued undermined this anti-military strategy. Not only the government, but, judging from the polls, the majority of Canadians are now uncertain just what role Canada should play in the global "war on terror." Should we stay in Afghanistan? For how long? Should we grow our military for future conflicts? If so, to what degree?
But the most prescient question, and one that is not being widely raised concerns the long-term consequences of militarization. We are signing on to a carefully staged but major shift in Canadian life, without much awareness or debate.
Only the limited tactician Jack Layton is actively opposed to the current war, but even the NDP leadership, which rarely thinks strategically, has failed to raise the more fundamental and long-term issues in an articulate fashion.
As usual, the Liberals are all a muddle, wanting to support the war effort lest they be considered unpatriotic. Their reading of the polls tells them that calling for withdrawing the troops would lose them the next election.
Ramping up military spending
Only Stephen Harper has a clear long-term strategy -- an ever-increasing military and a far more "engaged" foreign policy, which means likely participation in more American-sponsored wars. And that likelihood in turn justifies enlarging the military.
On both the material and ideological fronts, this militarization is well under way. The overall Department of National Defense budget has increased from $13 billion to $15.1 billion in the past two years, with a $1.1 billion rise over the next two and $5.3 billion in the next five years. Additional security costs -- paramilitary border guards and increased internal counter-espionage, all elements of modern militarism -- will go up another $1.5 billion in the next two years.
The military has embarked on an expensive expenditure program for transport planes, helicopters, supply ships, tanks, trucks and missiles, as well as more troops.
Planning for the next two decades, the Canadian military command has called for more than doubling the military budget to $36 billion by 2025, not to mention attendant security add-ons, which could double that figure to $72 billion if accelerated at the current pace. General Rick Hillier frequently trumpets the need for massive increases to the Canadian military establishment, and he does this in a public and politically partisan way that is radically contrary to the traditional public stance of Canadian commanders in chief. He, not the Minister of National Defense, is the vocal point man for militarism.
But Prime Minister Stephen Harper is really leading the charge. Not only is he tailoring his budgets to substantially increase the military each year, he is the chief ideologue of speeded up militarization.
Cheerleading for war
A notable example of Harper as military cheerleader was the speech he gave on April 7 commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. One hundred thousand "brave Canadians" fought there in 1917, Harper said, and 3598 died. "Every nation has a creation story. The First World War and the Battle of Vimy Ridge are central to the story of Canada." This was the "first time the entire [Canadian] army fought on the battlefield together," an effort that produced "a spectacular victory, a stunning breakthrough that helped turn the war in the Allies favour."
Even at the time of the battle, Brigadier Alexander Ross noted that looking out over the field of this battle, he was witnessing "the birth of a nation," Harper recalled in his speech.
Canadians today should honour this great sacrifice, the Prime Minister concluded. "We may hear them say softly: I love my family, I love my comrades, I love my country, and I will defend this freedom to the end."
The day before Harper gave this speech, six Canadian soldiers were killed in action in Afghanistan, and at the Vimy Ridge commemoration, General Hillier drew the obvious links of that earlier struggle to today, saying that he could not really concentrate on the past when current sacrifices are so great.
One risks being labeled unpatriotic if one questions either the larger military program or the highly freighted patriotic rhetoric of such occasions. But was Canada really born at Vimy Ridge? I thought it was constructed in 1867 as an economic and political constitutional bargain to head off any potential American threat and serve larger British imperial aims, tied to the material aspirations of the dominant merchants in the Canadian colonies.
But of course, however historically inaccurate, Vimy Ridge makes for the heroic birth of a nation, in bloodshed. (So had the Plains of Abraham, but that was the English conquering the French, which is not a useful victory for purposes of Canadian unity.) National birth in blood sacrifice is important to emphasize when one wants to make the pitch for a current war and the re-militarization of a society.
American experiences
I am aware that I am particularly attuned to such ideological uses of heroic battles because I am an American-Canadian who specializes in the history of the American Civil War. The dominant writing about the Civil War is triumphalist. If the bloody American revolutionary war had commenced American freedom, this argument goes, the far more massive Civil War, by ending slavery, secured the nation for liberty, democracy and equality of opportunity.
Such arguments rarely emphasize the costs of the Civil War: 620,000 men killed in a nation of 36 million, and countless lives maimed and ruined, both civilian and military. Nor does this account focus on the century of brutal apartheid that followed the war, revamping white supremacy and undermining African-American freedom for generations to come, with consequences for the present and the foreseeable future of American race relations.
World War II was another "good war" which continues to provide ideological encouragement for the uses of military means. Thus was Fascism defeated and freedom saved, this story goes -- overlooking the Russian-based victory, with the immense costs to the Russian people, and the equivocal nature of western hegemony in our world since the war.
The immense American military budgets, the endless series of American wars, the never-ending ideological barrage supporting such militarism, all have had a deeply corrosive effect on American society.
And this militarism is relatively recent. Most Americans themselves do not know how resistant Americans were to the use of the military prior to World War II. Indeed the lack of a draft and the refusal to employ the army abroad were points of patriotic pride for Americans up until 1941, outlining their difference from those horrible European imperialists.
Dwight D. Eisenhower's dramatic presidential farewell address in 1960, when he warned of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex," stemmed from his youth when the American army he served was small and marginal. He alerted the public to the poison spread by permanent militarization, in a way that was both prophetic and a cry in the ideological wilderness (see sidebar).
After 1945, as Eisenhower stressed in 1960, and in the nearly five decades that have followed, there never has been a return to the American tradition of a non-militarized society: and the military has an enormous and permanent presence in American society and consciousness. To me it is no coincidence that the huge spread of personal weapons and the high rate of violent crime correlated to militarism. If military force was good for the nation in the Civil War and World War II, if the military and the warrior tradition are central to American society, why is armed force on the part of civilians not a generally legitimate means to deal with problems?
Armed civilians?
Even after Virginia Tech, the National Rifle Association types have continued to proclaim the virtues of arming the general populace on campus so that good people can shoot down bad ones when the need arises. Few liberal congressmen or journalists have taken on the NRA, which has an excellent record of destroying their opponents while calling for the arming of all honest civilians -- for society as a militia.
I cannot "prove" this theory of, as Eisenhower put it, the negative "spiritual" implications of militarization, nor can most Americans stand back far enough to analyze the impact that a permanently huge military establishment and frequent wars have had on their social fabric.
Nor can I "prove" what the long-term consequences will be for Canada if militarization continues. Perhaps because of the tradition of a small military, perhaps because Canadians trust their government too much, perhaps because of a more general complacency, few public voices sound such an alarm. But I am not sanguine about this trend, and I would like to see more public debate. I believe we are slipping into an American Republican style material and ideological marriage of military and society.
Many believe that the chief threat of Harper conservatism lies in his social beliefs, particularly on abortion. Although that social conservatism may be true in his heart, a "strong military" is far more front and centre in his belief structure. These are values upon which he has acted vigorously, while he has steered clear thus far on any sustained action concerning social issues like abortion.
So far he is having his way. More questions need be asked.
Related Tyee stories:
- Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada
The coolly reasoned case made by a leading expert in international law. - Harper's Unmeasured Support for Israel
Why Canada is wrong to fan the flames. - Foreign Policy: Harper's Downfall?
On Kyoto and Afghanistan, he backed Bush. What if the US attacks Iran? - A Condo in Vancouver: Escape from Empire?
Move over Chomsky. Author Chalmers Johnson accuses Americans of self-defeating imperialism, and calls B.C. a refuge.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Who Mowed Down the Premier?
- Canada's Economy, Deconstructed (by a 12 year-old)
- Death in Remand: a Tyee Inquiry
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- Death In Remand: 'A Gut Feeling'
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- Alberta Fills Pipes with Corrosive Denial
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- How Our Immune Systems Exaggerate Fear
- BC biotech company seeks approval for GM apple
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Should You Run from that Medical Test?
- 'The Dictator'
- Death in Remand: Stacked Deck
- 'Moonrise Kingdom'
- From Financial Advisor to Occupier
- Seven Goals to Build the Conservative 'Dream'
45
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Fiat lux
5 years ago
I always find it amusing
I always find it amusing when politicians, of all nations, scream for "defence" and more military spending to show the world etc., while busily negotiating behind the scenes, as Harper is doing now, for the sale of the country's resources and the country itself, to "wealth creating foreign investors".
What's the point in "defending the country"
when the country is for sale ?
In any case, anybody who knows the military and warfare, also knows that the Canadian and NATO involvement in Afghanistan is nothing more than a cruel joke, killing people on both sides for no logical, or moral reason.
Which means that the generals and politicians who support it are liars.
Ed Deak.
Cynic
5 years ago
What do the people want?
What do the people want? Peace. What do the elite want? War, and lots of it. Harper is horrendous. In no way does he represent the aspirations of Canadians. He serves the elite. He received his "vision" for Canada in 2003 at Versailles where he met with the likes of Kissinger, Rockefeller, and Black. These people are failed human beings; all they care about is power and profit. May Harper and Hellier and Bush go down in the very flames they inflict on our lives. Peace and Love to the people.
lynn
5 years ago
Sold out
That is brilliant. Okay if I start making up the bumper stickers now? ;-)
murdock
5 years ago
Violence in perspective
-- Charles Tilly
and
-- Charles Tilly
These are the crucial elements at play within many of the welfare states from the late 20th century.
One, that the populace will increasingly become less connected to the center of power and the old arguments of citizenship and patriotism are gone the way of chivalry...lost in the pages of a yellowed textbook.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens]
With this loss of connection will come an anarchy that will threaten the end of that central authority.
Two that the action of 'going to war' leaves the citizens of that nation that undertakes the military action at the mercy of their 'leaders' whom continue to pour more efforts into those 'war' fighting actions. Whether the efforts are financial (such as taxes) or of a more personal nature (such as giving your life or the lives of your children) will be of little meaning to those with their hands on the levers of the power.
One and all must recognize that:
“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”
-- Thucydides
and that ultimately:
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
-- Sun Tzu
murdock
5 years ago
Only when on our 'hind legs'
I present the quotes simply to show that none of this is new, all of it has been debated before.
Until all of us are willing to show the courage to stop our own leaders from leading us to glory, then 'to glory' we shall follow-march.
-- supposedly quoted by General Wolfe before Abraham I
perhaps our current minority PM wants his fighting, foul-mouthed, General Hillier to behave like George II did about Wolfe?
http://www.sevenyearswarassociation.com/Reference/18thCenturyQuotes.html
http://www.onpower.org/quotes/t.html
relayer
5 years ago
Liberal thinking
decimated the Canadian Armed Forces over decades. Liberal thinking also holds that civilians aren't to be trusted with firearms. Neither thought was particularly intelligent, and both are reasons why I will never vote Liberal.
Jeffrey J.
5 years ago
Let's Discuss Indeed
Excellent article! Prof. Fellman has perfectly captured how most Canadians feel about Harper's rush for war. How awful it is that Canadian democracy is being hijacked so ruthlessly. And how frightening for our citizens. In the recent book by Chalmers Johnson (Sorrows of Empire) we learn of the militarization of the US in stunning clarity: 735 military bases girdle the globe; employing over 1,000,000 people; wholly dominating the US budget; undermining civil democracy. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Thanks to Prof. Fellman and the Tyee for good journalism.
JIm
5 years ago
This whole article is
This whole article is nothing but a ideological rant against the military.
The author hasn't added anything new or informative to this discussion. He should have just written "military bad" and sat back and watched as the posters lined up to support him with their own hand crafted rhetoric.
How does Ed Deak's post get a best comment? You can cut and paste any one of Ed's 100 comments over the last couple of years and place it in there. Like the article, nothing new or informative was presented. I thought the whole best comment thing was to get away from the ideological ranting?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Lynn, you're welcome to make
Lynn, you're welcome to make bumper stickers of anything I write.
JIm, I'm a WW2 volunteer vet, wounded on a voluntary patrol, former officer candidate, and a long time student of military history. So I know the total corruption by and of the military mind and war.
Wars are the ultimate economic competition and all wars have been and are competition for certain forms of energy, wasting more energy, than what's gained, in the process.
Read the histories of all empires and how and why they collapsed? They simply ran out of steam and disappeared, or still exist as bad jokes of their former might. Where are the Hittite, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman, Polish, Hun, Dutch, French, British, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. etc. of hundred of past and long lost empires ?
Nlow look at what's happening to and in the USA? Once the envy of the whole world, now the most hated.
A certain numbers of military are necessary for "defence" and flood control, but what is going on now is the biggest crime. 10 days of military spending could provide clean drinking water for everybody on Earth.
While these idiots are producing more and more arms, 30 odd million starve to death every year.
What is the Canadian, or the NATO military doing in their locked up bases in Afghanistan, running around in locked up tin cans, not daring to show their faces in the open? Spreading democracy over postage stamp sized areas under their control, while being hit by rockets?
Ed Deak.
Elliot
5 years ago
let's talk about 11 years of
let's talk about 11 years of senseless and pathetic federal liberal policy whereby the military funding is cut to the point where they're a laughing stock and are reduced to borrowing batteries from the spanish air force. once again the lefties are out of touch with reality. what else is new?
Michael Fellman
5 years ago
Michael Fellman
Calling my calm essay an "ideological rant" is slinging a curse rather than engaging in dialogue.
Nothing I said in particular is exactly new, but there has been little systemic analysis nor much thought expressed about the long-term effects of militarization. "Ideological rant" as a shibbolith demonstrates one of the problems at hand--that any criticism of the military and its impact must be dismissed as crazy.
Hasn't Stphen Harper just declared perpetual war? Won't that war be used to expand Canadian military budgets even beyond current projections? What are the long-term social consequences of such choices? These are real world issues with real world impacts. They will be tested in the real future.
My essay is not an abstract ideological product. It does stem, however, from intense skepticism about the uses of power by whoever has it. I thought that social criticism was my vocation as a scholar, a journalist and an engaged citizen.
murdock
5 years ago
Not a rant against the military.
opines JIm
wrote Michael Fellman
This is the crux of the point in the arguments regarding this 'creeping mission' to Afghanistan.
One side, represented by the likes of Michael Fellman and Michael Byers says that Afghanistan is now the WRONG MISSION for the Canadian Forces.
The other side, perhaps put forward by JIm says that the Canadian Military is needed to go 'over there' to stomp out the 'terrorists' before they can again organize well enough to strike at North America again (as they are convinced that 3rd century goat herders could have on Sept 11, 2001).
This article and many of the comments that follow it are not 'ranting against the military' they are better regarded as 'an open discussion' about Canada's military role in society and its use overseas.
These are healthy things for a democracy, for a lack of discussion is a recipe for dictatorship.
Michael Fellman
5 years ago
"leftie"
My comment was written before Elliott called me a "leftie," but what I responded about "idelogical rant" applies to the smear word "leftie." Again, this is a curse meant to dismiss rather than engage in dialogue.
James Burns
5 years ago
Contrast Iraq
Contrast those figures with Iraq, a nation of 26 million before the war, where two years ago a study in the Lancet conservatively estimated over 700,000 have died as a result of the American war; a figure undoubtedly well beyond a million now. 2 to 3 million Iraqis displaced, 2 million Iraqis have fled as refugees. Add the poison of depleted uranium, and the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure by American airpower, and you have a recipe for genocide.
That we have a government in power federally that not only does not speak out against this atrocity, but materially supports it, is a disgusting indictment of the Canadian electorate.
murdock
5 years ago
Military ... needs a plan?
put in Elliot.
agreed lets talk about three decades of decay, that got only short check-ups and minor band-aid fixes.
better still lets have a real defence White Paper, something that has not been done since the 1990's!
We have, collectively, left the military without supports, budgets and respect for 30 years then suddenly expect them to perform a miracle as solving the puzzle of Afghanistan that has stymied armies for 3000 years! I have no illusions about what fate awaits such folly.
-- Sun Tzu
Time for those of us whom shall decide to go to war to stop being decieved.
James Burns
5 years ago
Fellman
Oh I forgot to mention, it's nice to see Michael back here on the Tyee. I was actually going to bring up your absence for the last number of months, as I was getting really tired of having to read Glavin here, and there seemed to be little alternative international political perspective. I had almost forgotten you write here from time to time, as you've been gone so long.
DPL
5 years ago
----------------------- The
-----------------------
The blood of the desert is sodden red. Red with blood of the square that broke. From the old Brit poem.Play up and play the game. It was all about team work rah rah raw. The Zulus kicked the shit out of the brits in that one. Some folks see war a game, others as ways to make a lot of money and some others consider it’s a prestige thing. Go ask the folks who got parts shot off and ask them what they think. It’s a dirty job and we are slipping into a thing we can’t win. Go read Rory Stewart’s book “The Places in Between. He walked a long way through Afghanistan not long before the fighting started again. It’s tribal, everyone has a gun or two and hates just about everyone else. Status is everything when you are poor.
But Steve wants to be a big man and some of supporters are of the same opinion. The guy must go. If he wants war so bad, maybe he can join the army. The arms industry will vote for him every time. The Generals end up as lobbyists for war. Some try to be Conservative Candidates, some don't make it. Get out of the place
Chicken Little
5 years ago
Militarism is for creeps
Harper has been aching for war since he was a backroom boy. None of this namby-pamby diplomacy and peacekeeping for him. (What is his problem, anyway?).
His use of "creation story" in his Vimy address made my skin crawl. Creation stories are myths. Countries come about by evolution. I was expecting a fire and brimstone sermon next.
But if we can't get the Canadian public's attention any other way, we're going to have to follow the money and hit them where it hurts - in the wallet.
An article by Chalmers Johnson/Tom Englehardt, originally on TomDispatch and linked from Antiwar.com has the following quote:
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=10972http://
Let's get Buzz Hargrove and the trade unions onto this.
JIm
5 years ago
Ed, none of your points are
Ed, none of your points are wrong, but don't really apply to Canada. We are talking about a military on the verge of collapse, not a world super power.
Without increased funding the necessary domestic functions of a military wouldn't have even been possible in 15 years. Maybe sooner.
Many of the anti-military post seem to be more anti-American posts. The mission in Afghanistan is not much different than a peacekeeping role, expect it's more political because Americans are involved.
My original post is relevant because most of these posts are ideological rants that could have been provoked by a simple "military bad" article, which is what this is.
It funny that Micheal gets so offensive over some leftie and ideological labels when he threw those labels out repeatedly in his article.
I'm not advocating taking over the world, but I do believe we need a military. I guess most of you feel we can piggy back off the Americans when we are in dire straights. How ironic, especially when many of you are concerned about Canada's sovereignty in regards to the US's control of our assets.
Percy
5 years ago
Huh? Abortion?
Finally, at the end of this story, we see that it is motivated by the author's view that the Harper government is a "threat...particularly on abortion".
The author says we are making a huge mistake if we change policy directions in this country without public debate.
That's cute, maybe he should call for a public debate on abortion, which has never occured. \
Skywalker
5 years ago
Being led by the blind.
Throughout Canadian history the Canadian armed forces have been involved in far away wars often started by war mongers in other countries and often led by incompetent leaders from other countries. First it was because we were a colony of England that we were involved in two WW's and then Korea because of the war mongers in the U.S. were defending a S. Korean dictator from a N. Korean dictator. Then it was General MacArthur who foolishly thought he could crush the communists by driving into North Korea bringing China into the scene.
You would think that we would learn to avoid war games in far off places but here we have Harper getting cozy with the U.S. foreign policy something every Prime Minister before him has avoided, except maybe Mulroney.
Pierre Berton's "Marching As To War" is a very good read during these times. When Afghanistan is used as a photo op. then getting our troops home will be decided on the basis of political fortunes. Imagine shedding more blood so the politicians can save face!
G West
5 years ago
JIm
All in your opinion; with which, apparently, a great many other people (including a majority of Canadians) don't seem to agree.
The Canadian military's current deep integration with US forces is just another serious problem for Canadian sovereignty. Harper is making it worse, that's all.
If Canadians were aware how deeply compromised our NATO role in Afghanistan actually is by the involvement of American contractor groups who run the service show in country they would be amazed. The $189,000,000 we spent to air ferry our worthless Leopard tanks amounted to little more than a bonfire of Canadian dollars.
Even the much touted Kandahar Tim Horton's is a tiny presence when compared with the American suppliers and contractors toward whom our supposedly-independent soldiers must turn for services and support. Most Canuck medical personnel seem to prefer Green Beans to Canadian coffee, for example.
We need to get out NOW. We are there now as little more than a pander to Stephen Harper's 'continentalizing' dreams.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
JIm, This morning, here
JIm,
This morning, here in Central BC's Williams Lake area, we had 4 USAF B52s flying over our house, going South, between 10:30 and 11:30 am. The North and South flights have been going on forever, since the Cold War days, but in the past few months the numbers intensified and are now also flying East-West, sometimes crossing each others' con-stripes, up to a dozen or more a day and night.
I calculated once that during the time we can see these "idiot planes", as we call them, they use enough fuel to power my truck, tractors and small engines for 5 years. Yes, I know that jet fuel is different, but I'm talking about volumes.
What are they practicing for and why are they permitted to use Williams Lake as a navigational correction point, by making slight turns over the town ?
This is one question I would like to see answered, without ideological claptrap.
As far Afghanistan is concerned, if NATO is serious to establish democracy in that godforsaken pile of rocks and poppy fields,
they'll have to put in a minimum of half million foot soldiers, bodily and permanently occupying every village and valley and mountain top for a generation, or longer.
As I wrote before, the present numbers are a bad joke. In any case, the Taliban were put into power, financed and feted by the US government in the first place, knowing very well who and what they and their religious idiocies are. So was Saddam Hussein.
And this is what our soldiers are supposed to be dying, and the citizens paying for ?
Ed Deak.
alive
5 years ago
start making up the bumper stickers now? ;-)
What's the point in "defending the country"
when the country is for sale ?
Every vehicle should have such a bumpersticker, then maybe certain politicians would realize that they are puppets being manipulated by backroom boys for pure greed!
murdock
5 years ago
Delusions of peacekeeping and peacemaking
writes JIm
The reality of the Afghanistan mission is that it is NOT in any way a UN Peacekeeping mission.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10224
A peacekeeper’s main purpose is to forcibly control conflict between two or more parties.
http://www.unac.org/peacekeeping/en/un-peacekeeping/canada-and-un-peacekeeping/
The main purposes of peacekeepers are to monitor cease-fires, maintain the separation of forces, protect humanitarian operations, and assist in the implementation of the peace agreement.
IN AFGHANISTAN TODAY THERE IS NO PEACE AGREEMENT TO BE MADE SINCE NEITHER SIDE (the Karzei government nor the Pashtun tribal leaders) WANTS PEACE!
*** to be continued ***
murdock
5 years ago
The Canadian Soldier hates being called a Peacekeeper!
The military mind abhorrs the 'way' of the peacekeeper!
http://www.thestar.com/article/185216
From Romeo Dallaire to Lewis MacKenzie the story is the same, trying to 'remote control' the field operations of UN peacekeeping, thus the reason for why NATO is leading operations in Afghanistan and not the UN. It is 'sanctioned' by the UN (whatever that means), but the Canadian Afghanistan Operations are NOT UN PEACEKEEPING EFFORTS! ~ please stop refering to them as though they were!
http://www.thestar.com/article/185216
The 'hearts and minds' of Afghanis' will not be won over by tanks!
http://www.canadiancontent.net/commtr/article_815.html
Do not let the 'PRT' or development smokescreen get in your eyes either!
http://www.jameslaxer.com/2007/02/mission-of-folly-chapter-3-canadian.html
Long before the Afghanistan debacle ever started, long before 9/11, Gen(ret) Lewis MacKenzie advocated for a pull-back of the entire CF, re-tooling and re-equipping them for future conflicts. A new Defence white paper was called for.
None of these things were done, have been done, nor will be done under the current climate in the Zoo on the Rideu.
murdock
5 years ago
Afghanistan mission is like no other before it
Even the stogy CISS (Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies) recognizes that the debate, both within the House of Commons and without is important.
http://www.ciss.ca/Comment_Kandahar.pdf
JIm, stop trying to 'shut' the debate down with your namecalling. This is one discussion that must be had and heard out completely, a generation of young people in uniform is counting on us to make the best decision.
RickW
5 years ago
relayer
Don't bet that Harper will ever allow civilians to carry firearms either. He fears the citizenry every bit as much as the Liberals do. One of his campaign "promises" was to cancel the Firearms Act, which he conspicuously hasn't tackled..........
BC Mary
5 years ago
Harper's trip to Kabul part of concerted U.S. effort
Visit's not just for our benefit
Thomas Walkom
Toronto Star - May 23, 2007
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise trip to Kabul is not just a photo op for domestic Canadian consumption.
It's part of a concerted effort by the U.S. and its NATO allies to stiffen the spine of President Hamid Karzai and forestall growing sentiment in Afghanistan for a political settlement with the Taliban.
That is the real significance of Harper's focus on development during yesterday's meeting with Karzai.
"As Canadians we know that Afghanistan's future will not be secured through military means alone," the Prime Minister said, after handing out pencil cases to children at a local school ...
zalm
5 years ago
The military's the wrong tool for the job
The military is a huge sledgehammer for crushing every fly that lands on its anvil. It's useless for the job that's at hand in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it's also the tool with the best advertising on TV.
The right tool for the job is the police. I would have said the RCMP, but that's a little dicey right now. But there were 50 cops in Afghanistan until recently, training the locals how to effectively uphold the rule of law.
That's the kind of tool the Afghani people need in spades. There needs to be tens of thoussands of cops there, from every democracy that has a rule of law. At least one in every village, with an instant hot-line to a central clearing house that can assemble the information needed to determine where threats to human rights (such as the Taliban, but they aren't the only ones) exist, and who can determine the appropriate response.
Then - and only then - can the military be permitted to act, when the national clearing-house of security information determines that the appropriate response is a military one.
Peacekeeping is a useful role where there are actively armed combatants on both sides, such as there were in Cyprus in the 1970s. This is not the case in Darfur, Eritrea, Congo, Afghanistan, or any of a hundred other spots around the world where 'asymmetrical warfare' is taking place.
Roving bands of Canadian military are entirely useless. As soon as they're off down the road to the next village, the Taliban, the local bully boys, and the drug lords pop out of the woodwork and threaten the locals into cooperation until next week, when the Canadians return. Fat lot of good we're doing.
This isn't just me that's saying this. This is every one of a dozen cops I know. This is also words from a friend who used work on contract for CSIS in the late 1980s - they're all saying exactly the same thing.
So what makes armchair quarterbacks like JIm and Harper so smart that they get to say what goes?
zalm
5 years ago
Oh, and...
EDITED FOR PERSONAL INSULTS - TYEE EDITOR
Michael Fellman
5 years ago
Correction
This from an old friend, a Canadian historian.
"The oft-quoted remark by Alexander Ross that you refer to about the birth of a nation comes from a preface Ross wrote to a friend's book published in 1967. It's usually quoted in a way that implies Ross made the comment around the time of Vimy Ridge, not 50 years later. Lord Byng was rather more eloquent: 'There they stood on Vimy Ridge that 9th day of April, 1917, men from Quebec stood shoulder to shoulder with men from Ontario, men from the Maritimes with men from British Columbia, and there was forged a nation tempered by the fires of sacrifice and hammered on the anvil of high adventure.'"
DPL
5 years ago
Somebody mentioned the B52's
Somebody mentioned the B52's cruising over their town on a regular basis,and wondered why? It's called training flights, sort of like the ones that used to pass over Montreal back in 1960. Turning point was right over the St.Hubert RCAF base. They train for war. The signs used to read. "This is the sounds of freedom"
We should of course be concerned, but also concerned that the US of A now have Blackhawk helicopters based just across the border from us and often come into Canadaian Airspace doing their thing to prevent" terorists" or somebody from doing somehting. They use drones as well. The longest undefended border simply doesn't exist any more. The CIA operates in this country. Our federal government allows all these incursions so the boss can be best friends with Bush. It's caled "sucking up"
The brits got wise and Tony Blair is gone. They want new direction and it seems the soon to be PM of Britian has far different ideas on how to deal with the US. Steve boy is getting what he wants. Look big in the eyes of the far right folk and maybe get some nice comments from Bush. Steve went "Outside the wire" as reported in the Globe today. Big hairy. He would have so many bodyguards around him he would be safter there than on a street in Ottawa.Did he take his paid for by us hair dresser?
To heck with the polls that say we are in the wrong country doing the dirty work for the US. Why waste youg people on something that nobody has ever won. The local change sides as often as we change socks. so we drop some money into a school or two, but as long as a Bush puppet is running the country along with the war lords nothing much is going to improve, except the poppy crop, even larger this year than last. wonder who is using all those drugs? The country will make changes when they want changes, not when some infidel tells them to change. The word democracy is not in their vocabulary. Le'ts get the opposition parties organised and pull the plug on the likes of Steve, stockwell Mckay, and Occonor. They should take that big mouth Newfie with them
Fiat lux
5 years ago
DPL.....I mentioned the B52
DPL.....I mentioned the B52 flights over our ranch in the Williams Lake area. I saw 5 of them yesterday, all flying South, but there may have been more when I was inside, or in the night.
I wouldn't say anything about Canadian fighter planes training over our head, but strongly object to USAF B52s, especially in the numbers we see from time to time. Bombers are not defence, but attack weapons and they're training for the mass murder of people.
Ed Deak. Big Lake, about halfway between 150 Mile House and Likely.
G West
5 years ago
DPL
Pee Wee Rambo has a 'hair dresser'?
Now that is interesting.
I thought he just headed for the cheapest joint on Sparks Street and asked for a 'college cut'.
Or had his wife use the clippers in the bathroom twice a month or so.
Very strange.
JIm
5 years ago
After I read all the
After I read all the responses. My first two posts become more valid.
Fiat is right again by saying we need more troops in Afghanistan to make it a success. That won't happen because you have the left, in collusion with right wing Muslim extremists (really weird), waging a marketing campaign to get the west out of Afghanistan. As this marketing campaign heated up, support went down. Now the country is about 50/50, so don't act like there is this huge majority supporting your position. Only in this mecca of group think do you have a majority supporting completely abandoning Afghanistan.
EDITED TO REMOVE PERSONAL INSULTS OF THE WRITER. PLEASE REVIEW THE NEW TYEE COMMENT GUIDELINES, AND IF YOU CAN'T ABIDE, POST COMMENTS ON A DIFFERENT SITE.
-- TYEE EDITOR
I thought the left goal was to help the less fortunate so they can have a better life. I thought the left was all about freedoms and rights for all. I thought the left was about equal rights for women. I thought the left found education as an essential service to human development. But after times like this I have to conclude the left is mostly about self serving interests. (See APC for another example) On the Afghanistan issue you are a traitor to your cause. Your blinded by the ideology of anti-Americanism. The only honest leftie is Glavin and he gets flamed out because he dares to step out of the group think bubble.
DPL
5 years ago
Hi ED I mentioned a few
Hi ED
I mentioned a few posts up that the US has been using Canada as a target bombing range for many years. Do you remember the story of the B36 that ended up in northern BC that may or may not been equiped with a atomic bomb. When they found it a team dropped in and destroyed what was left of the aircraft and to this day nobody has confirmed if the bomb was blown up or had been dropped at sea. Most but not all of he crew had bailed out. The US has had a bad habit of dropping those things by accident in assorted parts of the world. Next time you see them, head for the root cellar. If steve stays around for awhile longer we may end up with nukes again thanks to a previous Conservative government run by Dief the Chief. You of course must know Canada had nuke warheads for artilary in Europe as well. The gung ho Conservatives love to look like the big boys. This country once had a very large armed force but at that time a world war was in progress.WE just bought four heavy lift transports to haul who knws what where. Too bad they went out of production at the same time we bought them. WE will soon have a whole bunch of used tanks so will have to put them to work somewhere. the arms dealers love Conservatives
G West
5 years ago
JIm
I think you entirely miss the point.
The problem in Afghanistan arose because the Americans did not carry out the program they promised to implement when the Taliban were initially thrown out.
You might want to check the background from that period. Instead of following through with the funds which were promised when Bush went in, the GOP House and Senate failed to vote the promised funds and Bush moved on with his flawed vision of bringing democracy to the whole middle east by deposing Saddam Hussein in a search for WMD that did not exist.
This left Afghanistan with:
(a) insufficient reconstruction resources;
(b) an economy that was in a shambles - the US specifically refused to permit tariff-free access for Afghan goods into the US trade economy - (why do you think the peasants and farmers returned to cultivating poppies?);
(c) a military presence too small to undertake the hard work of pacifying the regions outside Kabul; which
(d) played into the hands of the warlords the invading troops didn't have the jam to contend with and who were actually the folks who won the war on the ground; for example
(e) even the medical assistance we've provided for the Afghanis has been a problem - Afghanis hurt in battles as our allies DO NOT get the same intensive medical aid that NATO soldiers do. Afghanis with serious burns die. Nato soldiers are airlifted to Germany. The differential valuation of personnel is not lost on our Afghan hosts.
Canada should have walked as soon as it became clear that the US didn't intend, as it almost never does, to keep its word.
The military actually gave this advice to Martin's cabinet years ago - and several top officers resigned over it. Instead, the government, then as now, decided to listen to a compromised cheerleader like Ricky Hillyer.
This is still just an American operation - commanded, run and compromised by American contractors. Ask anyone who's been there.
Look at who Pee Wee had to hitch a ride with during his phony foray to the front the other day.
You think that Black Hawk was a CF asset?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Jim, How about trying to use
Jim, How about trying to use a bit of logic, instead of everlasting name calling and ideological claptrap.
There's no left and right in politics. Period. The ruling classes are always the same people under different flags and religious symbols. Soldiers are not fighting and dying for countries, or faiths, but ruling classes.
What were and are Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Bush, just to name a few. Left, or right ? And who gave them the right to invade, torture, enslave and mass murder millions?
NATO has no more right to be in Afghanistan as any Muslim country would have invading us to spread their faith.
The 400 years of invasions of Palestine by the Crusaders, the various wars of Christian and Muslim reformation, the holy jihads by the Turks against Europe, just as the Bush invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq to "spread democracy" were only coverups for land and resource grabs.
Ideologies are dead, regardless what they may be called, if the human race wants to survive.
I was watching Harpo on TV, spreading democracy with a steel helmet and flak jacket on, visiting an "advance post" with a big cannon in the background. Some spreading. Not democracy, but bs.
Only so called "righties" can be fooled by this kind of crap.
Ed Deak.
JIm
5 years ago
"You think that Black Hawk
"You think that Black Hawk was a CF asset?"
Nope, our military doesn't have helicopters due to gross negligence by the Canadian government, like I said earlier. This article is fear mongering about Canada becoming a military-industrial complex. Ya some military complex, we don't even have our own helicopters. Watch out US our 4 tanks, and 3 helicopters that can't fly 2 hours without 10 hours of maintenance are coming after you. Our 2nd hand 40 year old submarines are lethal as well, heads up. The world must be getting nervous with all the money taken away from social causes and put into our military. Look out world Canada is coming after you.
Listing American mistakes does not mean we should abandoned our responsibility. Do you honestly think Afghanistan would be better off if we just got up and left?
Again it comes down to blind anti-Americanism and nothing more. Again my points are still valid.
G West
5 years ago
JIm: Another Canuck bites the dust - sad
Canada doesn't exist as a military entity without the US in Afghanistan. My post had absolutely nothing to do with Anti-Americanism.
You need to learn to read a lot more closely. I pointed out quite clearly that the American refusal to stand by its promises to Afghanistan was the critical point in this adventure. Once the American lawmakers moved on and scrapped their financial support to real re-building and trade reform, the only sensible thing was for Canada to move out. We didn't do that and most of the 55 Canadians killed in this misadventure (I don't include the 4 troopers bombed by the Americans in this total) have been wasted...sorry, that's the truth as I see it.
The world doesn’t have to 'come after' Canada. We've already surrendered. Where have you been since the 1980s?
Your points, and your refusal to contend with the realities of the situation, are completely invalid and quite purblind.
A great many of our troops in country - the ones not waiting for Don Cherry's next appearance in camo gear - were troubled by the way they've just been 'used' for political purposes by George Bush's wolverine, pee wee Rambo.
You seem nostalgic for a past when military service in Canada meant something more than being a powder monkey to either Britain or the USA.
G West
5 years ago
Nice friends! You won't read this in the National Post JIm
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit to Afghanistan cames one day after Malalai Joya, an outspoken women’s rights activist and Member of the Afghan Parliament, was suspended. The pretext for her suspension was her description of the Afghan Parliament as no better than a ‘zoo’; it was clearly aimed at silencing her criticism of the Afghanistan government.
During his surprise visit, Harper said that Canada is bringing, "the light of freedom and democracy, of human rights and the rule of law," to the people of Afghanistan, but most Afghans’ true experience is violence and misery at the hands of the warlord-dominated government.
Joya’s suspension speaks volumes about the nature of the "democracy" we are bringing to the country. Silencing critics and intimidating or killing political opposition figures is common practice for the government that Canada continues to support.
Joya has been a thorn in the side of the NATO-supported government by being an outspoken critic of the human rights abuses of the warlords that dominate the parliament of Afghanistan. In the elections of May 2005, more than 60% of those elected to parliament were from known warlord groups, many of whom are responsible for war crimes committed during the civil war from 1992 to 1996. An international campaign to have the warlords held to account failed when the parliament decided to offer immunity for all past war crimes.
Joya has been threatened and attacked for her stance. In 2006, President Hamid Karzai cut her security funding, proving that women’s rights are not a concern for his government despite assertions to the contrary from the Government of Canada.
In an interview with the Guardian, Joya said: "When I speak in parliament they threaten me. In May they beat me by throwing bottles of water at me and they shouted, ‘Take her and rape her.’ These men who are in power, never have they apologized for their crimes that they committed in the wars, and now, with the support of the US, they continue with their crimes in a different way. That is why there is no fundamental change in the situation of women."
bolding is mine.
Nice allies. Considering that women's and children's 'rights' are at the top of the list of things we're supposedly 'fighting' and dying for in country, I think you are the one who needs to consider who and what you're supporting over there my friend.
Bring all the refugees who want to make a life in Canada here to the Great White North and get out - NOW.
Before any more lives are lost by us or because of us.
DPL
5 years ago
The local rag mentioned to
The local rag mentioned to day that the withdrawl in 2009 may be extended. Best way to make sure it doesn't, is to send Steve and his warlike( for others not them) is to give them the boot.
Read some history on that country and you will see that the concept of democracy is unknown . Killing each other seems to be routine. But don't forget to pray five times a day. The Canadain people are being played as suckers
BC Dude
5 years ago
Where is Harper getting all
Where is Harper getting all this warmongering cash from $15+ billion?
I understand it's coming from OUR CPP or OUR future! Shameless Bushco buddy who is also complacent in and allowing torture of any human being no matter who they are! Eyes being gouged out, fingers cut off, ears cut off, castrations, sexually abused to death, and whole families tortured! We sit back and go to Our thankless underpaid jobs and let these "War Crimes Against Humanity" war criminals continue to dictate US!
BC Dude
5 years ago
COME ON PEOPLE JULY 01 IS
COME ON PEOPLE JULY 01 IS CANADA DAY A DAY WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERANCE! Just maybe We can hold OUR heads up high again with Pride for OUR Country?
I used to be proud but knowing that I am being an accomplice to these Horrors but not anymore, a sad and shameful Canuck who will probably sit and watch the Memorial Cup Hockey today but in the back of my mind I'll be thinking of some poor innocent slob screaming for death to take them out of the Pain and Evil!
Satan is reaping many souls from all over the world including Canada!
Foul mouth Rick (rymes with) Hiller
it just shows what a dispicable little man he is.
Wars are started by the Industrial war machine and kept going as long as the people put up with it!