Edition no. 58 September 2009

A venture not worth the sacrifice

Canada will not be remembered for its honest effort in Afghanistan

By Thomas Terrio

Afterthoughts

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.
John F. Kennedy

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
Ernest Hemingway

 

                

                 While the world waits for the next major catastrophic terrorist attack, everyone else is attempting to go on with their lives as if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are no less there, then not. What else can one do?

                 Whole industries have sprouted up in the field of security and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver will cost more than a billion dollars simply to secure the games from a terrorist attack.

                 The idea Canada is a holier than most nation or one more civilized than another, is a foolish idea. Who gave us this more holier than thou responsibility? Are we holier because we give criminals less than they deserve, or are we more civilized because we allow them to take advantage of us; when, in most cases, the truly civilized thing to do is as simple as to lock convicts up forever or apply the death penalty e.g. Clifford Olson or Robert Pickton. Why the debate?

                 Canada has one third of one percent of the global population, yet a small elite of socialists simply run the farm. This socialist ignorance has spread far and beyond the borders of Canada, because our influence now has extended itself to the United Nations.

                 Yes, without denial, the Americans betrayed Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan. Their costly adventure into Iraq has left a mark only a skin graft can remove. The right decision, not to follow the Americans into Iraq made by former prime minister Jean Chretien, does not dissolve the horrendous losses in life and billions of taxpayer dollars never to be repaid because of those ramifications felt in Afghanistan. Canada has suffered at the cost of American adventurism into Iraq.

                  The caveats put into place early on in the campaign by NATO allies, Italy, Germany and France, are a disgrace to such a small nation as Canada, considering the efforts and losses we sustained during the Second World War to free those same European nations from the Nazi holocaust.

                 Let us leave no doubt, the Nazis would have gassed anyone they thought was a threat to the  idea of a supreme race. The caveats pursued in Afghanistan by the Europeans are nothing less than spit in our face; nothing less than someone who refuses to shake your hand even though you extend yours. Few alive today remember the Siegfried Line, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle for Hong Kong, Dieppe, Normandy—just to name a few.

                 Stone monuments and parades only carry forward the truth of war, but do not reflect it into the future. It is only flesh and blood that casts its long shadow on those monuments of pride and courage. Unless people of flesh, blood, and courage are prepared to sacrifice themselves for those truths of freedom and democracy that many have sacrificed for in the past— they, the stone monuments, are nothing more than pyramids, meaninglessly dissolving themselves into the earth; their ancestor’s legacy—long lost. Let us never forget. Unfortunately, many in Europe appear to have since forgotten. By not standing together in NATO, the alliance appears weak and divided.

                  Because of this, in my view, as a nation, Canada should be more occupied and more concerned with what happens within its own borders and within the protection of its own waters, the Arctic, the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines. Indeed, Canadians should concern themselves with the poverty within, the development of children and the expansion of its own wealth of natural resources such as oil, hydroelectric power and liquid natural gas, rather than spend billions on foreign aid and war.

                 Let us never forget what Canada as a nation achieved in liberating others, however, there is a time to leave history behind, because obviously, history and those we once set free, glorious now in their freedom, have long since forgotten us.

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