Why Canada should not be in Afghanistan

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Contributed by: robertjb

Why Canada should not be in Afghanistan and other post-modern travesties!

SNIP

America’s brazen behavior has left the global community cowed, and little wonder. If it decided to use its strategic weapons with the same wanton belligerence it uses it conventional weapons the planet earth would be a nuclear wasteland. America may never use its overwhelming military capability on a broader basis but it is clearly a nation out of control and it is clearly out to establish global hegemony- when it says democracy it really means satellite puppet regimes.

Lesser nations may feel powerless, but collectively they could be very powerful in confronting the American bullyboy- and bullies must be confronted. There are numerous economic, diplomatic and political avenues open to let America know its behavior as the world’s pre-eminent rogue state is unacceptable to the global community.

SNIP

Canada’s political elites have fallen on hard times. They are drowning in the effluent of their feeble self-deceptions. We can never be more than a minor player in global affairs but we diminish ourselves even further by being cowardly collaborators in a monumental subterfuge.

One modest way we can protest is too refuse to participate in America’s self-aggrandizing wars that are being fought for less than altruistic reasons. We can let it be known that our sovereignty is not some mere give away as our political elites indulge in their self-inflicted emasculation.

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20060309003144152#comments

War and peace are too important to leave to generals like Rick Hillier, says Gerald Caplan

The Canadian media have a new hero. They've fallen hard for a soldier. Gen. Rick Hillier can do no wrong. He speaks; the media salutes. After apparent love-ins last week with the editorial boards of both the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, both gave swooning endorsement to his pitch for Canada's mission to Afghanistan.

Few of the general's assertions, however provocative or dubious, seem to get challenged. His more memorable utterances are repeated often and scrutinized rarely.

He is, apparently, an expert on complex geopolitical matters in faraway regions of the world.

Let's hear why it's a good thing for Canadian troops to risk their lives in Afghanistan but not, for example, in Darfur or the Congo. War and peace, it's been pointed out, are far too important to leave to the generals — even the media darlings among them.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1141858211065

There are valid arguments for building up our military to render them more autonomous. That, however, is not what the Cons plan, if I got the jist of ti correctly.

I wonder what kind of a strain on our national fiances this will become.