Canada's New Militarism
I dunno, but it's as if Peacekeeping, as perilous as Canadians know it is, has taken a back seat to the New Conservative ego. And is it just me, or are you, too, Dear Reader, sick of how Afghanistan has been elevated to WWII status before Hollywood has even made the movie: "The Best Years of Canadian Lives"?
If at all possible, this New Conservative re-writing of our national Post-War identity galls me even more than the post-election-during-which-no-mention-was-made-of-Afghanstan-amping-up-of-the-mission-from-Peacekeeping-to-Warmaking.
It actually out-offends the New Conservative Government of Canada's American military import of labelling Non-New-Conservative-During-Wartime-Canadians as UnCanadian.
Slapping a New Conservative stamp on our country and preaching to the converted seems to be the only real priority of this New Conservative Government of Canada. The fact that most Canadians simply do not believe in what it's selling (with our money, of course) seems lost on it between elections. Not just because its version of us doesn't reflect what used to be true, but because it only risks the selling after it's been safely elected.
I mean, just as a minor point of interest, how many Canadians even know anymore that it was Chretien who actually put us in Afghanistan?
Not many, I'll wager. And that's because the mission has changed from a Peacekeeping gimme to Bush Inc to save us from Iraq (and I'm well aware of the fact that there was no peace to keep - but this is the consummate Liberal government I'm talking about here) to a military operation with a Made-in-America stamp and our own General Petreus ready to step up to the microphone to promote his war.
Let's face it - a Canadian army general is dictating Canadian foreign policy through our New Conservative Government of Canada as if that's how it was always done in this country.
So, is it just me, again, Dear Reader, or do you, too, remember a time when it wasn't?
Call me UnCanadian, but my sense is that Canadians do not, in any way, want to go down the American military foreign policy road that we are currently on in Afghanistan. Before the War on Terror was declared and the New Conservative Government of Canada was elected, I thought we considered ourselves and were considered abroad as Peacekeepers - a dangerous and deadly pursuit for the greater good that Americans left behind with isolationism and the Peace Corps.
Personally, I believe that, like the Americans in Iraq, we have no choice now but to stay the course in Afghanistan. And while I have the best of hopes for the soldiers who must do that, I have nothing but contempt for the governments that put us there. And while I know who Hillier and Harper are talking to when they beat their war drums, it isn't me - despite their laughable claim that we are in Afghanistan to promote women's rights.
In any case, if we're stupid enough to elect New Conservatives to Parliament again, we've no one to blame but ourselves for the New Militaristic Canadian identity our children will grow up to remember.
