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NDP Statement On The 95th Anniversary Of Vimy Ridge
April 9, 2012 - 8:24pm
Statement On The 95th Anniversary Of Vimy Ridge
http://www.ndp.ca/press/statement-on-95th-anniversary-vimy-ridge
As we mark it's 95th anniversary, we remember the sacrifice and valour of the Canadian Corps as they took control of Vimy Ridge and the thousands of soldiers who lost their lives in this historic battle.
We remember how the battle for Vimy Ridge was the first time Canadian Corps divisions fought together and how their actions brought the Allies their first sucess of the war. And we remember how these young men -- coming from Canada's farms, mines, fishing boats and towns across the country -- helped bring Canadians together.
As we remember the sacrifice of those soldiers 95 years ago, we must also reflect on the work Canadian soldiers continue to do in Canada and around the world. Our thoughts are always with our brave women and men serving overseas with the Canadian Forces, and their families back at home.
Like the statement. My greatgrandfather and his brother were at Vimy after they had lost several brothers and cousins at Beaumont Hamel.
Where's the puke smiley when you need it?
Seriously though, this pro-war piece of garbage of a statement from the NDP shows just how far the party has already moved to the right on foreign policy issues. Not that I expected much better from a party that just elected Tom Mulcair as its leader.
"We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people.." Chief of Defence Staff CF Hillier
http://rabble.ca/comment/1214169
Perhaps when you have a moment, you can explain how this party of Tom Mulcair is different from the party of Nycole Turmel, Jack Layton, Alexa McDonough...
This pro-war anti-people fetid crap shows that there is no opposition worthy of its name. Is there something stopping Niki Ashton or Nathan Cullen or Roméo Saganash or any of them from standing up and saying: "Our country massacred a generation of our young people in the defence of colonialism and imperialism - we must pledge together, Never Again!"? They are all the same.
There is hope - in our young generation of today. They will not be fooled by the cowardly chauvinism of this NDP, of the Bloc, of the Liberals and Conservatives. They are rising up and smashing the limits which society has sought to impose upon them. When I participate in the students' demonstrations, I talk to them - I hear them question absolutely every accepted "truth" of this society. The future belongs to them, and I'm optimistic for all of our sakes.
First off, there's ways to mourn the loss of a good chunk of a generation without glorifying war and imperialism. WW1 was truly one of the most senseless tragedies of the 20th century, and for what? Essentially, it was just a spat between imperialist powers which was years in the making, and which millions of working class people had to die for for some reason. It was the closest historical parallel to Jay Gould's famous quote, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half"
The Russians were the first to figure this out.
Of course, once the survivors got home, they were treated like shit again in the factories by the very people they were hired to kill for, and many found themselves organizing unions and general strikes.
One of the many problems in our political discourse is that Canadian military history (that is, certain aspects of it - I don't expect to see the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion honoured anytime soon) is glorified, made into part of our national mythology, and then tied to present-day imperialist adventures - turning an imperialist war into a glorious national project. These kinds of statements aren't really helpful.
This is why I wear a white poppy every year.
I had an old uncle who fought in all the big battles and told me absolutely everything he could remember. He said 'we were just kids told it would be a great adventure but it turned out to be a murderous, bloody sausage machine. I never had a clue what it was really all about."
I'm not shitting on those vets. They believed what they were told. But we now have the benefit of history to know 'what it was really all about.' So to have the NDP, beating their little tin drum for militarism, these chickenhawks who signed off on the most barbaric and illegal complete destruction of Libya without so much as a word of regret about it or any inquiries as to how things worked out.
I think the NDP is an awful thing to push this jingo nonsense and persuade other young people to die for nonsense. Shame on them. Hurry up and take 'Socialism' out of the ndp constitution. It has no business there.
The message the vets brought back from WWI was Never Again not lets have troops in foreign countries indefinitely.
One of my CCF "heroes" is J.S. You can stand with men of principle like him (fanatics to some of you) and oppose war or you can say Ready Aye Ready. The NDP is all about Ready Aye Ready. Yes I am a radical pacifist and social democrats in 1917 also thought war was a necesary evil. It is that mind set that produced the slaughter of good Canadian boys as cannon fodder when they surged out the trenches at Vimy ridge and were mowed down by machine gun fire.
I say never again.
http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/guerre/peace-activists-e.aspx
There is a monument to the Mac-Paps here in Ottawa. I attended the unveiling ceremony in 2001. But you're right, their story goes largely unknown and uncelebrated by those poiticians who are so quick to glorify every other part of our military history.
We celebrate the struggle every year in Cumberland. Here is the words for one song and a video of another. I am sure that the NDP will have a commemorative statement next year on the 95th anniversary of Ginger's murder and the general strike by the working people of BC.
The party of Tom Mulcair isn't really that different from the party of Nicole Turmel, Jack Layton, ect., certainly not on this issue. The thing is that given that Mulcair campaigned on "modernizing" the language of the NDP; and given that he had in 2008 said that he is an "ardent supporter of Israel in any and all situations", I never had any illusions about Mulcair not engaging in this kind of pandering to imperialism.
The other thing is that because Mulcair won a OMOV leadership contest to become leader of the NDP -- albeit only on the fourth ballot -- and given that Mulcair's views on militarism were clearly visible for all to see, its clear that a substantial portion of the NDP membership condones this kind of pandering to imperialism.
Honestly, I think you could learn a thing or two about "modernizing language" when you're talking about "pandering to imperialism". Outside babble, I don't think I've ever heard anyone even use the word imperialism unless I was in history class, or on tv when somebody was trying to parody communism.
Seems reasonable to me. Regardless of the stupid reasons they were encouraged to do so, those men did sacrifice their lives for our benefit and that's worth commemorating.
They sacrificed their lives, but not for our benefit, whether they thought that was the reason or not.
There's nothing like a good old fashioned mass slaughter; the lamentable result of incestuous squabbling over imperial bragging rights; in order to bring Canadians closer together. Let's have a big round of virtual hugs out there for the NDP rank and file, one and all.
Doug, I think you nailed it. It doesn't matter in a way what reaons lie behind Canada's military actions. The fact is people fought and died for this country believintg they were doing the right thing. All you are doing is acknowledging their sacrifice.
You know I was very lucky. My lifetime, anti-war activist old man (blessed be his memory), was on the first wave, and second man ashore at Normandy from his landing craft; he was a company Sargeant Major during the war. He fought through France, and then across Belgium. If he hadn't made it, I wouldn't be here. I don't have any problem acknowledging and thanking my dad, and countless other "dads", for doing their job when called to serve.
I wish you guys could figure out that there is a difference between thanking someone, and supporting their boss. Seems pretty simple to understand to me.
We can be sorrowful about the needless dead, and thankful that not all of the country's youth were squandered away for nothing. Other than that, are there other deeds we should be thankful for?
There was euphoria about going off to war, but there was also a national peer pressure movement that led to the deaths of many thousands who went off simply to avoid being labeled by their own communities. There is nothing to celebrate or to be thankful for, except for the living that made it.
Me too. Gotta wonder if we should start treating people with contempt that are in industries that are destroying the environment beyond the point of no repair and that are going to cause the deaths of millions or billions and have caused thousands of deaths world wide already. They also work for what I guess people here call 'imperialists' out to control the world.
Saw a brief news piece on that Vimy Ridge story last night - 5,500 Canadians participated this year - how the heck did they get them all over there, and at whose expense???
Part of the hidden costs associated with today's military adventurism. The need to maintain and pass the fabled torch that is never permitted to be extinguished. The cost of continuity. Freedom then and now.
It looked like an exercise in jingoism to me.
I don't know about all of them but there were school tours from across Canada who included a visit there in their tour packages and Legions who sent representatives some from families who had relatives that fought at Vimy.
Ever ask yourself why the moulders and shapers of public opinion and the owners and controllers of public discourse never mention imperialism? It's because imperialism is far too useful a concept for understanding and explaining Canadian history, economy, and foreign policy. Then ask yourself, in whose interests it lies for the word imperialism never to be uttered in "polite" company.
Only slightly thread drift. I was royally pissed last night when the Blue Jays public address announcer said that the soldiers in Afghanistan were "defending Canada."
Well, our values are being defended, such as they are.
Wow. That's pure jingoism. When the f*ck did Afganistan ever attack Canada???
But that's the whole point.
The military propagandists who feed and promote the war memorialization industry, with their registered trade-mark poppies™ and their phony cult of heroism, are entirely "regardless of the stupid reasons" that men were encouraged to sacrifice their lives for. And they continue to disregard the stupidity of the reasons for continuing to do the same to this very day!
Do you really think that's a way to honour the dead of Vimy? I think it's an insult.
I don't and feel you have insulted my greatgrandfather and his brothers and cousins.
Nowadays the imperialists rarely quibble amongst one another to any great extent. It's bad for business. They've learned to just pick on smaller countries that have few means of defending themselves. Through all of the carnage of the last century in the service of imperialism, Canada did however manage to improve it's status from that of a vassal colony of Britain to the position of Chester to the American Spike.