Canadian military

I have expressed my thoughts on Canada's military needs in other threads, but not for a few years, so I'll voice my unpopular opinion again. I believe there is no serious military threat to Canada other than the U.S. Also, the U.S. is so powerful that any attempt to defend against them militarily would be suicidal. We are somewhat in the position of Alba Longa with respect to the early Roman empire. We share mostly the same history and culture, we are theoretically friends and allies, but in reality, we are merely a vassal state. As part of our imperial tribute, we are compelled to provide some military forces. In fact, those forces are fully integrated into the U.S. imperial war machine.

The clear conclusion for me is that what Canada needs for a military is the minimum the U.S. will let us get away with. I think that if any Canadian government were to attempt a truly independent foreign policy, one seriously at odds with imperial interests,  that government would quickly be overthrown, by military coup, or other less direct means. Then, democracy would be restored to Canada by a U.S. approved P.M. (Maybe someone like Mad Max?). If you think this is far-fetched, you should read up on John Diefenbaker and the Bomarc missile affair.

Of course, there are practical things that are done by the military, such as search and rescue, assisting in fire fighting and so on. We should spend as much of our military budget as possible on these practical uses, and as little as possible on the actual war making parts. We should carefully calculate how little we can spend on the military, and how independent our foreign policy can be without being squashed like a bug, and do the best we can under the circumstances.

NDPP wrote:

Of course they do. Just look at the wonders achieved by western troops there so far.

Yup they do. No denying the west fucked up and ruined the country. The also recognize the west is whats preventing them from getting steamrolled by ISIS again. They want us there to train them, help them against ISIS, give them modern equipment and of course give them money.

WWWTT wrote:

Anyways, the focus for the imperialist Canadian military needs to shift from offensive NATO to defensive, more search and rescue orientated. A complete redifinition and approach is completely warranted!

Is that search and rescue inside Canada or abroad?  Can we justify a budget of 20.6 billion (US) to rescue lost hikers and snowmobilers?

Michael Moriarity wrote:

 

Of course, there are practical things that are done by the military, such as search and rescue, assisting in fire fighting and so on. We should spend as much of our military budget as possible on these practical uses, and as little as possible on the actual war making parts. We should carefully calculate how little we can spend on the military, and how independent our foreign policy can be without being squashed like a bug, and do the best we can under the circumstances.

I find the military often gets thrown into duties/jobs/tasks like fighting fires and sandbagging floods and shoveling snow in Toronto because of a byproduct of military training, mobility, brainwashing and of course how we've trained to fight.

Specialists aside, that is actual military fire fighters or search and rescue technicians, we basically take people untrained in a job and throw them in feet first. Guys I know who helped with firefighting had no idea what the hell they were doing. Do we want to pay someone $68,000 a year to fill sandbags and drop them to make a dam?

I agree about the defense of Canada. Chances we're going to be attacked are pretty small.

The military remains a tool used by the government to project our national interests and remain relevant in world politics. The UN asks Canada to be involved in UN peacekeeping missions, not Andorra or Monaco.

$32.7 billion

That'll buy a lot of sandbags and snow shovels for Toronto lol

Canadian Soldiers Carry Guns in 'Full Fighting Order' at Toronto's Khalsa Day

https://globalnews.ca/news/5223262/canadian-soldiers-unmuzzled-weapons-k...

"The forces called it 'misguided."

Banana republic.

Michael Post #154

Well said!

"Brave, courageous, selfless. Honored to join these Canadian Forces members at the Embassy and thank them for their service to US military units and operations under US military command." - US Amb Kelly Craft [newly named by Trump, US ambassador to the UN]

https://twitter.com/USAmbCanada/status/1151227042136035328

NDPP wrote:

But CF training Ukrainian fascists is fine.

https://twitter.com/mikolaswed/status/913468028741996545

Your source thinks women are property.

Canadian Forces to help Halifax with massive post-Dorian cleanup

https://globalnews.ca/news/5872891/canadian-forces-post-dorian/

One again the army is being sent out to help with a natural disaster.

Floods, bush fires, hurricanes, snow storms if you're in Toronto. It's fairly easy to deploy the military to these events. The military isn't (as) bogged down by municipal and provincial politics. Self contained, and can sleep in the bush or in ditches esentially.

Question #1 - SHOULD we use the military for this? With climate disasters seemingly on the increase it seems like the CAF will be called to do this work more and more.

Question #2 - Should the military recieve more money to purchase vehicles and equipment intended for civil use? During the Ottawa vally floods some CAF members were going to the local stores to buy hip waders out of their own pockets because they didn't want to stand in (litteral) shit water all day.  

kropotkin1951 wrote:

We should be using the military for that purpose and not buying weapons of semi-mass destruction to bomb other countries. We have lots of money in the military budget if we cease trying to be part of the global hegemony team.

But then it wouldn't be the military. When someone joins the army to drive a tank they want to drive a tank. They'll do what they're told and go shovel snow but the end state is going back to driving tanks.

We would need to start from scratch. It might work, we might see thousands or tens of thousands of Canadians interested in a civil emergency response. But in my experience civilian agencies and organizations don't have the same ability as the military to deploy that quickly and effeciently. Part of that comes from the discipline instilled in recruits and the brain washing we do. Can you imagine telling a young single mother of 3 that you don't care that she can't find a babysitter she needs to pack her shit and leave for up to a month - otherwise she'll get thrown in jail?

The military can get used as slave labour basically. That may not work well when you try to do it with civlians.

Ken Burch wrote:

3) Does what you're saying here open the door to a discussion of some form of "national service", in which a person agrees to sign up for a period of time but what they sign up for isn't about war?  That it might be about repairing delapidated buildings in a low-income area, or providing disaster relief(there's a strong case for a full-time Disaster Corps that would be on-call to deal with disaster situations at home or in other places).

I hope not. There's no call for such a strictly regimented rights-violating system of employment outside of defending the country against military threats. For such an idea to emerge from pro-labour leftist circles is bizarre. If the government wants to spend to fix buildings and deal with disasters – and it should – there's no reason it can't do so by employing unionized workers with rights. Or do you think that a drilled and servile workforce with no rights that can be ordered anywhere by the government will only be used for gentrification and hurricane relief? My guess is they'd be first on the line as guaranteed scabs the minute there was a labour strike with national implications – just like Ronald Reagan used military air traffic controllers when he fired the striking ones.

Ken Burch wrote:

Some questions arise from that

1) Are there really that many situations where it's absolutely essential to use slave labour?

I think it's a part of the institution. When you look at it from a business perspective it changes things I think. As a business owner would you be okay with paying 100 of your employees 2 hours worth of pay to stand outside a building waiting for it to open? And losing 200 hours of productivity in one day? Or take a highly trained specialist and pay them to pick up cigarette butts all morning and rake rocks and sticks off of grass all afternoon? The military as an institution treats it's members as a sort of slave labour is what I mean.

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2) Does it matter WHAT a person joins the service hoping to do?  My understanding is that you pretty much do what they tell you to do, and the vast majority of what the troops are told to do, outside of actual combat, is mainly drudgery like maintaining the grounds of the base where they are stationed.

When someone looks at their career asperations I think so. One of the problems our pilots are facing is that they join the airforce and become pilots to, surprise surprise, fly aircraft. The problem is they're taken out of the cockpit and put into administrative jobs or doing leadership roles they don't want to do. So now you have a highly trained pilot ($$$) who is very unhappy with their job, who isn't able to fly anymore and can make double the money working for a civilian airline company. The reason why a member joins is important because it can be a deciding factor whether the military (and you as a tax payer) will get a 25 year return on the money spent, or, they'll quit and need to be replaced. Which is more money for training, more money to pay for instructors etc.

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3) Does what you're saying here open the door to a discussion of some form of "national service", in which a person agrees to sign up for a period of time but what they sign up for isn't about war?  That it might be about repairing delapidated buildings in a low-income area, or providing disaster relief(there's a strong case for a full-time Disaster Corps that would be on-call to deal with disaster situations at home or in other places).

I think a national service model could work but there's a few obstacles. We base our views off success off money. As well, there needs to be a driving force making people want to join. The Canadian military is the second highest paid military in NATO, just behind Austrailia. Soldiers make a LOT of money in Canada, yet we're critically short people. We're also losing more people than we're gaining.  It would be a challange to entice young Canadians to this, I think.

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4) To what degree should Canada's foreign policy even be about war?  Obviously Canada needs to be protected against eternal military attack-and its exceedingly unlikely that anybody would actually try to attack it militarily-but there really aren't any situations outside of that where the use of Canadian force is going to serve any meaningful good in the world.  The case for any further use of force against the Arab/Muslim world simply doesn't exist  Western force made nothing better in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya it can't make anything better in Yemen  or Iran.  War has been a failure in terms of acheiving any positive goals for the world at all since VE Day. 

Military power is a major factor in a countries place in the world hierarchy. It's a manner to protect/enforce Canadian interests abroad.  Until we decide to leave NATO we're a fairly major member and have duties and obligations, the same with being in the UN.

It's not a very pleasent way of seeing things but at the end of the day physical force is the only thing some people listen to.

Scott Taylor: Our Soldiers Should Not Be Used As Symbolic Props

https://t.co/LabWUOP3Yu

"If local Ukrianian nationalists in the town of Sambir wish to revise their history and continue to exhibit blatant acts of anti-Semitism, that should not be supported by Canada. It certainly should not be granted the appearance of official sanction by having Canadian soldiers commemorate those who collaborated with Hitler's Nazis in perpetrating the Holocaust."

I guess orders are orders. Canada knows full well who they have been supporting, training and arming. So does Chrystia Freeland. And her friend the chief Rabbi of Ukraine.

Israeli Defence Attache Cultivates Ties With Canadian Military

https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/israeli-defence-attache-cultivates-ti...

"...It turns out there is a great deal of cooperation between the two militaries. 'Our relationship is robust and totally agnostic to the notion of who is in power,' Col Amos Nachmani said. Nachmani said he engages 'regularly with the different services in the Canadian Armed Forces, to understand your capabilities, your needs, your plans, in order to see where we can help each other out.'

In 2017, Nachmani joined former Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen Thomas J Lawson to discuss 'The Future of the Israel-NATO Strategic Partnership.' For other militaries, the IDF 'is a very valuable partner and ally for a country like Canada, due to our deep understanding of the situation in the Middle East, our intelligence capabilities and assessment and our operational experience,' he said. From his experience interacting with Canadian soldiers, Nachmani believes the IDF and the Canadian Forces share many values..."

No doubt. Pretty good for a racist little apartheid terror-state eh? And a very busy lobby and fifth column that never sleeps working to keep it that way too. Canadian Zionization continues apace.

Brewing battle over future of NATO creates minefield for Canada

A brewing battle over the future of NATO could have major implications for Canada, which for decades has relied on the military alliance as a cornerstone of its security, protection and influence in the world.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to travel to London next month where recent comments by French President Emmanuel Macron questioning the viability of the alliance threaten to overshadow a celebration of NATO's 70th birthday.

Macron, in an interview published in the Economist magazine, warned that NATO, which was established at the start of the Cold War to protect the democracies of North America and Western Europe from the Soviet Union, was suffering from "brain death."

The French president specifically cited the recent U.S. military withdrawal from northeast Syria and Turkey's subsequent invasion of the area — both without any consultation with fellow NATO members — as examples of a breakdown in the alliance.

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It is also through NATO that Canada is most active militarily today, with hundreds of Forces' members deployed on NATO operations in Iraq, Latvia, Romania, and the Mediterranean, as well as hundreds more scattered throughout the alliance's command structures.

The Enemy Within

http://espritdecorps.ca/commentary/the-enemy-within

"Take heart that the CAF is still watching, monitoring and identifying the enemy within. They'll find them and they'll let you know what you're supposed to think about that when they do. Trust the CAF, because they don't trust you."

Perhaps you thought a police-state only involved the police...

Engler: Canadian Government Determined to Follow Foreign Wars Path

http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/2020/11/them-aint-us-canadian-gover...

"Despite polls that show Canadians do not support warplanes used to kill and destroy things [and people] around the world, the federal government seems determined to spend tens of billions of dollars to expand that capability. While there is a growing movement afoot to block the Liberals' fighter-jet purchase, it will require significant mobilization to overcome the powerful forces seeking cutting edge new warplanes..."

 Corporations use military to subsidize research costs

https://yvesengler.com/2021/09/15/corporations-use-military-to-subsidize...

"Both the Conservatives and Liberals' election platforms suggest they plan to instigate a Canadian DARPA..."

..not sure if this is the right thread but here i post. even in the best of times i have had trouble navigating babble searches. takes me so long to find if i actually do.

Even more reasons for Canada to stay out of American ballistic missile defence

quote:

Why Canada should still not be involved: the problem with BMD

Recently the Canadian Global Affairs Institute hosted a virtual roundtable exploring the adaptation of continental defence to new missile threats with Peggy Mason (Rideau Institute), Sarah Mineiro (Center for a New American Security), and Todd Sharp (NATO) (recording forthcoming). Institute Vice-President and roundtable moderator David Perry asked Mason the following question:

During the mid 2000s and since you’ve been one of the prominent voices speaking out against Canadian participation in the US BMD system.  Do you have the same concerns now about Canadian participation in that system, as Canada and the US look to modernize NORAD and enhance the defence of the continent?

In response Mason stated:

The short answer is yes, even more so. All the concerns I had back in 2004 (and actually as far back as 1984-85, the first time Canada said no to participation in American strategic missile defence) — all those concerns have been borne out in spades.

And now there are even greater concerns as aggressive first strike options have been added to the equation.

Pondering wrote:

The left is very divided from the people.

For sure. Some lefties are obsessed with ventriloquizing for the Taiwanese people. Hard to get more out of touch with the average Canadian worker than that.

I had an old uncle who fought for Canada in all the major battles of WW1 and told me everything I asked. It was horrible, living and dying in mud,rats and corpses. He said the men on both sides were used as expendable cannon fodder by the politicians.

I believe the dark times we are heading into, made worse by a general lack of awareness, will probably include war. I hope that all who can will fight like hell against the msm propaganda, militarism and outrageous expenditures Canada is planning to make to fight on America's behalf. Time to build a powerful antiwar movement for planet, peace and people power for a better future for the generations to come.

Pondering wrote:

Pretty much what I get in response paraphrased is   "the US is the sole evil empire on Earth so we are always on the side of the enemies of the US."

It isn't a convincing argument.  

Yeah, that's not what you are getting in response at all. That is you (deliberately?) misreading reseponses and straw-manning them with the usual Liberal-hawkish talking points. 

I'm not going to repeat what has been stated for the millionth time but if you are having a hard time understanding the non-interventionist left response, it is probably because you have not grappled with the implications and influence of 'Manufacturing Consent.' It points out that human rights abuses get emphasized and reported differently depending on if they are done by "our guys", the "bad guys" or "guys we don't care about." Chomsky points out that the ones done by "our guys" are the ones that we can actually do something about as citizens but get the least attention. Whereas the media foucs on "the bad guys" is usually used to empower our countries elites and justify militarism and war. You speaking for "Taiwan" as if you should decide what is to be done and are a stakeholder while being totally unaware  of the region's history and minimizing the fact that your country is sending war ships to China's coast is in line with what you would expect in a society with this propaganda model.

Pondering wrote:

Do you honestly believe that the average Canadian worker has any idea about what's going on in the South China sea beyond MSM headlines?

You are the one trying to speak for "Taiwan" the singular person. I think the propaganda pushing for a hostile foreign policy with China is definitely top-down and only intersects at all with working class concerns to the extent that there is a feeling that China's rise has caused economic anxiety for Western economies (jobs, wages, housing, competition).  

Pondering wrote:

I have zero knowledge of WW1 beyond the fact that it happened. I have no idea who started it or why or how it ended or how long it lasted.

This explains a lot about why you think the military build up in the South China Sea and the military alliances aimed at China is all just harmless consequence-free posturing. It would be hard to have that kind of faith if you knew anything about how WW1 started. No one started it. It was a Rube Goldberg war triggered by a political assassination but caused by a tightly-wound military alliance network that sucked the planet into a horror show of death and misery.

And workers do understand the anti-war position much better than the professional class because they are the ones who do the killing and dying. 

Pondering wrote:

I don't support the Wet'suwet'en because "reconcilliation" means Canada must do everything indigenous peoples want. I don't support them because they are on the right side of environmentalism. I support them because it is their land.

I agree and we are in a position where our support can have an impact because it is our government (who would love its citizens to be focused on debating Taiwanese electoral politics) who the Wet'suwet'en are resisting.