babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Support rabble | Advertise with us | Contact our staff | About rabble | Log-in or Register for a new account | Corrections | Privacy policy | Newsfeeds | Mailing lists
rabble: Features | Columnists | In Cahoots | Blogs | Books | Photos | What's Up | Polls
babble: Forum Topics | Active Topics
The rpn: About the RPN | Become a podcaster
rabbleTV: Program Guide | Features | Indie Inside | Best of the net
Copyright © 2001-2013 the authors
Syndicate
Since you've decided to personalize this issue, would you mind sharing with us the detailed evidence for what you say were the motives of your relative who died at age 17 more than 30 years before you were born?
I'd also be interested in knowing how "love of family" motivated a 17-year-old to enlist. Explain? Also, how "love of country" was involved in his decision, and which country that was.
Of course, I'll understand if you prefer not to get into such personal issues. It's just that since you raised it, it does pose some interesting questions.
And sadly, soldiers are meant to be killers in a time of war. Kill or be killed.......
I don't want my son to be a soldier. I don't want him to be killed, or for him to be a killer. Harper does increase the possibility of war for my son.
Sorry to hear that. I'm genuinely interested in how someone could have enlisted in WWI for "love of family". I also have a great concern about glorification of war. But if you only want to raise the issue, and not discuss it, I guess I'll have to respect that.
ETA:
Speaking personally, that will never happen - not while I'm alive - and I plan to write enough things down so that hopefully "the politics" won't be forgotten even after I'm dead.
[ 09 April 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]
Well, if his profound experience was anything like my grandfather's was, he would not want WWI glorified, or used by politicians for photo ops.
Nor, if he was like my grandfather, would he have wanted himself glorified in anyway. Maybe you should think on that a bit, eh?
And bye bye, as it would seem those who accuse others of being "doctinaire", just want to keep themselves in their own bubble of indoctrination.
Think of the headlines in the Post and the Suns.
Since being able to comment on this issue seems to reqire a soldier relative, my grandfather was wounded at Vimy Ridge. He married an English nurse and returned to Canada.
Excellent point - although Paul Martin would not have done that. Still, the image is vivid!
Had PM the PM won Canadian Troops would still be in Afghanistan. If still there then yesterday's deaths would still have happened.
If PM the PM had won then he would have been at Vimy like he was at the 60th of DDay etc.
Only difference is some like PM more that Harper.
I hate both for their policies and hate both for their crappy leadership
Yet still expect them to be at ceremonies like these.
Does anyone know if Jack was at the National War Memorial in Ottawa for today's Ottawa Vimy ceremony with the GG?
No Prime Minister would however have the political courage to do the right thing and miss such an event.
Most classy PMs would have avoided politicizing it.
Has Canada ever had one of these? Well maybe Sir Charles Tupper [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
Fair enough - but is it any less valid for me to project a positive perception of Mr Harper's motives than for you to project a negative perception of same? Neither of us actually "knows" what his motivation is.
I know you can't. Where you stand depends on where you sit...
However, the dire truth is that their sacrifices were part of a senseless slaughter, which dwarfed the minor differences between the states fighting the war in a sea of human blood.
The point of this thread is not, however, to discuss their sacrifices. It is to refuse to accept that Canada is DEFINED by Vimy.
The strategy of defining yourself through your enemies is a discredited element of previous century nationalisms, whether it is the "glorious"
victory of the Spanish (or the Serbs) over the Moors/Turks, or the "glorious" struggle of Chile to annex the Peruvian Province of Antofagasta.
Sensible people understand that, by defining themselves through their killing of others, they cheapen the nation's real achievements.
In Canada, those achievements are measurable, and should be celebrated. By doing so, we insure that they will continue to live.
Celebrating military campaigns only legitimises future campaigns, and, as Premier Harper well understands, it insulates the decisionmakers from the consequences of their decisions.
I wonder if you could put this into another context. Let's say it's a province with an NDP Govt, or a riding with an NDP MP or MLA. On Nov 11, should the NDP Premier or the NDP member be seen at the Remembrance Day ceremonies placing a wreath?
Exactly. That's what this whole thread is really all about, a stronger distaste for Blue than for Red politicians.
I agree with you about celebrating military campaigns. The ONLY point I was trying to make is that the old soldiers who want to remember and honour their fallen comrades, should be allowed to do so without being considered "professional killers" and war lovers. My relative, and I dare say most of the old soldiers were, at the time, doing what they thought was the right thing for their country. I don't give a damn about the phony photo op Harper is getting out of it. He and his "behatted wife" looked stiff and out of place anyway. I don't think he impressed anyone!
The flaw in your argument is your use of the term celebrate. This is a comemoration, not a celebration. The tone is quite different. It's rather like confusing weddings and funerals.
A cursory toot 'round the net, TV or newspapers will alert you to the fact that Vimy is indeed being celebrated as the starting point of Canada's emergence as a nation:
Mr. Harper:
Jeff House didn't start this thread to say -- hey, let's demean the efforts of the soldiers at Vimy. What I thought he was saying was let's not commemorate the birth of our country through war. Perhaps particularly, the utter waste that was WWI.
I think it dishonours their memory to use their deaths to promote more war and more carnage in Afghanistan. To me, the point of remembering our war dead is to strengthen our resolve not to repeat the senseless slaughters of the past.
If a politician - NDP or otherwise - agrees with me and is prepared to say so, by way of contextualizing his or her remembrance of the war dead, I have no problem with that.
It's when they lay the wreath and then talk about the glorious dead in Afghanistan who are dying to preserve our freedom, liberate the women of Afghanistan, and keep the Taliban battleships off our Eastern shores, etc. etc. ad nauseam, that I have to stand up and object.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines enormity as:
Harper thinks it means "immensity", which the dictionary correctly calls a "usage problem."What I object to is the use of a military victory to define what is Canada.
It is disingenuous to pretend that this "commemoration" does not have a political component.
Speeches by the PM with full-court television coverage serve to raise THIS battle, and THESE results, as emblematic of Canada.
You are meant to internalise SPECIFIC ideas and images, which can then be called upon to justify other, different struggles.
This is precisely what Harper's speech tried to do.
I favour a DIFFERENT set of images. For example, one could commemorate workers who have died on the job in the past ninety years. They were mostly brave, risking death to provide a living for their families.
One could celebrate the bravery of Inuit hunters, facing the rigors of the North. Or firefighters.
Anything but killing others for no discernible purpose.
Mythification of Vimy may well come back to hurt us all. Once Vimy is safe from criticism, what about the coming anniversary of World War I?
Will the whole war be raised from the meaningless slaughter it was, to become something noble and "defining" for us?
Someone who is not sympathetic towards the political left would have a lot of trouble, or alternatively a lot of fun, with what you have said.
Consider the sentence, "I'd lay the frikkin' wreath myself, and quite sincerely.". The adjective "frikkin'" does tend to call into question the later modifier, "sincerely".
Beyond semantics, your description of the First War as "useless" is debatable. It's true Kaiser Bill was no Hitler, and that the entire thing started as much by accident as anything else.
But the terrible carnage of that war, in the millions, was a result of an international political framework that lawyers and statespersons had not succeeded in advancing at anything like the pace that the natural scientists and engineers had succeeded in advancing the weapons of war, as any. The US Civil War is a kind of pre-cursor to this struggle in that regard. Seen in this light the sacrifices weren't useless, even though they are unquestionably appalling. They were part of an historic evolution towards a more stable international order where the great powers haven't gone to war against each other since 1945. And of course that may be because, once again, the scientists jumped ahead, making war so costly with nuclear weapons that no one could contemplate it.
I believe Trudeau and even Mulroney managed to attend these things in a dignified non-political fashion.
There is so much that is so wrong about your post - from the idea that WWI helped accomplish some new peaceful world order (it laid the inevitable groundwork for WWII, besides the Middle East crises, the India partition slaughter, etc.) - to the notion that the "great powers" haven't gone to war since 1945 (for which proposition you would have to ignore all the millions killed in new-style proxy wars and wars of imperial conquest and wars of "containment" etc.).
At least no one has said yet that we fought World War I to "save brave Belgium". That one worked for a while.
I just saw a retired military person interviewed on CBC Calgary. HE was asked about the link between Vimy and Afghanistan. In his mind, this is what we always do -- go out and hep folks to be free which in turn keeps our country free.
See? Seamless. And we go to hep whether the folks want our hep or not (like in the Boer War).
We're just that kind of good people.
Oh, and of course he took the time to demean the "myth" of blue beret peace keeping. We're heppers, not peace keepers!
Wholeheartedly agree. Vimy has a place in Canada's history, and her sense of herself (hope the gendering is not offensive - really don't know the rules about this one) and was probably a defining moment - in its time. Now, not so much - and that is okay. We have evolved as a nation, and as a people(s) and need to allow new moments to help in defining us.
The Prime Minister clearly supports the war in Afghanistan. Jack Layton wants to bring the troops home, and I suspect so does Gilles Duceppe. According to the last vote in Parliament the Liberals were split.
Perhaps the Canadian people feel the same way, they are split, but enough support it to make it politically acceptable.
The elephant in the room is what are the polling data on this issue? I bet there are secret government polls, as the Prime Minister seems to be quite confident that the war is supported by the Canadian people. If that is bluster, perhaps he knows enough people support it to re-elect him.
If anyone has polling results on a question such as "Do you support Canadian military action in Afghanistan?", please post them to this thread, as that would be useful.
Ottawa Citizen Jan 07
EKOS Nov 06
IPSOS-Reid Feb 07
Seems to be steady at 57-58% pro.
Well that's the proof in the pudding, isn't it? By opposing the war, you are only appealing to a minority of Canadians.
Another question is whether the issue is strong enough to cause anyone to shift their political alliegances.
I have a feeling that if support for the war drops significantly, so will support for the Conservatives.
If, on the other hand, support for the war remains as strong as it is, the Conservatives can campaign for the war and say that its opponents do not want Canada to live up to its international committments. This could be the bomb that gives Harper his majority.
Still, the last one was February and it will be interesting to see if that moves at all with the most recent news.
This may explain why Conservatives are so smug right now.
What will you say when Canada runs out of there in disgrace, lives wasted, as the U.S. did out of Viet Nam?
As for your 57-58%, it's bullshit - and it's irrelevant. The invasion and occupation are wrong. Every Canadian who supports it, or who is silent in the face of these crimes, will have to answer to their conscience one day.
It's funny how some people can only recognize the crimes of the past - never the ones unfolding today.
Your anger and profanity, while revealing, are also irrelevant. Someone asked for the poll results and I posted them. The numbers are hardly "mine" - just as links that you post are not "yours".
An opinion that is very strongly stated in terms of moral absolutes makes it no less true or valid (and there is, of course, a huge difference) than simply stating it as a personal opinion.
Yeah - what's with that whole allowing ones believes to flavour their perception of events anyway? [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]