Our neighbour to the south is a nationdivided, and I suspect things may get muchworse before they get better. The winner of this election now has a bobcat by the tail. The problems in Iraq by themselves are enough to makethe toughest soul weep.

George W. Bush and thosebehind him have stepped into quicksand and havebeen adding mistake on top of mistake. On thisissue alone they should have been tossed from office, buttheir propaganda is strong and the legions of Kool-aid drinkers that support them are many. Be gladthat you live in Canada.

This week we once again observe RemembranceDay to honour those who have sacrificed for thecountry. For me it is a day about people, notcountries or patriotism. The sacrifices arehonourable, the reasons that people had to makethem are not necessarily so. We get fed a lot ofpropaganda about fighting wars to make theworld safe for democracy and to protect our wayof life. The fact is that mostly we fight them toserve economic interests, interests not necessarilyshared by the ones actually bleeding on the battlefield.

As I look back over 200 years of history in Canadaand the U.S. I see one, maybe two wars that had tobe fought. The war against Hitler, once it began,left us no choice. His right-wing ideology andambitions were a threat to us all. How the Alliesat the end of World War I stupidly set the stage for therise of Hitler is another story, but once he wasloose, putting him back in the can was the onlyreasonable alternative.

Then there was Korea.Putting aside how the mess was created there inthe first place, once the North invaded the south itcan be argued that there was little choice but tointervene if the United Nations was to meananything.

Beyond these two, except for peacekeeping andperhaps a few minor incidents, there was never agood reason to go to war — at least not a goodreason if defending democracy and freedom werethe issue, or national defense. One might arguethat the War of 1812 was one, at least fromCanada’s standpoint, but then the British alsoinvaded the U.S.

World War I, whence we get Remembrance Day,was certainly not a war worth fighting. It was astupid disaster from start to finish with all sides toblame. Volumes could be written about this, andhave been. The men who went and fought anddied in that war leave us a legacy of courage thatdeserves our remembrance, but so do GingerGoodwin and all the others who refused to be used ascannon fodder in a war we had no business in.

The truth is, if liberty and democracy are thethings we are to protect, then the protesters whorisked their well-being to speak out and take astand on principle also deserve our respect. Infact, if democracy and the benefits that we have inour society today are the issue, then a bigger debtis owed to the activists, organizers and unionleaders and their members who fought long andhard, even facing murder and other violentrepercussions. If not for them, much of what wetake for granted today would not be ours, and ourlives would be the poorer for it.

It is important to remember those who havesacrificed in war, and to honour that sacrifice.But, it is also important not to let the propagandadistort that sacrifice with unqualified praise aboutdefending liberty or democracy and makingpossible what we have today. Although many mayhave been convinced that they were fighting forthose things, in reality they were not.

Another truth is,had we avoided many of those wars we might havea better place today instead of having squanderedso many lives and resources to serve the profit andegos of a few with such a terrible cost to therest of us.