A ridiculous article, Gary Mason.
First, how many times do you think it appropriate to show pictures of coffin ceremonies?
What is the limit? How many years? For every death?
In WW II that would have meant coffin scenes were the only things broadcast twenty-four hours a day in some countries from 1939 to 1945.
In any event, it is also important to understand Canadians have not embraced the "cause" of Afghanistan because they are, for the most part, rational and understand there is no cause.
They know, just as the Europeans who will not subject themselves to further hazard, that it is not truly their cause and that they are there only owing to the paranoid demands of the United States.
Too much going on over coffins gets us into the American paranoid mode of thinking, supercharged, unhealthy patriotism. It makes people think there is something more significant going on than there is.
It also breeds fear, which is why those horrible men who started the whole ugly business, Bush and Cheney, have never allowed coffin returns to even be photographed.
