POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY FORMER GENERAL LEWIS MACKENZIE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
"Our infantry ranks are so diminished that Canada's combat role in Afghanistan has to end"
Good.
There is no more wasteful enterprise on earth than the military.
Like police, you need some military, but it should always be regarded with great care as a necessary evil.
And the bigger the military of a country is, the greater is the temptation of politicians to use it to bad purposes.
Analysts of the pointless bloodbath called the Great War agree that the level of armaments in the various states was a major contributor to starting the war. And what was Hitler’s first priority after taking power? The armed forces, of course.
The United States is the clearest contemporary example of that hard truth. Here is a nation that rebelled against imperial military forces only to end up being a greater imperial military force.
It spends as much on its military Frankenstein as all the other countries on the planet put together.
And the results are: occupation of two countries, neither of which ever attacked that country; regular bombing in a third country, Pakistan; constant threats to a fourth country, Iran; support of apartheid in Israel; plus innumerable other intrusions and black-ops.
The world surely is a better place for the three million the US murdered in Vietnam, isn't it? And for the sea of Agent Orange and landmines it left there? And for the million deaths it generated in Cambodia by destabilizing a neutral government with secret bombing? And don't forget the million or so killed in Iraq plus a couple of million refugees and an economy set back for a lifetime.
Lord Acton said it best for all time: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Why is it that conservatives and militarists like Lewis MacKenzie do not understand these things? That’s like asking a careless boy why he just smashed a bird’s nest.
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Arctic sovereignty I fear is an illusion.
Who is it that is actually going to challenge it?
Why, the world's military colossus of course.
Would our outposts of troops wave at the passing American atomic submarines and guided-missile cruisers?
