John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DAVID BERCUSON ON ALTERNET
“Here's Why Canadians Pay Little Attention to Their Military”
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Response to a comment asking, “What's wrong with having a military that just defends the country? Why did Alternet publish this?”:
Well said.
The writer is not a figure I associate with traditional Canadian values and attitudes towards the military.
It is hard for Americans to understand sometimes because in America the military has become almost a quasi-religious cult, much like the heavily-militarized police forces, which incidentally kill an average of three Americans every day, a greater toll than any terrorist could dream of.
On WWII, it is important to note that Canada entered the war two years before America and suffered on a per capita basis double the deaths.
America's losses in WWII were remarkably light for all the frequent hype about participating.
Just under 300,000 men killed while deaths overall in the war exceeded 50,000,000.
The USSR lost 27,000,000 in the greatest holocaust of all of human history.
So, Russians know something about war on a personal level Americans cannot begin to appreciate.
Maybe that's why they are not as keen on starting wars, an occupation America has pursued relentlessly since WWII.
America's colonial wars and interventions in that time have killed somewhere between - there are various estimates - 8 and 20,000,000 people, all "darned fur'ners"
American loses in its vast postwar set of combats have been very light owing to the ruthless use of air power. In Vietnam, despite all the noise once some body bags started coming home, America lost about 60,000 over 10 years.
While they managed to kill about 3 million Vietnamese. And by rights, the million killed in Cambodia's "killing fields" should be added since that horror only happened owing to covert American incursions and bombing toppling a neutral government.
It was much the same in Korea, light American losses, but an estimated 20% of the entire population of North Korea wiped out in three years of carpet bombing.
On Afghanistan, you might enjoy:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/afghanistan-is-no-ones-war/
