Another Don Cherry who hate quebeccers!

Another Don Cherry who hate quebeccers!

This is what happens after decades of socialism, multiculturism,

correctness and other
terrorists will take full advantage of this........and when we come
under attack, we will
One good thing, out West we are much more intelligent and generally

of

the dangers
that Islam and other terrorist ideologies that want too hurt

us..........it

Another Don Cherry who hate quebeccers!

"Albertadude" <devonhill@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:sZNwc.651749$Pk3.448370@pd7tw1no...

This is what happens after decades of socialism, multiculturism, political
correctness and other
liberal idiocy is hammered into the people...........we do not deserve a
nation with this attitude!!

And terrorists will take full advantage of this........and when we come
under attack, we will
be begging the Americans to come rescue us........and I couldn't blame

them

if they ignored us..

One good thing, out West we are much more intelligent and generally aware

of

the dangers
that Islam and other terrorist ideologies that want too hurt

us..........it

is mainly in Quebec that
this sickening attitude is fully on display....

Thanks
"ArKLyte_" <ArkLyte_@Now.Net> wrote in message
news:vgu6c0dbjmki1ie3lmdch3v2di969qg2k3@4ax.com...

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/history/article.jsp?content=20040607_81769
_81769

June 07, 2004

What Would You Die For?

Freedom? Democracy? Sixty years after D-Day, writes JONATHON
GATEHOUSE, we're no longer warriors -- and see few 'just wars.'

JONATHON GATEHOUSE

WHAT'S WORTH DYING FOR? A half-century after Korea, 60 years past the
heroism and tragedy of D-Day, and with our last living links to the
"War to End All Wars" soon to be severed, it's a question fewer and
fewer of us have had to answer. And one, it seems, most Canadians will
never be forced to contemplate.

What Would You Die For?

A couple of generations ago, however, millions of us were sure we
knew. A large majority believed certain causes -- freedom, democracy,
ending tyranny -- automatically justified putting our military in
harm's way. And when the government called, we lined up to volunteer.

Maybe it's just the passage of time, but today such certitude seems as
quaint as travel by buggy. Black and white political arguments are
quickly shaded gray. Twenty-four-hour news channels bring war's
suffering, sorrow and death into our living rooms at a flip of the
remote. Our leaders judge our tolerance for sacrifice to be a fraction
of that immortalized on monuments across the country. Evil is
something Canadians condemn, not combat.

Yes, our military made token contributions in the first Gulf War.
CF-18 fighter planes bombed Serbia to help secure Kosovo. We've been
on the ground in Afghanistan since the beginning, in limited but
meaningful ways, and suffered our first combat-related casualties in
half a century. When asked, we regularly send troops to hot spots to
keep others from killing. But the idea that this country will ever
again consent to having millions in uniform, fighting and dying in
faraway lands -- regardless of the reason -- is almost unfathomable.
Has the world changed so much in the span of a few decades that worthy
causes no longer exist? Have our national principles evolved? Are
Canadians wiser than we once were, or simply more selfish?

There are no easy answers. But an exclusive new Maclean's poll
provides an interesting perspective. Respondents nationwide were told
that a rallying cry for Canadian troops during the two world wars was,
"For God, King and Country." Asked what they personally would be
willing to die for -- and allowed to pick more than one category -- 83
per cent said their family, 32 per cent said their country, and 28 per
cent said their God. Only five per cent said none of the above --
suggesting that, no matter how much times have changed, many Canadians
still at least talk a good game.

When people discuss a "just war" today, it's the global fight against
Hitler and his Nazi-Axis that they usually invoke. A ruthless dictator
and his allies, bent on expanding their repressive empires, threatened
much of the "free world." Hindsight knowledge of the Holocaust and
other crimes only strengthens the case that defeating Fascism was a
moral necessity, not a political choice.

The reality of why we fought is more complex. There was never
unanimity. "If you walked around in the late 1930s and listened to
trade unionists, university students, the younger generation, there
was no enthusiasm," says Desmond Morton, the McGill University
historian. "They looked at these guys who had gone over in World War I
and gained nothing from it. The attitude was 'not for me, thank you
very much.' Then we found ourselves in a war and the old atavisms
proclaimed themselves. We got patriotic again." Many Francophone
Quebecers never viewed it as their fight, and conscription only
deepened the divide.

On the battlefields, survival and comradeship often took precedence
over political ideals. At home, the sacrifices -- both human and
material -- being made for victory were impossible to forget, but the
peril to our way of life rarely seemed imminent. Still, whatever their
misgivings, most Canadians remained convinced they were on the side of
righteousness. We committed to the larger purpose and stuck it through
to the bloody and costly end, six long years later.

Nothing since has been so clean-cut. In 1950, we sent a hastily
assembled brigade to Korea with the UN as part of a "police action,"
and found ourselves in a hot war -- our last to date -- that cost the
lives of 309 Canadian soldiers. But the seismic shift in our foreign
policy -- our transition from warriors to peacekeepers -- began six
years later with the Suez Crisis, when Lester Pearson perched us on
the middle ground between our U.S. and European allies. The idea of
using soldiers to end hostilities rather than begin them is an
innovation that Canadians take immense pride in. If our national
identity was forged at the battle of Vimy Ridge, as many are fond of
claiming, we discovered our preferred self-image the first time we put
on a blue helmet.

It is, by any measure, a remarkable transformation. In the course of
three generations, we have gone from having proportionally one of the
world's largest militaries -- in 1945, almost 10 percent of our
population was in uniform, and our navy ranked behind only Britain and
the U.S. -- to one of its smallest. Many of our hard-won battlefield
triumphs, once sources of national pride, are now mostly forgotten.
Brian Orend, a University of Waterloo philosophy professor who
specializes in the ethics of war and peace, says his students have
little enthusiasm for the use of Canadian Forces in any mission but
humanitarian ones. "The whole peacekeeping propaganda has been very
effective, especially on the younger students," he says. "That's
essentially how they view Canada's role -- we're there to clean up.
The major operations are for the major players -- America, Britain,
France."

And almost nothing, it seems, will shake our entrenched world view. On
Sept. 11, 2001, we mourned our own dead and grieved along with
Americans, but our nations quickly diverged on the question of how to
respond to the threat of global terrorism. It took many months before
opinion polls tapped into the widely held Canadian sentiment that U.S.
policy was at least partially to blame for the tragic attacks. But the
day after 9/11, Orend asked one of his classes whether the United
States would be justified in going to war against their attackers. Of
the 65 students, only three said yes. "I was floored," he says. "It
was the first time in my teaching career that I had ever been rendered
speechless." Self-defence is the classic condition for a just war, but
apparently our distaste for armed conflict and leeriness of American
power is so generalized that we now question such a basic national
right.

For many people, that change in Canadian attitudes is a virtue, not a
shortcoming. Jeremy Hinzman is a wiry 25-year-old with intense blue
eyes and a freshly shaven head. One year ago, he was serving with the
U.S. Army's 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Afghanistan. Last
January, on the eve of being shipped to Iraq, he deserted, and drove
with his wife and infant son to Toronto to claim refugee status.
"There comes a time when you have no choice but to confront what is
going on, even if you are a soldier," he says. "I understand the way
the world is and how it's probably necessary for wars to happen. But I
also think it's wrong. It is a fundamental failure of humanity."

Hinzman, who grew up in Rapid City, S.D., joined the military in
January 2001, to finance a college education. He knew combat was a
possibility and hoped the training would prepare him. Instead, boot
camp made him realize he simply wasn't capable of taking a life. After
the 9/11 attacks, he began reading about American foreign policy and
developed deep doubts about the morality of warfare. His application
for conscientious objector status was denied. Hinzman says he knows
there have been reasons to fight in the past -- he cites the struggle
against the Nazis, and suggests we would have been justified if we'd
taken on Stalin -- but says there's no way he could envision himself
picking up a gun. "It would be a hard choice, I would be pressed, but
war is barbaric no matter what the reason."

You can argue that much of our modern reluctance to embrace military
action is a function of whom we live next to. Our decision to pass on
America's last disastrous military adventure, Vietnam, and stay out of
the current Iraq imbroglio, were popular at home. But does our fear of
committing for the wrong reasons keep us from defending causes and
ideals we do believe in? Has the bar been set unrealistically high?

Retired Canadian Gen. Roméo Dallaire has first-hand knowledge of the
cruel limits of compassion and principles in geopolitics. As the
Rwandan genocide unfolded, he struggled and failed to motivate the UN
and world powers to step in and stop the slaughter. "Rwanda, as I was
clearly told, had no strategic value geographically, no resources
other than coffee," says the former peacekeeper. "All it had was
humans, and there were too many of them. It was overpopulated."
Countries with the capability to bring solutions -- political,
economic or military -- to conflicts too often pick and choose where
to apply their influence. "There's no real overriding factor of
humanity and suffering in what they're doing," he says. "They're
simply acting, particularly the big powers, in what is their national
interest."

Still, Dallaire is optimistic that change is looming. He was heartened
by Paul Martin's recent pledge to make Canada a "catalyst" for
nation-building in the world's hot spots. And he's excited by Ottawa
chatter about a more muscular foreign policy, one that would use our
military not just to keep peace, but to forcibly export values like
multiculturalism, order and good government. "There's got to be
something more than just keeping Canada running. We need a focus,"
says Dallaire. "We don't have the right to be ***** and simply
stand on the sidelines."

Whether the public is ready for such a drastic turn and its attendant
costs is another issue. As we are reminded on sombre anniversaries
like D-Day, those who fought, and too often died, for our country in
the past did so in hopes of sparing us from a similar burden. It's now
been more than a half-century since we last had to answer the question
of what we truly believe in, what we in large numbers would pay the
ultimate price for. The times have changed, so have the threats we
face. How much our values have altered is what remains to be tested.

AS FOR TODAY...
Percentage of Canadians who would be willing to die for:
Family 83%
Country 32%
God 28%

(Source: Pollara)

jonathon.gatehouse@macleans.rogers.co

--

( W W P D ) - What Would Patton Do?

http://www.marianland.com/Patton/PattononTerrorists.gif

On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 23:42:16 GMT, "Albertadude" <devonhill@shaw.ca>
wrote:

This is what happens after decades of socialism, multiculturism, political
correctness and other
liberal idiocy is hammered into the people...........we do not deserve a
nation with this attitude!!

And terrorists will take full advantage of this........and when we come
under attack, we will
be begging the Americans to come rescue us........and I couldn't blame them
if they ignored us..

Your missing the point there. Canada isn't one of the countries which
is robbing and manipulating the middle east to suit its national
interest, so there will be no attack on Canada. Simple really.

Unless there are large Canadian oil/gas companies which I don't know
about.

Fighting the Germans and Japs in WW2 was a good cause; killing Arabs,
although they are clearly not the ones who attacked the USA on 9/11,
and creating decades of blowback value into the bargain is a bad
cause.

I like the Canadians better now....