There used to be a time not too long ago when a man could walk the four corners of the earth with a Canadian flag sewed onto his backpack and he was treated like a visiting dignitary. There used to be a time when a man could travel without fear to far and distant lands and when he grew weary, the locals would wipe his brow and give him a place to rest based solely on the fact that he was a Canadian citizen. There was a time when the red maple leaf symbolized truth, compassion and justice but just as fast as Paul Coffey used to race down the ice, the ill fated mission in Afghanistan has put a massive stain on our reputation throughout the free world.
We are remembered for our heroic efforts on the beaches of Normandy and hills of Dieppe just as much as we are for our refusal to enter the rice paddies of Vietnam and the barren deserts of Iraq. Our politicians have decided to blindly follow the lead of the war profiteers based on Pennsylvania Ave and have seen hefty returns on their dividends while the mothers and fathers of the young fallen soldiers see their returns in a different light; via a body bag. It would be easy to play partisan politics and blame one party for our misguided effort in Afghanistan but the truth of the matter is that all the political parties have blood on their hands. The Liberals, Conservatives and NDP have all voted at one point or another to keep the NATO Mission in tact.
How many more mornings do we have to endure the major dailies splashing out pictures of our fallen young men on their front pages? How many more litres of neoconservative kool aid will our politicians drink? When will the war machine stop churning? Where the heck is Osama bin Laden?
A report issued last week from an umbrella group of Aid Agencies stated that the goodwill toward foreign forces is starting to fade. Innocent civilians are being maimed and killed and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is pleading with NATO and American forces to protect civilians. I am not a military commander but I am pretty sure that killing women and children is not the most effective way to win the hearts and minds of the people.
Canada’s strength lies in its diplomacy not in an aggressive foreign policy aimed at a country halfway across the world that may or may not be hiding a former colleague of the United States who became Public Enemy #1 six years ago. None of the hijackers on 9/11 were Afghani’s, the weapons of mass destruction fiasco should have been one of the biggest scandals of the 21st century but instead has been largely forgotten by a corporate driven media. The War on Terrorism has only succeeded into creating more terrorists and making a boatload of money for the same politicians that deceived us into this war in the first place. Is it a conflict of interest that our Minister of Defence is a former Lobbyist for the defence and Aerospace Industry? NATO’s top secretary Jaap de Hoop was crooning to the press recently that Canada should extend its mission. He also inexplicably linked this imperialist war to the heroic efforts of the Allies in WWII as the old dinosaurs like to use past glories when they were young and idealistic to mask the greedy and bloated misadventures of today.
We must let the bells of democracy ring loudly across this great land by demanding a national referendum to pull our troops out of Afghanistan immediately. We must let the people of Canada whom the lakes, rivers and forests belong to, decide if this war is worth fighting for, if it’s worth dying for. We cannot sit complacently and let history remember us as the generation of swine that allowed the reputation of our great nation to be smeared by traitors and greedy businessmen. I want my children to be able to travel outside of their own country without any fear of retaliation or blowback. I want my children to be able to proudly sew the maple leaf on their backpack’s so they do not have to pretend they are citizens of a different country as our neighbours down south have to do when traveling abroad.
Max De Luca is a freelance writer who lives in London, Ontario Canada. His short stories and articles have appeared in such publications as the Istanbul Literature Review, Inscribed Magazine and Mobius: A Journal for Social Change. He is influenced by the work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Hunter S Thompson and Howard Zinn. Read other posts by Max De Luca.
