Wake up! We are in a war
Canada is at war right now. We're not peacekeeping, we're occupying a country and killing people. Do you know we're at war? Does it feel like we're at war? I mean, besides putting yellow ribbons on our global warmers we haven't really been asked to sacrifice much, other than our international image of a peace-keeping and human rights promoting nation.
I saw a picture in an Adbusters recently of graffiti done by soldiers in Iraq that said, “America is not at war, the marine corps is at war. America is at the mall.” This statement applies to Canada as well. Decades ago when we fought wars, our government demanded that we drastically reduce the amount of shit we consumed. We were told what to grow in our urban gardens. Gasoline and other “essentials” were rationed.
But now nothing is asked of us except our silent and obedient consent to the violent agenda of the ruling class. We are still filling up our oversized SUV's, gluttonously eating at buffets and selfishly consuming anything and everything we please. We watch our hundreds of different channels of mind-pollution and buy every last sweatshop-produced petroleum by-product that they tell us we need.
With all the entertainment at our disposal it's no wonder we aren't dissenting or even asking questions. The Internet, music, films, clubs, special events, theme parks, holidays, and reality television keep us so distracted that we don't even realize that we are at war. We haven't had to change anything in our lives. There's no draft, except a poverty draft. It's business as usual in Canada. The war doesn't really exist on the home front.
With the corporate media reporting on celebrities' lives instead of the failing occupation, the reality of the Afghan mission is largely hidden. And the reality is that Canada's military is being used by American neo-conservatives. Canadian soldiers are only stationed so heavily in Afghanistan so that the United States can commit the majority of their troops to the more unpopular occupation of Iraq.
We are not in Afghanistan to liberate women, or to promote democracy. We are in Afghanistan to get access to lucrative reconstruction contracts, to support the American-led war of terror, and so that American hawks in Project for the New American Century (PNAC) can attain their goal of global domination through control of the world's energy resources.
However, the majority of us only see the war through an information vacuum. We see the video clips of Canadian soldiers handing out candy to smiling children. We don't see the break-and enter house searches. We don't see our tanks shelling towns where civilians live. We don't see the torture chambers in prisons where we allow torture as a means of obtaining information. We definitely don't see the murder and environmental devastation that we're causing with our bullets and bombs.
The corporate media and our government have confused us by withholding information and now we just don't get it. We don't understand that we've only replaced the repressive Taliban regime with an equally repressive drug-dealing government of warlords who also treat women horribly. We don't get that our government will have wasted $7.2 billion of ours on this futile war by the end of this fiscal year (CCPA policyalternatives.ca), and that our department of defense openly admits that only 12 per cent was spent on ‘reconstruction'. The other 88 per cent was spent on the tools of destruction that have caused the damage. The problem with this equation means that we will continue to destroy more than we build and that the longer we stay the more harm we'll do.
Because of Afghanistan we are no longer a peacekeeping nation. We used to be one of the top contributors to UN peacekeeping work, but today we have only 56 soldiers deployed on U.N. peacekeeping missions. That is less than five per cent of what we were contributing in 1991. According to statistics provided by the Council of Canadians (Canadians.org), we spend more than $250 on Afghanistan for every dollar we spend on U.N. peacekeeping missions. The ‘peacekeeping' nation has died and the war-waging nation has emerged. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada has become the 13th highest military spender in the world.
We're losing everything right now. We're losing sovereignty of our foreign policy and defense forces. We're losing the respect of the international community. We're losing our image of a peacekeeping and neutral nation. We're losing billions of dollars. We're losing lives. Nearly 70 soldiers are already dead, and hundreds more have been permanently injured. The casualties have mostly come in the last two years, and the next two years will just get worse as attacks against our occupying forces continue to grow in size and frequency. We're losing this war; in fact it's already lost. Lets go back to being peacekeepers by ending the occupation of Afghanistan now!
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
I saw a picture in an Adbusters recently of graffiti done by soldiers in Iraq that said, “America is not at war, the marine corps is at war. America is at the mall.” This statement applies to Canada as well. Decades ago when we fought wars, our government demanded that we drastically reduce the amount of shit we consumed. We were told what to grow in our urban gardens. Gasoline and other “essentials” were rationed.
But now nothing is asked of us except our silent and obedient consent to the violent agenda of the ruling class. We are still filling up our oversized SUV's, gluttonously eating at buffets and selfishly consuming anything and everything we please. We watch our hundreds of different channels of mind-pollution and buy every last sweatshop-produced petroleum by-product that they tell us we need.
With all the entertainment at our disposal it's no wonder we aren't dissenting or even asking questions. The Internet, music, films, clubs, special events, theme parks, holidays, and reality television keep us so distracted that we don't even realize that we are at war. We haven't had to change anything in our lives. There's no draft, except a poverty draft. It's business as usual in Canada. The war doesn't really exist on the home front.
With the corporate media reporting on celebrities' lives instead of the failing occupation, the reality of the Afghan mission is largely hidden. And the reality is that Canada's military is being used by American neo-conservatives. Canadian soldiers are only stationed so heavily in Afghanistan so that the United States can commit the majority of their troops to the more unpopular occupation of Iraq.
We are not in Afghanistan to liberate women, or to promote democracy. We are in Afghanistan to get access to lucrative reconstruction contracts, to support the American-led war of terror, and so that American hawks in Project for the New American Century (PNAC) can attain their goal of global domination through control of the world's energy resources.
However, the majority of us only see the war through an information vacuum. We see the video clips of Canadian soldiers handing out candy to smiling children. We don't see the break-and enter house searches. We don't see our tanks shelling towns where civilians live. We don't see the torture chambers in prisons where we allow torture as a means of obtaining information. We definitely don't see the murder and environmental devastation that we're causing with our bullets and bombs.
The corporate media and our government have confused us by withholding information and now we just don't get it. We don't understand that we've only replaced the repressive Taliban regime with an equally repressive drug-dealing government of warlords who also treat women horribly. We don't get that our government will have wasted $7.2 billion of ours on this futile war by the end of this fiscal year (CCPA policyalternatives.ca), and that our department of defense openly admits that only 12 per cent was spent on ‘reconstruction'. The other 88 per cent was spent on the tools of destruction that have caused the damage. The problem with this equation means that we will continue to destroy more than we build and that the longer we stay the more harm we'll do.
Because of Afghanistan we are no longer a peacekeeping nation. We used to be one of the top contributors to UN peacekeeping work, but today we have only 56 soldiers deployed on U.N. peacekeeping missions. That is less than five per cent of what we were contributing in 1991. According to statistics provided by the Council of Canadians (Canadians.org), we spend more than $250 on Afghanistan for every dollar we spend on U.N. peacekeeping missions. The ‘peacekeeping' nation has died and the war-waging nation has emerged. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada has become the 13th highest military spender in the world.
We're losing everything right now. We're losing sovereignty of our foreign policy and defense forces. We're losing the respect of the international community. We're losing our image of a peacekeeping and neutral nation. We're losing billions of dollars. We're losing lives. Nearly 70 soldiers are already dead, and hundreds more have been permanently injured. The casualties have mostly come in the last two years, and the next two years will just get worse as attacks against our occupying forces continue to grow in size and frequency. We're losing this war; in fact it's already lost. Lets go back to being peacekeepers by ending the occupation of Afghanistan now!
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
