The Dogs of War
It being Veteran’s/Remembrance Day, I thought it would be a good time to write a bit about foreign policy that has been kicking around my head for a few months too long. Of course today, we are to spend the day thinking about the courageous and heroic actions of our respective service man and women, both those who have returned from various excursions in maintaining our security and freedom, as well as those who have lost their lives doing so. We are to remind ourselves to value the lives of those brave souls like our greatest national treasure and treat their contribution with the utmost of respect and care.
The sad fact of the matter, though, is that I think we fail utterly and completely in that charge, day-by-day.
Like many of my fellow Canadians, I have become increasingly pessimistic about our country’s role in Afghanistan. That we get to such recorded levels of pessimism is sometimes cited as evidence of a public that is waking up to the realities of what their government is committing significant blood and treasure. And, I suppose there is a degree to which that is true. But the other, and I would offer far more prevalent, reason for that snapshot of pessimism — notable as it is because it represents a drop from previous levels of support — is that we harbor utterly unrealistic expectations for what we might be able to achieve with military interventionism, humanitarian or otherwise. [Read more →]
November 11, 2009 4 Comments
Friedman Redivivius
November 9, 2009 1 Comment
