I think most men are just little boys grown larger. Little boys play with toy soldiers and like to carry toy swords and guns. I wonder if this is because of something in male DNA, a warrior gene, which has been an indwelling part of male minds ever since the first time a Cro-Magnon man met a Neanderthal woman and had to decide whether to fight or make love. I am a peaceable old man, but I have the warrior gene.
I thrill to the sight of men in colorful uniforms marching and to the music of military bands and pipes and drums. At a cenotaph or a military cemetery, tears often well up in my eyes. I have also made a study of weapons of war and have noted how inventions during warfare have later been beneficial in times of peace.
A television program featuring men in dress uniforms and women in gowns dancing to Straus waltzes in old Vienna is filled with fairy tale romance. Then I remember that Austro-Hungary was the remnant of the Holy Roman Empire and that Vienna was one of its capitals. Austro-Hungary was in decline and no longer a world power when the assassination of an Austrian archduke by a Croatian in Serbia ignited the First World War.
Propaganda machines ground away ceaselessly on both sides of the conflict, attempting always to justify carnage and destruction on a scale the world had never seen before. Actually, the war was fought because of a competition between nations for primacy and for colonies. A collateral result was the dismemberment of Caliphate of the Ottoman Turks and the distribution of the pieces among victorious nations of Europe. This was a historic event that still underlies the conflicts in the Middle East today. Although many noble reasons were advanced for the warring states to invite or compel younger citizens to risk death on the battlefields, there was no credible moral justification for the war on either side.
It is always right for nations to honour their war dead. So many who died so young were a grievous loss to the whole world for what they might have been and might have done. There should never be any honour, however, for those who, either through faulty diplomacy or greed, caused the armed conflicts to begin. The money lenders and makers of armaments profited enormously without risking their lives and fortunes. Armies are never made up of only rich people.
The Treaty of Versailles ended the First World War. Its errors produced the second one. In taking up arms against the evils of Adolph Hitler and his brutal regime, young Canadians were indeed engaged in a noble purpose. They were indeed protecting democracy and freedom.
We can also be proud of Canada’s role in originating the United Nation’s peace-keeping force. By standing with their allies between warring factions Canadians helped to prevent brushfire wars from growing into global conflagrations. When the effectiveness of United Nations peacekeeping was eroded by dissension between the Western democracies, led by the United States and the USSR and its allies, Canada was involved in the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a bloc which could intervene in conflicts in Europe and the Middle East without being hamstrung by the international policies of communist and former communist nations.
Client states are often the pressure points where conflicts originate. Although the well-armed state of Israel tries to pursue policies that are in its own interests, it is a client state because it could not exist at all without the support of the United States. In Asia, the well-armed mad dog state of North Korea exists only because, in former days, it had the support of China.
Canada has fallen from its former respected place in the community of nations. It is no longer a nation effective in diplomacy, military preparedness of in the ecological concerns necessary for human survival. Because of its immense land mass and long coastline, Canada needs large, well-trained and well-equipped armed forces, even if never employed outside of Canadian territory.
Almost every foray of Canadian forces to foray lands has been identified as being necessary for the protection of our country and the preservation of peace, freedom and democracy. So it was in the Second World War. Since then, no Canadian military operations have entirely satisfied that prescription.
Canadians in uniform have too often unknowingly risked their lives in operations that have benefited oil barons, warlords, religious fanatics, poppy growers and drug dealers. Our country is embarked on being involved in a military solution to the problem of the murderously insane people called ISIS, so far a movement that is not a nation and has no legal right to own territory. Canadians in uniform are again being put at risk on foreign soil and without the latest developments in weaponry. When and if they return they will discover combat veterans are honoured more often with empty words than the real expressions of gratitude they need and deserve..
If what we are seeing as a nation is Canadians in uniform being used as a polished plank in an impending election campaign, we should be ashamed of the politicians who are doing it and ashamed of ourselves for permitting it to happen.
