I’ve heard a lot of people saying with Hillier retiring, that he transformed the CF from peacekeepers to a fighting force. HELLO?!? The whole point of any military is to be able, in a crude sense, to go kill people and break there stuff if the government tells you to. If you’re on a peacekeeping mission, the whole point of sending in boots on the ground on UN missions is that if they have to, they are capable of inflicting death and destruction on someone to protect themselves or others.
Yes, the CF can do reconstruction, rescues, etc. But so can other gov’t agencies, without being armed. The different areas where they’ve sent in soldiers as ‘peacekeepers’ is because unarmed civilians aren’t safe.
Anyone who thinks that the military has changed it’s role because of Hillier is clueless. They haven’t gotten more ‘militant’ (they are the military afterall), it’s just the missions aren’t being sugarcoated anymore. All hillier did was be honest about what’s going on.
The reality is the world is a shitty, violent place. Canadians are spoiled in our little bubble of peace and serenity. If you want to be taken seriously on an international level, you need a competent military to act as a mail glove to be used when diplomacy fails. You can champion peace and love all you want, but a little fucking placard won’t stop the Taliban from burning down schools and killing the teachers becausee they are teaching girls. A well armed squad will. Same with what’s going on in a lot of failed states. Diplomacy only works when there is a gov’t to deal with. When the gov’t has no control and there is no law, then talking won’t do anything, you need boots on the ground.
So there you go. I’d love to hear from anyone how you can champion freedoms and womens rights while not be willing to do anything for others. Freedom ISN’T free. You need to be able to defend yourselves. So while spending money on things like ship upgrades or APCs could be spent on social programs, it needs to be realized that having a capable military is part of the cost of remaining an independent and free country. And yes, some other countries don’t have militaries, but no one is going to take luxembourg all that seriously. And we have one of the worlds largest coastlines to defend.
I’m done. Just tired of clueless hippies railing against any sort of military action. /rant.
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2008.
Good Rant Pete. Like him or not, Hillier made sure the troops got some badly needed upgrades. I know a lot of people are opposed to Canada’s role in Afghanistan but that should not get confused with the fact that Canada NEEDS a military and, in order to be effective, that military needs appropriate funding and necessary upgrades. We are fortunate enough to have well trained and professional soldiers, but we shouldn’t let them down by issuing substandard equipment.
True, we have, I meant to imply that we shouldn’t have. But under Hillier we finally got some new personal equipment and some better vehicles for our forces. Lots more to be done for them though like replacing the SeaKings which essentially ammount to 10,000 parts flying in formation.