National Affairs
We are not a ‘traditional’ peacekeeping country
Claire Hoy

On Christmas Eve, in the west end of Toronto, a 23- year-old man walked out of a restaurant with a group of his friends and was promptly shot at close range by a man wielding a handgun.

The victim, Jesse Batisse, died, the 67th homicide death in Toronto this year.

To put things in perspective – and without even adding the death toll in the rest of Canada – that’s almost twice as many murdered Canadians in this city alone compared to the 36 Canadian soldiers who died in 2006 in Afghanistan while performing a service which we should all be proud of.

As tragic as all deaths are – and they are – the fact remains that there are a significant number of Canadians, many of them elected parliamentarians with the NDP and the Bloc Québecois, who have taken every opportunity to exploit every death of every Canadian soldier to push their case against a mission which, after years of hypocritically wagging our fingers from the cheap seats, has put Canada back on the world map again as a country willing to do its duty.

Since 2002, in fact, a total of 44 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

Like many of the most deeply entrenched Canadian myths – none more so than the myth that our socialized health system is the world’s best (the World Health Organization doesn’t even rank us in the top 10) – the knee-jerk anti-war crowd argues that Canadians don’t do war. Instead, they say, we are a “traditional” peacekeeping country.

Quite apart from showing an appalling ignorance of our own history – and doing a grave disservice to the millions, yes millions, of Canadian men and women who served, and often died, in the two great wars of the last century, as well as in Korea, this twisted view of our military history conveniently ignores the fact that under more than a decade of Liberal rule we didn’t even do much in the way of peacekeeping beyond bragging about how good we are at it.

But things have changed.

First, Paul Martin, as prime minister, quietly agreed to dispatch Canadian troops to help erase the fanatical Taliban – you know, those nice folks who love to murder women who dare go out in public without the proscribed head-totoe garb, or who routinely behead teachers and murder children for the heinous crime of teaching and going to school, fearful no doubt that they actually might learn just how completely twisted the Taliban ideology is.

Yet, despite the realities of dealing with such butchers, we have the spectre of leaders such as NDP boss Jack Layton attacking the government for spending too much time fighting the Taliban and not enough time rebuilding schools and sewers.

Oh yes, and there’s that favorite old saw that ‘we support the troops, we just don’t support the mission.’ Well, if you’re saying the troops are risking their lives on a wasted mission, how is that supporting the troops, eh? What nonsense.

Just how Layton or anybody else expects that country’s infrastructure to be rebuilt until the military situation is brought under control is anybody’s guess. But that tact remains a gross insult to the valuable work that our troops are performing there.It is precisely because the 2,500 Canadian contingent is currently on the front lines in that war that the annual news poll of Canadian Press and Broadcast News editors and broadcasters have chosen the “Canadian Soldier” as Canada’s Newsmaker of the Year.Good choice.The fight, of course, is still a long way from being over, but there is no question that the Canadians are winning the battles – with the help of British and U.S. forces (other countries, most notably France, who talk a lot about stamping out evil, aren’t that keen when it comes to actually doing the heavy lifting.)

Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier spent Christmas with the troops in Kandahar province, helping serve dinner to them, the first hot meal most of them had had in weeks – and likely the last good meal for some time – commenting that the battle against the Taliban is about to intensify.

Yes, that will undoubtedly mean more Canadian casualties – although it likely won’t match Toronto’s murder toll – and more opportunity for the critics to wail about the inhumanity of it all and demand that Canadian troops be recalled, thereby leaving the people of Afghanistan subject to an organization which, just last week, beheaded about two dozen villagers in the area just to make a point.

At the end of his visit with the troops, Hillier said, “They are focused on their job, focused on what they have to do around here, and they’ll be all right until they come home.”

Then, before climbing into an armoured vehicle and heading off, Hillier said, “I tell you this from my heart, I leave here inspired.”

We all should be inspired. God bless them, one and all.