Sunday, July 10, 2011

Rosie DiManno's Glorious Imperial "Vestigial Tic"

Sometimes I read thwap, and sometimes thwap draws my attention to things that I'd rather not have read. Today it was the Star's shack-rat Rosie DiManno, in which she bludgeons her rhetorical way through the unapologetically liberal-imperialist, war-mongering, Canadian epitaph for Afghanistan.

It's hard to follow her reasoning. Early on she tells us war is part of human nature, apparently because she read some bunker graffiti somewhere Afghanistan.

“War is in your blood. It’s who you are . . . God is never going to make that go away."...War is part of the human condition, a vestigial tic. It will never be erased from our DNA, despite conflict resolution classes for school yard squabbles and UN mediation diplomacy for combatant states. As long as there’s a bully with an army or an oppressed constituency yearning for freedom, kinetic confrontation is inevitable.
My appendix was a vestigial bit and it nearly did me in a couple of years ago. Nuclear weapons might well do us all. . The difference is that the construction of my appendix is encoded in my DNA; the creation of nuclear weapons, and all wars and weapons before and since the first proto-human raised a club to smash another, are not.  The latter is a choice. Those who believe otherwise tend to be the ones who start wars.

The rest of the op-ed involves an incoherent and sneering dismissal of any of the anti-war or more humanitarian sentiments of this country in relation to Afghanistan. You can read on the link because I won't have that much drivel polluting my post. Near the end though, she engages in a such a contortion of moral reflection that I really do believe she wrote this with her head actually jammed in her colon.
Disaster is still as likely as success in Kandahar, even in the narrowed area of operations, Panjwaii, where Canadians have effectively focused their counter-insurgency efforts since 2009. This last Roto conducted 3,000 patrols, 130 operations, 900 shuras, found 300 weapon caches and 250 IEDs.
Americans have now swarmed into that terrain, assuming responsibility for all of Kandahar province. But it’s alarming to hear Gen. David Petraeus, as he takes leave of the Afghanistan overall command, talk about a shift eastward in the coming months, from Taliban strongholds in the south to the lawless border where insurgents have close ties to Al Qaeda and other militant organizations, in what is an undeclared but intensifying war with Pakistan.
Some have snidely opined that Canada has tried to put a veneer of victory on its operations in Kandahar, just as the Americans are now doing to justify Obama’s drawdown of troops. Yet it’s even more mendacious to proclaim a veneer of defeat.
Further, the equation is not only what did Canada do for Afghanistan but what did Afghanistan do for Canada?
Off the top it laid to rest, forever, the dewy-eyed concept of peacekeeping. A blue beret military had its place, an honourable one, in history. But that era has passed, unlikely ever to return.
From the ashes of tacit demobilization, a robust Canadian Forces arose, Phoenix-like — a military fit to stand on guard for righteous wars in distant lands.
Something that was lost has been found.
They are soldiers.
DiManno breathlessly declares the war questionable and mismanaged but also tell us this isn't really important. What is of such esteem according to her, is that all that our apparently "honourable" past of international peacekeeping was too metro for her the Canadian Forces, making them limp and emasculated. Ten years of blood in Afghanistan however, has apparently made them tough and hard, rising, to read between her lines a little,  like a great erection fit to fuck anyone anywhere on the great globe. More blood she is asking for. More wars for the greater glory of the  some abstract idea of Canadian values, the sentiments of a young member of a forward unit,  and the Freudian fantasies of her own mind, and the rhetoric of politicians and cowards across the country.

I'll tell you what's soft, Ms. DiManno. Soft is a country with a soil untouched by war for 65 years. Soft is a country suffering little hardship yet increasing its material wealth to a point unseen in history. Soft-headed is a country that feels  it must send its youth to distant lands to kill and be killed so newspaper columnists and rightwing partisans who've grown-up in such a lucky place can find meaning in their flaccid little lives of Don Cherry and beer.

If this is what passes for comment on the draw down of Canadian combat units in Afghanistan from the national press, then participation in that war has made us ugly and wretched.

6 comments:

Niles said...

A juxtaposition with your earlier post re: Kai Nagata seems to highlight exactly what is motivating Ms. Dimanno's gushing apologia for the present government's military 'wide' stance.

Has there ever been a 'free' press? The phrase Yellow Journalism was born to 'honour' American newspaper mogulism functioning in a manner picked up again by Fox News. As a history geek, I keep boggling at the blatant efforts of modern Robber Barons to hammer us 'advanced' countries back to the Gilded Age of the 1800s with methods and tropes *used* in the 1800s. And it seems to be working.

Lindsay Stewart said...

sounds like rosie is trying and suck the warrior-brand pubes out of ol' blatchford's teeth.

Steve said...

I agree 100% its all vainglory all the time with all the embeds, coincidence or pysk ops?

Anonymous said...

psa
My thoughts immediately as well, that chickenhawk, armchair warrior shite could have dropped from La Blatch's typewriter with out a change.
What is it about these folk who talk all misty eyed about war when they know they'll never fight in one?

Nicely put Boris.

Anonymous said...

Here's another example of what happens when you just love the gun, but do not have a clue about what it can do.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/07/10/20110710arizona-guns-special-report-overview.html
The bit about pointing it at the reporters chest speaks volumes.

The Mound of Sound said...

Why is it those who are so deliriously fond of war can't say the word? "Kinetic confrontation", really? That NewsyDupe can't help but parrot the lingua franca of our astonishingly inept military leadership. I think Rosie should get a kinetic bit of footwear right up the ass.