Friday, March 15, 2013

“Our military is an armed military.”

That's DefMin Airhow's Spokesspeaker on the rebrand/naming/emphasizing of the Canadian Forces to Canadian Armed Forces, accent on the armed, just in case the Glorious Canadian People forget the military is armed and also because Jean Chretien.

OK. I've long been mildly annoyed at the Canadian government's habit of including "Canada" in department and agency names for those tailored to internal mandates. I mean it isn't like Canadians would somehow find themselves confused as to which country's national agency was responsible for their affairs. Maybe it makes sense to avoid duplo(tm)cation with the provinces, but I'd like to deal with a government, not a self-aggrandising jingoistic cadre of patronising morons. I know, a dream it shall remain. I digress.

I'm now of the view that these Cons are increasingly suffering from the same encephalitic militarism that affects nearly every reactionary rightwing cadre of morons ever to find themselves running a country. People in this cohort tend to know nothing about military organisations or what makes for sustaining an effective warrior class. What they like though is uniforms and medals, parades, funerals, Great Struggles, shiny and expensive pieces of kit, and well mainly the whole idea of having a bunch of armed people at their whimsical disposal. 

What you get when all is said and done is a parade square army, gutted of ethos and brains, hauled out for show and tell and sent overseas without a so much as an "hey, is this actually a good idea?" on whatever shitshow crops up next because it is just.so.cool. to "deploy." Remember way back before Bush Gulf War Two, all that news footage of Hussein's troops marching up and down looking all slick and disciplined? Remember the late dicator's goddawful war with Iran, Kuwait, etc? His army consistently bit off more than it could chew and killed a lot of people who didn't need to die including its own troops and public because it's leadership at both military and civilian levels was a cadre of jingoistic self-aggrandising morons.

You know, I'd take that bitter, angry, dysfunctional Chretien era army over whatever the hell these manchildren playing with Airfix soldiers on lawn are trying to create.

3 comments:

thwap said...

Like Himmler in charge of Army Group Vistula.

Anonymous said...

It's the same with college sports, why the national anthem? We are all Canadians in Canada with two Canadian Colleges playing each other.
It's an attempt to be as nationalistic as the Americans who in turn were trying to out-patriotise whoever the enemy of the day was.
It's all bollocks, window dressing and just trying a little to hard.

Evil Brad said...

The thing I find most annoying is the creeping Americanisation of our military and its customs. And I'm not talking about the move away from peacekeeping, either. There's nothing inherently Canadian about that. After all, the job of a soldier is to do what he's bloody well told, whether it means counting sandbags for the UN or closing with and destroying the enemy. It's all good, if Parliament says it is.
But why, for example, do we need a Sacrifice Medal, presumably our version of the Purple Heart, when we already have the wound stripe?
And the use of soldiers as photo props by this govt is pretty creepy too.
The Brits seem to have a more realistic view of their soldiers. That's where we should be taking our cues from. Not the USA.