Internationally Obscure Policy

In the golden years of Canada with the likes of Trudeau and Pearson we became internationally recognized for bringing a new method of installing stability to a world in turmoil. When Israel invaded Egypt, it was Canada who came to the General Assembly to bring the policy of peacekeeping to the table. It was several thousand Canadian soldiers on the ground that enforced the otherwise doomed to fail peace treaty the Americans pushed at the Security Council. Those soldiers stopped a war in which hundreds or thousands could have perished.

Now, in the past decade and half, where has our peacekeeping gone? We have only a handful of soldiers in Congo, Romeo Dallaire commander of the failed Rwanda mission had four hundred men to protect millions of people. Our current leader, Harper, thinks bombs and killing is more important job for our soldiers in Afghanistan than building roads and schools.

Society today needs to shift its focus of the armed forces. The days of conquest are over. We no longer steal slaves from our enemies. We cannot take territory. The idea that there is a clash of civilizations or ideologies is nothing but an arbitrary declaration by politicians who stand to gain votes from that position. War as it is no longer serves a purpose. Should there be another world war we will use nuclear weapons to devastate what would otherwise have been useful.

It is not that the military has no purpose whatsoever. The idea is that the military’s purpose has changed. In the early days of humanity, those who were armed were hunters. Later they became raiding forces. Then they became armies to capture land and resources. Now they become something else entirely.

I say to you that the sole purpose of the military is peacekeeping and disaster relief. Granted not all countries will agree to this and still commit themselves to armed conflict, but that does not entitle us to bereft ourselves of morals and commit to the same such acts. Peacekeeping is a mission that is honourable to all individuals. War creates displaced peoples, starvation and disease. It is never really a question of whether we should send soldiers to help them but rather how many we should send. An automatic placement of aid (but not combat) soldiers is preferable to doing nothing.

Disaster relief is another task well handled by the military to be a stop gap measure for more civil entities to take to the task. As we well saw in the tragedy of hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was completely destroyed and the National Guard was in Iraq. The questionable intelligence of the American president combined with the inept bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security led to a situation in which Canadian aid workers arrived in the city before even Americans. For what purpose does the American military serve in Iraq when they could have been on American soil, saving real American lives.

Peacekeeping and disaster relief is the new focus for the armed citizens of our society. The world is a global village and we cannot disregard this fact by blinding ourselves to other cultures with anti-immigration policies and firewall borders. We must content ourselves to the fact that we must help one another or continue to live in a society with a debilitating level of strife.

Ultra_punk

I have come

From the deep recesses of Canada, I have come to this blog to post. As a little heads up I might have to say that my political leanings are toward the left in most cases. We'll see how it goes with the agreeing and such. In any case, if you don't talk about politics, they won't get any better in the future.

Oh and btw, while some of you may think, wow his name is ultra_punk, what songs do you listen to?! The reality of the alias is that it is simply two random words i rammed together in the intellectual space that is the internet to formulate a name that everyone can perceive as uniquely internet-ish. In effect, I have never heard punk music in my life :)

Ultra_punk