Government Does Right By Deporting American Deserters

There is a ridiculously biased article in the Ottawa Citizen involving the Conservative government and their current deportation policy on U.S. Army deserters. The tone it strikes is immediate:

Jason Kenney’s most memorable assault on U.S. war deserters seeking refuge in Canada occurred soon after he became immigration minister in October 2008.

Kenney dismissed them as “bogus refugee claimants,” a phrase that set off alarm bells among the deserters’ supporters because it was more loaded than anything said before by his Tory predecessors in the job.

How is it an “assault” on anybody to state the absolute truth of the situation? These are not genuine refugees, fleeing a war-torn country or a situation in which their lives are imperiled by actions beyond their control. These were men and women who knowingly and willingly signed into service with the military with the full knowledge of their actions and the consequences of desertion. Some of them even joined up long after the Iraq war had already started.

When you join the Army, there isn’t a checkbox to enter in which wars you want to join. There isn’t a checkbox which indicates what you may or may not morally approve. When you join the Army, you sign up for service for your country. And the consequences are well known. A dishonourable discharge and a possible year in prison is the penalty for abandoning service without permission. That’s hardly a steep price to pay for weaseling out on a contract.

Still, the underlying message in the printed material dating back three years is there is no appetite for intervening politically to do for Iraqi war deserters what Pierre Trudeau did for Vietnam War draft dodgers and deserters in 1969, when his government laid out the welcome mat for both groups. There also is nothing in the documents that suggests the issue has spurred any debate within government ranks.

In a memo to Kenney in February, then-deputy minister Richard Fadden provided a thorough review of why all Iraqi war deserters’ claims for refugee status had failed so far with the Immigration and Refugee Board, the Federal Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal.

There’s a simple reason for this. The Iraq war is not the Vietnam war. And let’s be clear here: while the Vietnam war was unpopular on both sides of the border, Prime Minister Trudeau did Canada no favours by rebuking our allies and letting in the deserters. What makes that situation slightly more valid is the fact that they had, at the time, conscription, so there were many soldiers who did not want to be in Vietnam who were forced to serve. In Iraq there is nobody serving that did not sign on a dotted line. Everyone who is there deserves to be there. They all knew the risks and the consequences when they enlisted. And even during the Vietnam era, not everybody believed that resisting the war meant running to the nearest border. Muhammad Ali, the top boxer in the world at the time, refused to go to Vietnam and surrendered three years of his life to that belief. His actions then became a matter of political objection, and carried weight in the arena of opinion in his country.

As for those who left? Well, much like the current brand running away from duty, they were forgotten about, ignored, or just plain didn’t matter.

If you believe in something strongly, you don’t run away from that principle. Perhaps the Canadian border represents the U.S. Army’s greatest test of character for a soldier. Those who run for it probably wouldn’t have made a competent member of the team anyway.

Canadians Prefer To Return To “Peacekeeping” Role

16 June 2009. Sergeant Erich BraŸn, from La Tuque QueŽbec. Photo: Sergeant Paz QuillŽ

Which is, one supposes, the opposite of what we’re doing now. Which would be war-making. Or perhaps it is our alliance with the Americans which makes so many Canadians so uneasy. It has possibly not occurred to many of them that it is possible to support the Americans on issues of mutual importance to international peace and security.

It’s no secret that the Americans want us to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2011. Whether we’re physically capable of carrying the load remains less relevant than whether we’re up to the job. It’s true that our military is strained by the Kandahar mission, a damning indictment in and of itself of our absolute underfunded and undermanned military, but I fail to see what it is that Canadians think we can do in so-called “peacekeeping” roles. Does that mean we get to post 200 troops to an outpost in Darfur and wait for the United Nations Security Council to authorize whether we may fire upon Janjaweed militia as they slaughter civilians? Or how about a return to the days where the terms of engagements are based upon waiting to be shot at first?

An article in the Canadian Press talks about the discomforting picture of the Afghan war, and the lack of political appetite to extend our military role there beyond 2011. Although for years the opposition were painting the government as war hawks, while for their part the Conservatives were maligning the opposition as “cut-and-run” cowards, the windmill has changed direction with the wind, and now nobody is willing to stand up and say that Afghanistan is the right mission for Canada. Not because we can sustain the mission with our current funding and manpower levels, not because we have the popular support of the people, but because it’s the right thing to do. Fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan has been the most moral decision we’ve made since declaring war against Germany in 1939.

But rather than fight popular opinion, it’s clear to me that the government wants a quiet exit from our noble service in Kandahar:

Contrary to the picture often painted by opposition parties, Harper is personally opposed to staying beyond the end date and has said privately that if Parliament “hadn’t imposed a deadline” on him, he would have done it himself because an “open-ended war is not in the best interest of the country – or the army.”

Insiders say his view stems from the ever-increasing human and financial toll, where military cost estimates coming before the federal cabinet would literally make him “gulp.”

[...]

A Canadian Press-Harris Decima survey last month suggested almost 90 per cent of Canadians want the troops out of Afghanistan by the 2011 target, if not before.

Smith said he believes the Conservatives and the Liberals before them failed to give Canadians a compelling argument for being in Afghanistan beyond declaring that “the Americans are there – and we should be, too.”

The fact is that nothing about this mission has been very well articulated to Canadians. Yes, we’ve lost 120 soldiers in Afghanistan over seven years, and I wouldn’t for one moment minimize their sacrifices. But what is lacking from this mission is perspective to what the risk has been compared to the reward. Would one say that constructing buildings and bridges and roads in Canada is not worth the sacrifice of the construction workers who die in order to work to their completion? The casualties for this mission have been extremely low compared to historical conflicts, and we’ve accomplished a lot in return for our work, both in repelling the enemy and in improving the lives of the people in Kandahar.

If we’re going to leave Afghanistan, it should be because it’s the right thing to do. Not because we don’t think we can afford it, or whether there is a perception that the sacrifice is too great. We quibble about Omar Khadr and possible terrorists in our midst in Canada, and yet we’re over there fighting real terrorists, and real threats to our security. The real enemy. We must not forget that.

h/t Torch

What Is The Purpose Of A “Gay Pride” Parade?

The struggle in equal rights in our society isn’t one that is entirely over, even in Canada where legislation allowed homosexuals the opportunity to equal status in marriage only a few years ago. I had no objection to gay marriage from the very outset. There isn’t very much that I agree with in Pierre Trudeau’s legacy, but when he said “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation”, there is a resonance that appeals to my individualist side. I don’t really care what two, or more, consenting adults do within the confines of their own private abodes, so long as it isn’t advertised to me. I’m not offended by public displays of affection, either heterosexually or homosexually, so same-sex couples kissing or holding hands isn’t a problem for me either. But I am left to wonder, what exactly is the purpose of this gay pride parade that continues in Toronto year after year, and every year seems to get more and more like a south American caribana festival, only more hedonistic?

One would have thought that in a recession, that governments throughout the country could prioritize the importance of expenditures. Saying “apparently not” for the federal government would be an unnecessary understatement. With the feds, it’s either a necessary expenditure, or else it’s just “stimulus”, in which case everything that happens to be spending falls under this category. Even parades which promote a sexual orientation as an identifying demographic.

Pride Toronto received a $400,000 donation from the federal government last week as a recepient of the Marquee Events Program. It’s money which goes toward improving infrastructure and services for people with disabilities during the 10-day festival, along with improving marketing and programming efforts. The government has long ago recognized that Pride week has surpassed whatever original intentions it may have had of bringing social activism and civil rights to the forefront, and replaced it with a happy heteronormative stamp of approval as a tourist attraction. Something to bring the whole family to watch. Costumes, balloons, floats, the whole nine yards. It does draw over a million people, and the tourism revenue is substantial.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone who wants to go to a festival that they enjoy. The parade began back when “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” was an act of political activism, evolving out of the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids which sought to legitimize homosexual rights. But the people attending the parade today aren’t activists anymore. The equality of homosexual rights is enshrined in the Charter, and now protected under hate crime and discrimination laws. To celebrate the pride of equal rights for homosexuals is becoming little more than an excuse to celebrate the “lifestyle” of that demographic.

The lifestyle on display in Pride week is that of a rather flamboyant, hedonistic, overtly sexual nature. These aren’t people celebrating their equal right to sexuality, as Pierre Trudeau put it, in the bedrooms of the nation. They’re celebrating their right to sexuality on the streets of Toronto, complete with women’s lingerie, sado-masochistic leather outfits, and just plain nudity, in all the glory of the organ-piercings on the display. Is that what equal rights is all about? Publicly celebrating unabashed sexual exuberance, a stereotype that is so often misdirected at all homosexuals, even those who live quiet and unassuming lives with their same-sex partner?

The event has become so diluted of whatever message it originally had that now parents come with their children to gawk at the colours and half-naked and naked men and women who walk down the streets. Politicians, not wanting to seem intolerant or out of touch with a voting demographic, show up to wave and smile, safe in the sanitized and municipally-approved message [or perhaps not so sanitary with Toronto's outside workers on strike]. Jack Layton and Olivia Chow make their obligatory appearance for the LGBT community, oblivious to the phallic party favours they wave to the crowd. And then there are the children, dragged along by parents who believe it’s open-minded and tolerant to let them watch naked men and women overtly celebrate sex. That in and of itself, is a criminal act:

Section 173.1 of Canada’s Criminal Code states parading in the nude “in the presence of one or more persons” is a crime.

Section 173.2 states any person who “exposes his or her genital organs to a person under the age of 14” has also broken the law.

So one is left to wonder: what is the purpose of gay pride parade? The celebration of equal rights for all people to engage in the particular sexual orientation that nature has chosen for them in the discreet privacy of their own homes? Or merely a chance to parade naked and wave phallic ornaments in public? And if it is the latter, then surely our federal tax dollars would be better reserved for less specific tastes, and underage children be kept away. Until the parade can become respectful of the common laws of decency observed by all people, I do not see why it can be endorsed and publicly funded, particularly as the civil rights of the movement is no longer an issue.