There’s nothing like a good little war. It gets the blood flowing. When spirits are down it provides a nice little pick me up.
Does life feel pointless? War provides its own raison d’être.
So it should come as no surprise when the peace-loving Canadian prime minister becomes a fan of war. War had been something alien to the Canadian psyche. Now it’s central.
The key to all of this is the war between Russia and Ukraine. Logically, this war has nothing to do with Canada. Russia has not attacked Canada. Nor is there anything that suggests it wants to do so.
But that has not deterred the bully-boys in the Canadian government. They are banging the drums of war and will be heard. Where there is no provocation, one will be created.
Thus, the Canadian government has seized a Russian transport planewhose only crime was to be caught flying legally in Canadian airspace. The transport is to be sold off with all proceeds earmarked for the Ukrainian government.
In normal times, a saw-off over such a dispute would be heard by an independent panel. But this is not a normal dispute. It’s Canada’s war and we’re thrilled to be playing a part.
In fact, we are so thrilled that we are doing things that don’t make much sense.
We promised to give the Ukrainians tanks. But the only tanks we have are ones cobbled together out of spare parts. From this we have confected eight workable tanks to give the Ukrainians for use against Russia.
We promised to train Ukrainian fighter pilots. But we have no jets for our own use, much less for training Ukrainians. In any case, the 88 jets that we are ordering won’t be ready for years.
We don’t have enough troops to create an emergency force to fight home grown forest fires. Yet we are acting as if we did.
We are commanding NATO troops in the Baltics. Yet when it comes to spending two percentage points of gross domestic product on defence, we always come up short.
We have committed Canada to playing a role in the U.S. created Asia-Pacific alliance against China. Yet the exact nature of that role is unclear.
Common to them all is level of enthusiasm aimed at boosting the morale of Canadian troops, even when the troops in question exist only as polite fictions.
This is not to suggest that all Canadian armed forces are mythical.
Many are already committed to fire and flood fighting. Indeed, the government promises to create a national force to provide manpower during times of stress.
All of this comes with the proviso that first dibs go to those fighting a real war against Russia and its supporters. After all, the Canadian government wins no international kudos for supplying emergency forces with material to fight forest fires.
It does, however, win plaudits for supplying our Ukrainian allies with bullets, even when we don’t have enough ammunition of our own.
Source: Toronto Star