-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.33/pageone.html
<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.33/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City
Times - Volume 3 Issue 33</A>
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Laissez Faire City Times
Aug. 23, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 33
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
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Canada's Toy Soldiers
by Peter Topolewski
Lethal contaminants. Shredded files. Unwitting victims. Mysterious
illnesses. Is it beginning to smell like a Clinton scandal around here
or are these the ingredients for the latest episode of the X-Files?
Neither. These are keys in another case of the hierarchy in the Canadian
Armed Forces abandoning its soldiers. And in the recent history of
giving short shrift to the men and women who volunteer their lives to
the whim of the Prime Minister and the minister of defense, this shrift
is the shortest of them all. The lack of respect for human life that has
become institutionalized in the military has evolved from years of
neglect � neglect that has let the condition of the military sink to new
depths.
The military in Canada rightly lays claim to a storied history. During
the First World War the federal government could avoid making a decision
on the touchy subject of conscription largely because until 1918
volunteers were plenty. By 1918, 600,000 Canadians had served in the
wartime army and another 9,000 in the navy. Canadian pilots constituted
nearly 25 percent of Britain�s Royal Air Force. All tolled over 60,000
Canadians died in the World War One. When it was over they all, living
and dead, had built for Canada a reputation for spearheading Allied
attacks with marked tenacity and courage.
During the Second World War conscription again strained relations
between English- and French-speaking Canadians, and again great numbers
of volunteers delayed its enactment, this time until 1944. By the end of
the war Canada, with a population of 12 million, had raised a military
force of 1 million people. The Navy, which grew from 5,000 to 100,000
men, protected the Atlantic supply convoys to Britain, while the army
played a major role in freeing the Scheldt estuary in the Netherlands,
through which the Allies entered Europe on their way to victory.
When the Nazis surrendered in May 1945, they did so to the Canadian
command. Since the Second World War Canadian troops have distinguished
themselves in the Korean War and in meeting a great number of NATO and
UN peacekeeping obligations. Most recently during NATO air attacks on
Kosovo Canadian CF-18s flew a disproportionately large number of
missions.
While the quality of Canadian troops has never slipped, and the military
to this day meets Canada�s NATO and UN obligations shiningly, Canada�s
forces offer little protection from an attack against the home turf.
Canadians and interested observers openly acknowledge that the military
is wholly inadequate to protect the country�s people and land. It is
reasonable to argue that no army in the world could capably protect
Canada�s huge landmass, nor any navy properly patrol the largest
coastline in the world; nevertheless, since the end of the Second World
War, Canada has come to maintain a force of about 60,000 regulars with
less than 200 CF-18s. Upgrading a thirty-year old fleet of rescue
helicopters has become a shameful embarrassment to the government �
bickering over dollar signs has sent several crewmen to their deaths in
antique aircraft and rendered the rescue forces virtually useless.
The penny pinching has understandably hurt morale. No wonder.
Perennially low wages trap many soldiers below poverty level. In the
last year national television newscasts have run stories on soldiers who
are forced to visit food banks to feed their families. Two soldiers in
Winnipeg, Manitoba garnered some much needed media attention for their
food-drive � they promised to camp out atop a few stories high scaffold
for food donations for their base. Well-wishers and supporters stopped
at the foot of the scaffold and gave what they could.
That the Canadian military could come to this is hard to conceive. Yet
the wonder grows greater when we see the politicians so willing to send
this military on UN missions. In the early 90s Canada shipped troops to
Somalia, a hell on earth so volatile and confused that a Somali prisoner
sadly, but not surprisingly, was beaten and killed while held in custody
by Canadian soldiers. To the hate war in Bosnia, Canadians went as
unarmed gatekeepers and to stuff body bags. Their role was much the same
in Croatia, enforcing peace in a place where nothing was what it seemed
� even the dirt.
The UN, Dealer of Death
Six years after Canadian troops went to work in Croatia on behalf of the
UN, they are learning that they made their bunkers out of earth
contaminated with PCBs and bauxite. These days scores of those who
served in Croatia are sick. Some are going blind, other deteriorating at
the joints. Who has stepped forward to treat them, to provide them with
a pension? Not the organization (the UN) that sent them to Croatia.
Actually, since the story has hit the media, the military is grudgingly
offering some assistance, but this story gets much worse. In 1993 a
doctor had a memo placed in the files of all soldiers who served in
Croatia that year, stating that they might have been exposed to harmful
substances and faced a risk of illness. Those memos were systematically
removed and shredded.
With overwhelming predictability, the Ministry of Defense has convened
an inquiry to determine the source and nature of possible illnesses
caused by materials or events in Croatia. A separate criminal
investigation into the memo shredding has also commenced. Meanwhile,
Matt Stopford, a former Canadian soldier who served in Croatia, is
leading the charge for compensation. Already blind in one eye and
swallowing handfuls of medication a day, he�s lived through six years of
zero progress with his onetime employer. He claims that he�s been
contacted by more than 30 people just like him, and 70 others have
spoken with veterans groups and another soldier who is compiling a list
of sick former servicemen. Not surprisingly, Stopford says that none of
the affected are contacting the military, not only because the Forces
are downplaying complaints, but the soldiers don�t trust the military
leadership.
Maintaining the armed forces is one of the few duties the federal
government should consider an obligation. Somehow the best fighting
force Canada can produce in the 1990s is a bunch of soldiers who do not
believe their leaders will look out for them. A defense budget that has
armed soldiers with outdated equipment and left them in the poorhouse
might reflect the priorities of peace-loving Canadians. Other ventures
and adventures and programs are more important to the voters, you can
almost hear the politicians saying. And so the obligation to maintain a
national defense has instead become very much more like a luxury.
This might be how it is, but it is totally wrong. The "luxury" spending
on the military comes at cost to the men and women who volunteer to
offer their lives for Canada�s protection. If the government cannot
properly pay and supply its soldiers it cannot justify sending them on
peacekeeping missions. In these circumstances the Canadian contributions
to UN and NATO missions look more and more like efforts to maintain a
cherished reputation in the international community. I find it hard to
believe that any human could send others into such danger easily, or
without the decision weighing heavy in the heart. And yet the evidence
shows, at the home base and the on the peacekeeping mission, that the
Canadian leadership treats Canadian soldiers as if their lives have no
value. This cannot be tolerated. They must have proper supplies, whether
that means more money or fewer soldiers.
Though treated like it, these soldiers are not toys.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Topolewski was born in Canada in 1972. Against the odds that seem
stacked against everyone at birth, he is just now beginning to learn
that the society and system of authority one is born into is not the
society and system of authority one must accept. He lives and works in
Vancouver, where his corporate communications company is based.
-30-
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 33, August 23, 1999
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc.
Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar
All Rights Reserved
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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