Canadian Forces: More vis. min. Boy Scouts the answer

Some young journalists utterly fail to understand what armed (note that word) forces--such as the Canadian Forces--are all about.

...the military has failed to recruit visible minorities and new Canadians. Those who identify themselves as visible minorities make up less than three per cent of the regular Forces and four per cent of the reserves. In total, there are fewer than 2,500 visible minorities in the military...

The effectiveness of this country's role in the world rests on having a multicultural military. When Canadian soldiers go abroad, diversity is what they can count on to win hearts and minds. Speaking another language is an asset, but being from another culture means soldiers see solutions to problems from different perspectives.

The need is urgent given Canada's presence in Afghanistan...

I'm sure that, amongst others, Chinese, Hindu, Filipino and Jamaican Canadians will have special insights into how to win Afghan "hearts and minds". Such diversity also could not but melt hard Taliban hearts. The hearts of the same people who destroyed the Bamian Buddhas with artillery fire.

Another problem is that cultural minorities tend to have misconceptions about the nature of Canada's military, which is less a fighting army than one designed [my emphasis--M.C.] for peacekeeping, disaster response, reconstruction, humanitarian missions and border patrol...

Wow. Tell that to our CF-18 fighter pilots, the crews of our Navy's frigates, and our soldiers in LAV IIIs in Afstan. What was the design of our military that has a combat mission at Kandahar now, had one there in 2002, and bombed the Serbs in 1999? Not to speak of the Canadian Forces that (though we tend to forget it) actually took part in the 1991 Gulf War.