Rediscovering our military

The Toronto Sun's Linda Williamson has a great article in today's issue. It's a virtual call to action on the part of all Canadians. It's time to foster a sense of pride and respect for our Armed Forces by all in Canada. I couldn't agree more.

Rediscovering our military
It's time we understood the importance of our forces

By Linda Williamson

If you thought last week's string of massive military spending announcements -- $15 billion and counting -- was all about buying new toys for our boys and girls in uniform, you really missed the boat. And the plane, truck and helicopter.

It was about something much more fundamental: Our government finally doing its job by rebuilding our armed forces and reminding us all of their importance.

But if you didn't get that, you aren't alone.

Canadians' relationship with our military has been so eroded in this country over the past few decades that it will take a lot more than new equipment to fix the problem.

I'm not talking about the ambivalence of some Canadians toward our current, dangerous mission in Afghanistan. I'm talking about the ambivalence of many of us toward anything to do with our armed forces, period.

Thanks to government neglect and years of recharacterizing our fighting soldiers as "peacekeepers" (little more than armed foreign aid workers), many of us grew up thinking of the military as practically unnecesary and vaguely shameful.

Coming of age in the shadow of Vietnam and under the threat of nuclear war -- and too far removed from the two World Wars to truly understand soldiers' sacrifice -- my generation absorbed a largely negative view of all things military.

Government slashing of defence budgets seemed just fine -- less money for the war-makers, more for health care, right? Besides, this is Canada. Aren't we too nice to fight?

The scary thing is, this idiotic, naive attitude became so pervasive in Canada, it left us with a military crisis that is now going to cost us more billions and decades to turn around.

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