I have the bad habit of writing letters to the editor of the
local newspaper. Some get printed but
many do not. Some of these unpublished
letters I thought were worth sharing, so here are three.
The first letter called “War or Peace” was written in
response to an article about Stephen Harper’s apparent resolve to get us
involved further in the war on ISIL.
“I could not agree
more with Joseph Heath’s article (Stephen Harper, warmonger, Ottawa Citizen,
March 21, 2015) when it comes to Stephen Harper’s view of war. However, I would suggest that Mr. Harper’s
conduct of current deployments amounts to tokenism. A few planes here and a few there, plus a
handful of special forces troops, but only in a training role, are but tokens
to use as political pawns to “trap” opposition parties. But this is to be expected in view of the
Conservatives who seem to consider the military nothing more than a political
prop.
How else do you
consider their bungling attempts at military procurement? The only real results that they can point to
are the procurement of transport aircraft and helicopters as a result of sole
source contracts. Every attempt at a
competitive bidding process has been fraught with delays, rebids and
failure. The truth is, despite
Conservative propaganda, that the Liberals have a much better record of
starting and executing military procurement projects over the last 40 years
than any of the so called ‘military friendly’ Conservative governments.
How else do you
consider the fact that they have spent time trying to clothe our troops to look
more like their Second World War contemporaries than they have to real military
problems? The reintroduction of the
executive curl to Navy uniforms, and pips and crowns, not to mention the staff
officers’ emblem on the collar, on army uniforms, has cost money with no
discernable improvement to military readiness. The truth is that no current
member of the Canadian Forces had previously had any experience with these
baubles before they were announced with great fanfare. It reminds me of
President Richard Nixon’s desire to have special fancy uniforms introduced for
the White House military detail. All
show and no go.
The Conservative
government under Mr. Harper seems to prove to the adage that old men (and now
women) start wars, but young men (and now women) die in them.”
The second letter titled “When will he be ready” was in response
to yet another article declaring that Justin Trudeau was not experienced enough
to be Prime Minister.
“Once again, we have
the now tired diatribe that Justin Trudeau “is not ready” to be Prime Minister
(“Trudeau-esque” leader is not ready – Ottawa Citizen Letters, March 13,
2015). It is becoming quite annoying to
keep hearing this constant chant. The
question arises, when will he be ready in the minds of these people? Would 10 years, or 20 years in Parliament be
enough? Must he go and run a
corporation? Or perhaps he must go back
to school to become an economist (as if that has proven a winning strategy). However, I suspect that none of the above
would be enough to satisfy the politicians and their adherents of the grumpy
old men . . . er, Conservative Party.
They have found a label and they will stick to it no matter what
happens.
The truth is that Mr.
Trudeau has impressed a major political party enough to win their leadership,
he has brought a harmony to that party that it had not seen in several years,
and he has prepared that party to contest the next federal election. Oh, and he also won the support of almost 40%
of voters. If this is not enough, please
tell me what else he must do to be taken seriously.”
The final offering concerns stories that HMCS Fredericton,
while deployed with other NATO units in the Black Sea, was “buzzed” by Russian
warplanes and shadowed by Russian warships.
“Keeping tabs on other
nations’ ships is nothing new. If
Russian warships were to sail into Hudson Bay or the Gulf of Mexico, you would
certainly expect to find the Canadian or American Navies shadowing them. You would also expect our surveillance aircraft
to fly by and probably take lots of pictures.
Russia sees the Black Sea in a similar light; international waters but
close to home. Such things have been
going for years and were certainly a feature of the Cold War. During my naval career I witnessed Russia,
the US and Canada do the very same thing.
Sometimes ships got very close in what sometimes seemed like a game of
chicken. This happened to one of the ships I served aboard. While crossing the North Sea with a Canadian
task group, a Soviet destroyer tried to impede our way. The two ships came within a few hundred yards
of each other at high speed before the other ship veered away. Close encounters were so common in the
Mediterranean between the US and Soviet Navies that they had to work out a series
of rules and signals to avoid serious accidents.
Compared to this, the
incidents in the Black Sea last week seem quite tame, a normal interaction.”
Hope you enjoy these letters and find them thought
provoking.
