Unpublished Letters

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  Some of these unpublished letters I thought were worth sharing, so here are three.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.