Lawrence Martin, in his column today in the Globe and Mail, puts the case that Stephen Harper may use the anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge to whip Canadians into a patriotic froth, after which he can drop the writ for a spring election.
I'd like to think that even this would be below Harper, but I doubt it.
He's already using that tried and true Bush-administration tactic of conflating anti-war sentiments with anti-soldier sentiments (garbage, of course). He was going to go to Vimy taking only his Conservative buddies, since everyone knows that the only true Canadians are (neo)Conservative, but a howl arose from the two-thirds of the country who aren't Canadians (sorry - Conservatives), so he invited (how kind of him) representatives of the rest of Canada to go as well.
If anything comes out of this, it should be that governments show their abject failure when their only resort is to go to war. Young men and women pay the price with their blood, families are left with lifelong sorrow, civilians die, and countries are left diminished in every way.
I wonder if the War Amps will send a member of their organization to the ceremonies. Their series of documentaries in the late nineties told of their experiences, of the horrors of war, and their wish to leave the children of Canada a legacy of peace. Their message was, ""In a war, everyone suffers...
we must never let it happen again."
And Stephen Harper couldn't commit Canadian troops to war-without-end in Afghanistan fast enough.
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