Here are a few things of interest today…

The Azizabad Air Strike

Initially the US military denied that they had made a mistake. In fact, they continued to deny that they had made a mistake for days following the devastating air strike on the village of Azizabad in the Afghan province of Herat that left some 90 people dead, including women and children – which was independently confirmed by the United Nations.

That said; authorities in Afghanistan have arrested three men suspected of providing false intelligence regarding the strike, claiming that there was a Taliban presence in the village. The US continues to assert that a top Taliban commander and other insurgents were killed during the attack.

More from Tom Dispatch.

Harper Promises To Withdraw Canadian Forces In 2011

Campaign promises are one thing, following through on them is another matter altogether.

Two days ago, while campaigning in Toronto, the Prime Minister pledged to withdraw the majority of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan in 2011, which is when the current mandate ends…

“He said that by 2011, Canadians will have been in Kandahar for six years. He acknowledged that neither the public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer and that only a small group of advisers might remain.

Mr Harper made his pledge as recent opinion polls showed that there was lukewarm public support for the mission.

Canada has lost 97 soldiers and a diplomat in Afghanistan.

Mr Harper faces the very real possibility of the number of Canadian soldiers killed there rising to the symbolic figure of 100 during the election campaign.”

Take note of one very important assertion in that quote – “He acknowledged that neither the public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer”.

That, right there, is something that should not be forgotten in the future if Harper remains Prime Minister and uses the deaths of more Canadians as justification for ‘seeing the mission through in their name’.

FBI On The Verge Of Being Granted Unprecedented Powers

From the New York Times…

“The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.

Justice Department officials said the plan, which is likely to be completed by the end of the month despite criticism from civil rights advocates, is intended to allow F.B.I. agents to be more aggressive and pre-emptive in assessing possible threats to national security.

It would allow an agent, for instance, to pursue an anonymous tip about terrorism by conducting an undercover interview or watching someone in a public place. Such steps are now prohibited unless there is more specific evidence of wrongdoing.”

I can just see it now. Some xenophobic asshole that’s having a dispute with his ‘ethnic’ neighbour over a tree’s branches extending over his back fence is going to be on the phone with the local Bureau Office claiming that suspicious activity has been taking place next door.

Polar Bears

It’s God’s world, we just happen to live in it. Which means that global warming is a myth, despite the fact that chunks of Greenland are falling into the North Atlantic and a whole host of other fun stuff. To those that believe it a ‘leftist hoax’, the earth has undergone changes in the past and therefore there’s really no need to panic. It doesn’t matter than the world’s scientific community overwhelmingly believes it to be a real threat, nor that they represent the world’s preeminent experts on the subject. Any fool with a computer can discount global warming by doing a Google search and finding ‘evidence’ to the contrary.

For every scientist out there that believes it an ‘overblown’ issue, there are a thousand that don’t. That right there should say something.

Moving on to the affects of global warming on the natural world, some of you might recall that not too long ago the government of Alaska moved to counter the Polar Bear being listed as a threatened species. As The Nation’s Mark Hertsgaard points out, we shouldn’t overlook who played a key role in Alaska’s opposition to it…

“It wasn’t much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin played a key supporting role in the latest episode of the Bush Administration’s eight-year war on the Endangered Species Act, one of the cornerstones of American environmental law. On August 4 Alaska sued the government for listing the polar bear as a “threatened” species, an action, the lawsuit asserted, that would harm “oil and gas…development” in the state. In an accompanying statement, Palin complained that the listing “was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available” and should be rescinded.

The Bush Administration had not wanted to designate the polar bear as threatened in the first place; now Palin’s lawsuit provided cover to backtrack on the decision. The Interior Department had issued the listing only after environmental groups filed two lawsuits, and the courts ordered compliance. While the polar bear population was currently stable, the plaintiffs argued, greenhouse gas emissions were melting the Arctic ice that polar bears rely on to hunt seals, their main food source. A study by the US Geological Survey supported this argument, concluding that two-thirds of all polar bears could be gone by 2050 if Arctic ice continues to melt as scientists project. The listing was the first time global warming had been cited as the sole premise in an Endangered Species Act case, and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne clearly wanted it to be the last. When Kempthorne announced the polar bear listing on May 14, he emphasized that it would not affect federal policy on global warming or block development of “our natural resources in the Arctic.”

A week after Palin’s lawsuit, Kempthorne delivered on that pledge. On August 11 he proposed new rules that could allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions will imperil a threatened or endangered species. The rule reverses precedent: since passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, scientists from the Fish and Wildlife Service have made such determinations independent of the agency involved. Under the new rule, if the Army Corps of Engineers is building a dam, the corps can decide whether it is putting species at risk. To make sure no one missed the point, Kempthorne told reporters that the new rule, which he termed “a narrow regulatory change,” would keep the Endangered Species Act from becoming “a back door” to making climate change policy.

Hated by the right wing as an infringement on property rights, the Endangered Species Act has been on Bush’s hit list since the beginning of his presidency, when he chose Gale Norton as his first Interior Secretary. A Republican woman of the West like Palin, Norton assailed the act and did all she could to undermine it. “The Bush Administration has listed only sixty species as threatened or endangered, compared with 522 under Clinton and 231 under the first President Bush,” says Noah Greenwald, science director of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in the polar bear case. “And it took a court order to make each of those sixty listings happen.”

We have lost another three brave young men in Afghanistan because of a reckless foreign policy agenda bent more on placating our southern neighbours than ushering in any sort of realistic ‘new day’ in a country that has been at war for decades.

In a country where international relief supplies are easier to obtained on the Black Market than anywhere else, where promises made by foreign powers have rarely become a reality despite propaganda to the contrary, one has to seriously wonder why the people of this country have remained largely silent while 96 Canadians have returned home in coffins. To some that might not seem like a lot, but, in truth, we have lost more lives given the small size of our contingent in Afghanistan than any nation involved in combat operations.

As I have exhaustively pointed out in the past, there is a vast difference between supporting our fighting men and women and supporting the policies that place them in harms way. They are, by no means, one in the same. That said; I will not launch into a protracted entry about my views regarding the conflict itself, as I have written a myriad of entries that can be sourced using the search function.

The Looming Election

It’s no secret that Stephen Harper intends to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and force a federal election, most likely on October 14th, breaking a legislative election pledge passed in the House that there would not be a federal election until October 19th of 2009. Given the disarray of the Federal Liberal Party, and its lack of what I consider a real leader, it makes sense. By breaking the legislative promise that Harper himself proposed and was successful in passing, the Conservatives have a chance at gaining a majority.

The truth is that Stéphane Dion is not, in my opinion, PM material. The NDP, of course, do not have the sort of national support required to win the PM’s office, with the Bloc’s potential remaining as limited as ever given their mandate. Thus, by the end of next month we could very well see a Conservative majority in the House and the dawning of a new age of unobstructed Conservative rule in Canada. The groundwork is already being laid…

» Tories pledge $80M to reopen Ford plant in Windsor, Ont.
» Tories unveil $60 million of pre-election goodies.

French forces in Afghanistan have suffered one of the biggest single day losses in the conflict’s history, losing ten soldiers and suffering 21 additional casualties in a single engagement. The soldiers were ambushed by insurgents a mere 50 kilometers from Kabul, solidifying concerns that insurgents are closing in on the capital.

France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, plans to travel to Afghanistan to reassure French forces, insisting that French participation in the mission will continue. Meanwhile, in France, two thirds of the population remains opposed to French involvement in Afghanistan.

From a Canadian perspective, given the size of Canada’s contingent as compared to those of other nations involved, Canada has suffered the highest mortality rate.

According to Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson, Canada may be expanding its role in Afghanistan from 2,500 members of the Canadian Armed Forces to 2,700. The additional 200 troops would, according to Emerson, be deployed to service six Chinook helicopters that are destined for the theatre as well as unmanned aerial drones.

The majority of the Canadian contingent of ISAF is stationed in the southern Province of Kandahar where they have suffered one of the worst casualty rates of the conflict. That is a fact that seems to get lost when many examine the size of our force in Afghanistan, but it remains a fact nonetheless. We have, given the size of our contingent, paid dearly.

In the end it will have been for nothing – I firmly believe that. Those who have given their lives in the line of duty, doing their jobs, will be rendered victims of policy, and that is also something that should not be overlooked. We are, to put it lightly, pawns in a game of global hegemony that think ourselves anything but, and it is high time that we woke up to that fact.

Of course, the counter arguments are many, though steeped in contradiction. The Taliban, whom I would never dream of defending, had to be stopped. Mind you, they only had to be stopped after 9/11. Prior to that the Canadian government did nothing of significance regarding the suffering of the people that endured their rule. The same is true of the United States. In fact, prior to 9/11, US oil giant Unocal was in negotiations with the Taliban in an attempt to secure the rights to build a natural gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea into Pakistan, a project that is, not surprisingly, currently being lauded as one of the country’s economic saving graces. Hamid Karzai, the current President of Afghanistan, was, at the time, a corporate consultant for Unocal, having turned down an offer from the Taliban to act as their Ambassador to the United Nations.

Representatives of the Taliban visited the United States twice during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and once during George Bush’s Presidency prior to 9/11. On all three occasions it was made very clear that the United States did not recognize the regime as the official government of Afghanistan. After all, these were people responsible for using tanks to crush individuals to death in football stadiums. Recognizing them as the legitimate government of Afghanistan was never an option. But allowing them to be courted by a major US oil giant was.

On the first two visits to the US the Taliban’s delegation met with representatives of Unocal, actually visiting the home of Unocal’s Vice President during the second visit. During the third visit, Said Ramatullah Hashemi, then the Taliban’s Foreign Minister, met with State Department officials as well as the Afghanistan desk officer for the Office of Counter Terrorism. During that visit he delivered a letter to the Bush Administration calling for improved relations. Following the meetings Richard Boucher commented that they did not represent any US recognition of the Taliban and that the United States did not recognize any government in the country at all. That said - and this should not be overlooked - during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 the United States employed the Northern Alliance as a proxy force.

Historical reality shows that the Pakistanis have played a significant role in supporting the Taliban. It was covertly funded in the past by the government of Benazir Bhutto, a fact that was conveniently overlooked upon her return to Pakistan and certainly overlooked when she was being sainted after her assassination. But as Steve Coll’s ‘Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden’ accurately points out…

“Benazir Bhutto, who was secretly authorizing the Taliban’s covert aid, did not let the Americans know. She visited Washington in the spring of 1995, met with President Clinton, and promoted the Taliban as a pro-Pakistan force that could help stabilize Afghanistan… During her visit and for many months afterward Bhutto and her aides repeatedly lied to American government officials and members of Congress about the extent of Pakistani military and financial aid to the Taliban… Bhutto had decided it was more important to appease the Pakistani army and intelligence service than to level with her American friends.”

It is no mystery that tensions have increased along the Pakistan-Afghan border of late, with cross border raids occurring in Pakistani tribal areas. While certain prominent voices within Pakistan have warned that unilateral operations conducted inside Pakistan represent a serious breach of the country’s sovereignty, the country’s new Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, claimed yesterday…

“Extremism and terrorism are our own problems. This is our own fight. This is our own cause”.

…an indicator that Pakistan is not open to obliging Western forces in Afghanistan with regards to independent military operations against the Taliban that include incursions into Pakistan itself.

There are several million Pashtun refugees still displaced along the Pashtun belt, providing the Taliban with a resource pool from which to draw. Given what they are prepared to pay those willing to fight, the economics of poverty have played a significant role in the Taliban’s reconstitution. Of course, the Taliban’s financial resources are not simply appearing out of thin air, another indication that aid from within Pakistan, be it from sympathetic groups within the country’s tribal areas or, dare I say, even the ISI itself, most likely represents the majority of their assistance.

If anything, the Taliban, if even uneasily, remains a Pakistani proxy force in the region, one that can be used to further Pakistan’s interests with regards to Afghanistan. To discount such ambitions is, in my view, to seriously underestimate the view that many within Pakistan’s military apparatus hold – that they are a significant player within the region and not one to be trifled with or treated as lackeys by foreign powers.

In the midst of this mess are several thousand Canadian combat troops, all of whom have been fed post September 11th propaganda without a serious study of the region’s conflict history entering into the equation.

The soonest I am able to get Casey in to see the vet is tomorrow morning. Things haven’t gotten any better. He can barely walk, licks his feet incessantly, and is lethargic. Roy called me last night and was worried that at some point Casey might have walked through antifreeze or some sort of fertilizer, so I immediately washed his feet, which caused him to yelp. I’m quite concerned to be honest.

Speaking To Yourself In Public

I went and got a coffee this morning and while I was standing in line I glanced over and read the headline on the front of the Globe & Mail (which was actually last Saturday’s edition - “Canada Takes Notes From Failed Soviet War”.

I then blurted out at a rather noticeably embarrassing volume - “you mean we’re leaving?”

I then returned home and looked up the article. It begins with the following…

“The Canadian military has been studying the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan for clues on how to prevent similar mistakes as NATO tries to beat back a persistent insurgency and ready the country’s weak but pro-Western government to assume greater control.

It began a research project in 2006, a year in which fighting intensified for Canada in the war against the Taliban.”

So let me get this straight. We’ve been involved in Afghanistan since 2001 – Joint Task Force 2 was the first operational combat unit in Afghanistan – and it’s taken this long for the geniuses in Ottawa to actually comparatively research the Soviet-Afghan conflict?

The article goes on…

“The project was undertaken … for the purpose of determining whether this history offered any lessons to be learned for the Canadian Forces,” an executive summary of some of the research said.”

On April 8th of last year I wrote an entry regarding the death of six Canadian soldiers in combat operations in Afghanistan. In that entry I made the following comment…

“This morning my first reaction to this news was to FedEx history books to General Hillier, Mr. O’Connor, and the Prime Minister.”

What I want to know is this – what special breed of moron commits soldiers to combat operations in a regional engagement wherein the inhabitants of that region have a storied past of successfully resisting and repelling much larger and stronger foreign forces without actually first doing our soldiers the service of due diligence with regards to historical military precedents?

I’ll not blame the Tories; they weren’t in power when we initially committed our troops, though they didn’t exactly vote against it either. But being that they are now in power I will hold them accountable for their actions, especially the extension of this country’s mission in Afghanistan.

“…for the purpose of determining whether this history offered any lessons to be learned…”

Are you kidding me? Who did the Department Of National Defence outsource this to, a grade 9 socials class?

It’s Canada Day. And while millions of Canadians celebrate across the country, the reality that we are a nation caught up in the most foolish proxy war that this nation has ever been lured into will no doubt go largely overlooked.

Fireworks and beer have that affect.

Our men and women in uniform, doing their duty, are the ones that will have to endure the reckless policies and military usury that will keep them in Afghanistan for years to come. ISAF itself is nothing more than a US military proxy, and one that has paid a heavy price dealing with yet another completely ill conceived post 9/11 US led invasion. The Taliban, which was overthrown in 2001, is stronger today than it was when they were sent packing following the initial invasion. In their wake, a wholly corrupted Western puppet regime has filled the void, one that is completely ineffectual and unable to govern the country without the presence of foreign forces. Of course, all of that has not stopped the dream of a natural gas pipeline from the Caspian to the Arabian Sea from being sidetracked.

I’ll not defend the Taliban, not in a million years, but the realities of history regarding the region have so blatantly been overlooked as to utterly stupefy.

June was the deadliest month on record in Afghanistan for occupational forces since the 2001 invasion. June was also the second month in a row that casualties in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq.

The problem in Afghanistan does not solely rest with the existence of the Taliban either. Corruption and political infighting are rampant, and the government itself shows no real signs of true consolidation. It is an apparatus wholly dependant on the support of foreign powers, powers that will, without question, extract every ounce of advantage from Afghanistan, and its people, if the military situation in the country’s volatile regions are ever quelled to an extent that outright exploitation can be viewed as safely lucrative. While we are fed tripe about helping the people of Afghanistan, the reality remains that they represent an untapped resource, one that will see them exploited as a mechanism of cheap labour – all under the banner of progress and self sustainability.

It is, in a word, a shit show – one that has claimed the lives of far too many Canadians.

We are a nation at war. Given the context in which we are involved, perhaps more time should be spent today contemplating what it is that this nation ultimately stands for. And if Canadians are comfortable with the fact that we represent little more than a military proxy for the United States and those Trans-Corporations that are patiently licking their lips like wolves waiting in the wings – then what does that ultimately make us?

The Prime Minister of this nation believes that our involvement in this ridiculousness will ultimately lead to this nation becoming more of ‘a player’ on the world scene. Since when has that ever been a Canadian objective, or, for that matter, a truly Canadian perspective?

Today’s Toronto Star features a shocking revelation about a standing order with regards to ignoring incidents of sexual assault involving the Afghan civilian population…

“Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers “to ignore” incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.

In her March report, which she says should have been advanced “up the chain of command,” Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers “to ignore” incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn’t received a reply to the report.

While several Canadian Forces chaplains say other soldiers have made similar claims, Department of National Defence lawyers have argued Canada isn’t obliged to investigate because none of the soldiers has made a formal complaint, says a senior Canadian officer familiar with the matter.

“It’s ridiculous,” the officer says. “We have an ethical and moral responsibility to pursue this, not to shut our eyes to it because it would make it more difficult to work with the Afghan government.

“We’re supposed to be in Afghanistan to help people who are being victimized.”

For some reason, reading this story reminds me of a scene from the film Platoon in which Chris, played by Charlie Sheen, comes across other members of his platoon raping Vietnamese girls. In that scene, Sheen’s character remarks “they’re human beings” and refers to his fellow soldiers as animals.

Now, obviously we’re not talking about Canadian soldiers raping Afghan civilians, but there is a psychological comparison to be made with regards to how the people of Afghanistan are viewed by foreign soldiers given that they are protecting some of them and fighting others. A disconnect occurs when you realize that while the motives of two indigenous sides aren’t the same, their faces are, which can often lead to a perspective of generalized dehumanization. Thus, while the Taliban is the enemy, their faces, their very race, remains the same as those that are being defended, which can easily lead to the generalization of a perceived moral inferiority.

In the end, rape is rape, and to suggest that not being involved in the reporting of such crimes committed by our Afghan allies is tantamount to covering it up for them. Ultimately, it is, in truth, probably more a matter of negative press and how that would impact domestic perceptions regarding the war.

Not all members of the CF agree with such orders. In fact, I would put money on the probability that most don’t. Then again, I would also put money on the probability that most fighting in Afghanistan right now view the conflict as one that is to be simply survived, and not one in which some noble outcome is being achieved. Like the majority of those Americans serving in Iraq, it is simply a matter of ‘making it through’ and getting home to family and friends. The policies of those that do not have to fight the war in Afghanistan have placed our men and women in harms way. While they make speeches on the Hill and elsewhere, kids from towns and cities all over this nation are the ones paying the price. The government and military leadership then have the audacity to use their deaths as justifications for the continuance of a course of action that is bearing no tangible results.

Those that serve this nation deserve our respect. There is, of course, a very marked difference between supporting them and supporting the policies that send them into harms way. While I support the former, I do not support the latter, as most of you are well aware.

I want to preface this entry with a statement regarding history.

Since I was a child I have been a passionate student of history. It is a passion that was handed down to me by my father who instilled in my brother and I the overwhelming importance of history not merely as the examination of our collective past, but as the study of the repetition of mistakes and the ability to use the past to identify their formation in the present. There are, in truth, no boundaries when it comes to the examination of history, nor its complexities, be it the study of events, or the philosophies and ideologies that have shaped the past and thusly influenced the present. History, despite its concrete persona, is not the study of irrefutable fact, but versions of truths that, combined, paint a picture from which insight is gained.

The corruption of history is one of its most important aspects, and the recognition of that corruption is something that must be openly examined. My generation, and those before it, were taught that the works of Karl Marx, for example, were ideological poison, that Lenin was tyrannical, and that the impetus of the Communist movement was one steeped in autocracy, not collectivism. These were, of course, propagandist lies of the Cold War, and, when examined, can be easily seen for the corruptions that they were – and remain in many cases. From a purely philosophical standpoint, The Communist Manifesto is not a work of evil whatsoever, quite the contrary in fact. Nor was Lenin tyrannical, only a sickly leader whose vision of a nation would be corrupted by others vying for power - and such actions are certainly not limited to what most traditionally refer to as ‘Communism’. In fact, the plutocratic reality of our own nation relies upon corruption more than it does accountability to function.

As we’re all aware, those that are victorious, never those defeated, write military history. Since childhood I have always found that to be a very skewed thing being that, when it comes to war, victory is not something that can ever be championed outright given its costs. As a young man I once spoke to a World War 2 veteran who was amongst those that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. He relayed to me his personal experiences of that day, and those that followed, but there is one statement that he made that I will never forget as long as I live, primarily because of it’s brutal honesty. I asked him how he felt as he stood with his comrades in the landing craft waiting to go ashore. His response was immediate and followed by a smirk…

- “Doing this ain’t worth saving Regina.”

They Don’t Make Major Motion Pictures About Us

Since posting an entry entitled Speechless yesterday, I have received a flurry of emails from angry American readers, primarily to do with the content of the email that I quoted in the post.

To answer them, let me put this issue in a Canadian context.

Since the Second World War ended, umpteen films have been made about American achievements during it. Some have won Oscars, some have gone on to become American cinema legend, such as The Longest Day and Patton. Unfortunately, when it comes to Canadian involvement in the Second World War, we’re not so celebrated. Despite a few made for TV films, the majority of our current and past remembrances have come in the form of commercials for General Motors that are broadcast during Hockey Night In Canada (commonly around November 11th).

Being that we are a Commonwealth Country, our involvement in the Second World War began shortly after Britain declared war on Germany. We were also involved in the Orient, where we fought the Japanese in locations such as Hong Kong. Until the United States entered the conflict in late 1941, Canadian soldiers, pilots, sailors, and merchant mariners played a significant role in ensuring that the British Isles did not fall and vital supplies reached them. In all, the Canadian Merchant Navy was responsible for completing 25,000 trans-Atlantic voyages. During World War 2, one in every eleven Canadians served in the armed forces. During the Italian Campaign, in which two of my Great Uncles participated, Canada lost 25,000 men, over half of all Canadian combat fatalities suffered during the war.

Obviously I can’t compare Canadian sacrifices to that of the United States. During the war some 16 million Americans served out of roughly 131 million, with 416,000 of them perishing in both theatres of war. We, being much smaller, had a population of a mere 11 million people. And, despite a few instances involving German U-Boats penetrating Canadian waters and sinking ships, we did not suffer a direct attack comparable to that of Pearl Harbour. That said; what if I, along with a few friends, were to go to the Arizona memorial and play street hockey on it?

Going Back

On that morning in June of 1944 the boys of the 3rd Infantry Division had something to prove, even if they hadn’t been involved in the utter disaster that had occurred along the north coast of France two years earlier.

On August 19th, 1942, a largely Canadian force undertook Operation Jubilee – the objective of which was to briefly capture Dieppe and Seine-Inférieure simply to prove that it was possible and to collect intelligence with regards to German strength in the area. British troops and fifty US Rangers also took part in the raid resulting in the first US land fatalities in the European Theatre.

At Dieppe, 3,963 Canadians went ashore. 2,210 of them made it back to England. It should be noted that 1,000 Canadians were never landed, so the entire contingent actually consisted of 4,963 men. Of the 6,086 soldiers that took part in the raid, 3,623 were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

That fact was not lost on Canadian soldiers on the morning of June 6th, 1944. In all, 21,000 Canadian troops were landed at Juno, with the first waves consisting of 3,000 men. The casualty rate at Juno was 50% in the first hour. Those left cleared the seawall within that hour. By 6’ o’clock that evening Canadian forces had captured the town of Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, pushing further into occupied France than any other allied contingent having faced the most heavily defended stretch of coastline of all five landing zones.

But you can bet your life that Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg won’t be making films about it any time soon.

All The World A Memorial

There is no questioning the fact that land is land and that throughout human history much of it has seen conflict rage across it. There is also no questioning the fact that while we honour the past we should not allow it to wholly restrict the future. When it comes to Juno Beach, and the memorial there, it should be remembered that no Canadian memorial existed at Juno until Prime Minister Jean Chrétien opened the Juno Beach Centre in 2003. On that day he said the following…

“Until now, there has been no Canadian memorial to mark these achievements. At the Juno Beach Center, our grandchildren and their grandchildren will learn what their forebears did for freedom.”

We’re not a country with a large population. In fact, our current population is equal to that of the State of California alone. Throughout our history we have largely been a humble and reserved people, not the sort that have needed to glorify what we have contributed to world affairs in the past. Had it not been for the work of Garth Webb, a veteran that took part in the D-Day invasion, who took it upon himself to make the Juno Beach Centre a reality, there still wouldn’t be a memorial there to mark the accomplishments and sacrifice of those men.

In the end, we don’t need a summer blockbuster to remind us of what our boys did that day. But a hint of respect would be appreciated.

Wait For Me Daddy

For my birthday this year my mother is having framed for me a very famous photograph that was taken in 1940 by then Province photographer Claud Detloff on Columbia Street at 8th Street in New Westminster. My family owns one of the original copies of the picture which would go on to be featured in both Life and Time Magazines and is considered the most famous Canadian pictures of the Second World War.

When our boys from the 3rd Infantry Division hit Juno Beach the morning of June 6th, 1944, the casualty rate within the first hour was 50%. Stretched between Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer and Courseulles-sur-Mer, our objective, like that on every other beach, was to clear a path so that armour could be landed and push inland. So the boys of the 3rd Infantry Division did their job. They did it so effectively, in fact, that they pushed further inland than any other allied force that landed that day, despite the fact that they suffered casualty rates equal to those suffered by the Americans at Omaha Beach.

While they did not secure their objective, they came closer to securing it than any other allied force against the most heavily defended section of all of the D-Day landing zones. The seawall at Juno was three times as high as that at Omaha Beach, the waters were mined, and aerial and naval bombardments preceding the landing failed to cause any significant damage to German defensive positions.

My connection to the sacrifices made that day is very strong. Being a lifetime student of history, especially one of 20th Century history, the events of that day by all involved should never be forgotten. When the Juno Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer was built I donated in the same funding level group as Global Television did. Numerous members of my family served in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War, so for me it was something that I felt needed to be done on behalf of my entire family.

While this entry might seem random to most of you, there is a reason for it, one prompted by an email that I received today…

“Few things I have ever experienced have appalled me to the point of nearly vomiting, but what I am about to tell you makes my stomach churn and it brings up the bile from the back of my neck.

Recently, my girlfriend went to Europe with a group from her small art school outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Over the course of their trip they traveled to Normandy, France. While going through her photos from Normandy, I happened upon pictures of a beach party in full swing with all her friends and fellow travelers drinking beer, kicking around soccer balls, and all the proper elements of a beach party. In one of the photos I noticed a monument in the background and, being a student of history, I recognized it as the Canadian memorial at Juno beach. As it turns out, my girlfriend and her compatriots were having a party on the very spot where Canadians attacked the most heavily fortified positions on D-day. The photos of them drinking beer and placing objects in the surf to artfully take photographs of make me seriously ill. I asked my girlfriend about it and apparently she raised a degree of protest to going down to the beach due the fact that it’d be akin to desecrating a sacred place, but one of her classmates said “Jesus, it’s just a fucking beach” and her minority opinion was overruled and they went anyways. It was also justified because, despite the presence of numerous memorials and signs stating what happened there, it was not the American landing site so it did not really matter. I am ashamed to call myself an American sometimes due to jack asses such as the people my girl goes to art school with. One would think artists are supposed to be intelligent and educated, but all I’ve experienced from these particular “artists” thus far is ignorance and selfishness. It makes me lose faith a little more in the youth of America today to know that there is an entire generation of youth who basically have grown up with a sense of entitlement and do not care about those around them. These particular kids are more concerned with who is fucking who, and who likes who, even at the ages of 19-22, than with more relevant and pertinent political matters. Due to the proliferation of people such as these, I feel there is little hope for America left. The intelligent person seems to be a dying breed in this country and before long they’ll be almost entirely extinct. I’ve enclosed a few of the photos so you might see for yourself.”

To this I have nothing to say. I’m simply speechless.