Canada's newly-minted, "red meat" crowd like to bellow that peacekeeping is a thing of the past, irrelevant in today's infinitely more dangerous world. Who the hell says?
Is the problem peacekeeping or the shrinking amount of peace worth trying to keep? In the Busharama era of clumsy megapower blundering, we're not getting a lot of people to the table to make peace that kind, well-intentioned nations like Canada can send forces to help keep.
I really don't care how many times Globe editorialist Marcus Gee and other dimbulbs of his ilk proclaim that peacekeeping is dead, irrelevant - it's not and, so long as mankind retains any hope of a future, it never will be.
Follow their argument along. Peacekeeping is passe. Therefore, what? Why, therefore we redirect the efforts of our personnel into 21st century, hi-tech mayhem. That seems to be the default option. It isn't even debatable. If you can't be bothered to keep people from killing each other you might as well get yourself up to your neck in blood. It's like the world is critically short of people to blast away at other people. Get real.
Rambo was just a movie. Let's fight wars but only the wars we really need to fight. There are plenty of other countries that indulge their trigger happy appetites.
Countries that ought to be peacekeeping are now transforming themselves into Bush's Foreign Legion, sending their young men and women in to places where America has already screwed up. What's with that anyway? NATO = FUBAR?
Afghanistan isn't about fighting terrorism, it's about taking one side in an incredibly long-running civil war. It's about wasting the lives of Canadian soldiers to wipe GWB's backside. Enough.
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