Not to hijack this thread further, but I cannot remain quiet on whitewashing the Waffen-SS activities;
We’ve had this discussion about the Waffen-SS before; the murder of civilians and POWs was widespread by many W-SS Divisions as early as 1940.
See my post in this old thread
So, don’t cry for me, Oradour-sur-Glane
Also, as recently as 1997, the US Department of Justice reminded us that:
This is a big part of my anger against Chretien; he isn’t going to take any of the heat for anything he does now. He’s coasting until he retires in a short while, doing anything he damn well pleases, and to hell with any of the messes he’s leaving behind. Some might even bandy the word “sabotage” around, since he knows very well that the government after him is going to be on the hot seat for dealing with his fallout.
As for the OP:
Gun registry - worst idea in Canadian history since chopping up the Arrow and burning the plans.
Don Cherry - feh. He was hired to voice opinions; guess it never occurred to his bosses at CBC that he might bite the hand that feeds him someday.
Canada not supporting the US decision to go to war against Iraq - I’m really divided on this.
On the one hand, we are a different sovereign country, and must make our own decisions on this.
On the other hand, we all know very well that if anything ever happens to Canada, we will go crying to the American military, demanding that they come help us immediately.
On yet another hand, all Chretien has to do is pay lip service to supporting the war and send a handful of troops (which is all we have anyway), and everyone’s happy (except the anti-war protesters). No biggie.
I realize that this is a huge hijack but I have to ask the following questions:
I hear a lot of moaning about the demise of the Avro Arrow. I just assume it’s presented in irony, because everybody knows that it was an enormously expensive boondoggle, right?
Do on-the-street Canadians think that if they really needed help that America would just sit on it’s collective hands? I find that sort of thinking bizarre. Sure, we get annoyed when your elected officials call us all “bastards,” but we generally like you folks. We’re here for you, and we always will be.
Please ignore the politically motivated bullshit from both sides. We like you guys a lot more than you like us.
Of course, a national gun registry would never fly down here.[sub]Just had to stick that in to address the other half of the “Arrow” statement.[/sub]
It does occur to me that perhaps the handful of troops might not be too happy with this arrangement, either, and that perhaps that just might be a biggie :rolleyes:
The Arrow wasn’t a boondoggle - just a very big interceptor designed for a mission that disappeared before it made it out of testing. That’s the real reason it was cancelled. It was design for high altitude, high speed intercept of Russian bombers. The missile age made that role obsolete, and the Arrow wasn’t much good for anything else.
The real shame though was that the Arrow development team was one of the best engineering teams in the world, and cancelling the Arrow without proposing a replacement aircraft meant a wholesale dismantling of Canada’s aerospace industry. Those engineers and scientists went to the U.S. en masse and became a significant factor in the rapid technological advance of the U.S. aerospace industry in the 1960’s.
Before the Arrow fiasco, Canada had an extremely advanced aerospace industry. We made fighters, bombers, transport aircraft, you name it. Many of our designs were among the best in the world. Canada could have become an industrial high-tech powerhouse - all the cards were in place. But we essentially pissed it all away. We’re good at that. Look at our military today - one of the world’s best trained and most effective for its size, it was a major power as recent as 15 years ago.
Now it’s a shadow of its former self.
Look, America is not pissed at Canada for not participating. Quietly staying out of it is okay. It’s France we’re pissed at. It’s France who decided that no matter what we came up with, if it remotely involved actually backing up the severe consequences promised in a prior treaty with Iraq, then they were going to veto it. Yes, to protect their oil interests in Iraq. Heaven forbid someone compromise France’s oil-for-WMD arrangement with Iraq. Or was it oil-for-palaces? I have a sneaking suspicion that when we get in there and actually get to his WMD stores that we’re going to find a lot of things with “Fabrique au France” on them.
But Canada? Puh-leeze. No offense (I’m ½ Canadian myself, btw), but America almost never thinks about Canada. That’s why that little South Park “Blame Canada” song was so damn funny - you guys don’t DO anything to piss us off, or even to get our attention.
So I’ll keep having my Freedom Toast with Canadian Bacon, thank you. (and yes, I think the whole Freedom Fries thing is ridiculous, but terribly funny!)
I assumed that people who are in the Canadian military would not be dismayed by the idea of going to Iraq - being soldiers and all. But, I don’t know that for a fact. So, any Canadian soldiers out there? Do you want to go fight in Iraq? Maybe these are the people whose opinion we should be asking here.