opinionsubmit@hotmail.com Respect the Military, But Don't Lower So the troops were deployed. Right Hook JJ McCullough, OP Columnist Whenever a soldier dies in the line of duty it is always an unquestionably tragic event. Soldiers are men and women like anyone else, with parents, children, friends, spouses, and lives of their own. Though their career of choice may be an admittedly dangerous profession, the death of a sol- dier is still the death of an ambitious kid in the prime of their life—and no less traumatic as a result. The question is whether or not such intimate, family tragedies should also be considered national tragedies. Under the previous Liberal government, the answer was clearly yes. During the Chrétien and Martin administrations, whenever a Canadian soldier died in Afghanistan the death was treated as an unprecedented crisis, with the flags on parliament hill low- ered, lengthy orations in parliament, and live funeral cover- age on the CBC. There were a number of underlying reasons for such overdramatic attitudes, perhaps the single largest being the classical liberal guilt complex. It’s worth remembering that Jean Chrétien was never entirely keen on sending troops to Afghanistan in the first place and waffled wildly in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 on the matter. Supporting an American-led military adventure in the Middle East was an action that seemed to contradict every bone in the Prime Minister’s liberal body. Yet it was an emotional time, and the public pressures for Canada to contribute to the retalia- tion against Al-Qaeda were ultimately too great to resist. As the years progressed, getting overly melodramatic about each ensuing casualty helped the Liberals compro- mise with their guilty consciences and exaggerate the degree to which the Afghanistan mission was unusual. When each soldier’s death was played up as an event wor- thy of days of nationwide mourning, the intended message was clear: Canada is not a military nation and we are unac- customed to the sacrifices of wat. This is something we are doing for America and at a heavy cost to ourselves. Our new government, under Stephen Harper, has challenged the value of perpetuating this weepy narrative, in large part because the Conservatives were always more genuinely dedicated to the Afghanistan mission in the first place. Unlike the Liberals, who increasingly viewed the conflict as some sort of Canadian favour to the Bush Administration, the CPC actually understood the mission on a more sophisticated (and accurate) level; namely, as a worthwhile military endeavour to promote freedom abroad and safety at home. Such is the historical legacy of the Canadian armed forces—the mission is hardly unprece- dented in either scope or spirit. Clearly, Harper is well aware that turning each Afghanistan casuality into the subject of its own private, overblown media circus does little more than distract atten- tion from the larger goals of Canada’s military mandate. It may help TV ratings, but overly frantic, emotional coverage of Canada’s war dead ultimately does little more than sen- sationalize events that should be dignified and private. The PM has thus banned the media from broadcasting live coverage of soldiet’s caskets being unloaded from returning transport planes, and has announced the Canadian flag will no longer be lowered on federal build- ings for each new death. Remembrance of the fallen will still occur in a dignified manner, but on November 11th, granting Afghanistan soldiers the same respect that has been given to all of Canada’s war dead for the past 80 years. Many high-profile Liberals, including Ujjal Dosanjh the Flag (who has somehow wound up as his party’s defense critic), have predictably criticized Harper’s moves as Bush-style attempts at secrecy and conspiracy. There is nothing funda- mentally American about choosing to respect fallen sol- diers collectively, rather than individually, however. No matter what country you live in, the army is a collective organization, with collective goals, collective interests, and collective sacrifices. When the government and media treat each military death as being the moral equivalent of a teenage car crash— unpredicted, gruesome, and meaning- less—they are actually doing a far greater disservice to the collective institution of the military and the public’s con- ception of it than any acts of Prime Ministerial censorship. The army is not simply some meat grinder in which kids are sent as some on the left will imply. It is a noble career of bravery and honour, in which individuals have freely expressed a willingness to endanger their own lives in order to protect the safety of others. Mourning is important, but to view the military as sole- ly being an institution of death, and only celebrating sym- bols of the military that remind us of death, is ultimately in no one’s interest but those who despise the military in the first place. For years, the armed forces in this country have gone under-funded, under-staffed, and ignored by successive governments. We now have what is probably the most pro- military government in two decades, and yet Harper is still criticized for his disrespectful attitude towards our troops. To liberals in the media and elsewhere, respect can appar- ently only be shown through gestures that portray soldiers as the unwilling victims of a pointless American war Canada should not even be a part of in the first place. More upbeat actions, such as having the PM visit the troops in Kabul or, you know, actually increasing funding to the army, are dismissed as mere Bush-style PR stunts. There is certainly some truth to the claim that the less we are visibly reminded of death on the battlefield, the firmer we will be in our foreign policy resolve. This sounds Continued: p.8 Drugs are Bad, Mmmmkay? Especially the Legal Ones Left Overs lain Reeve, OP Fella Drugs get a bad rap. At least some of them do. If Canada’s drug use were a clubhouse, all the different types of alcohol and cigarettes would be inside rocking out while heroin, cocaine, and speed have to hang outback by the dumpster. Marijuana might get let in through the West entrance but he’d have to keep a low profile. There are, of course, good reasons for all this. Hard drugs mess you up something fierce. They get you addict- ed, destroy your relationships, cost you all kinds of cash, and may even get you all kinds of dead. Our good friends alcohol and cigarettes don’t do that, right? Well the news is out kids and it isn’t good for our favourite vices. While there is certainly more to consider than the monetary cost of drug use, a recent study showed that 80 percent of the $40 billion a year that drugs cost us comes from hooch and smokes. So that means you can take everything, smack, crack, speed, pot, shrooms, dust, E, Lucy in the sky, juice, PCP, and everything else you can shove in an orifice that makes you feel wacky, add it all together, and it costs society only a quarter of what ciga- rettes and alcohol do. So how are we to deal with this news? Crazies on both sides of the drug issue will make the following recommen- dations. People on the ultra liberal pro-drug drug side will use this to further the case that legalizing pot and decrimi- nalizing heroin to some degree is unlikely to cause any more harm than existing drugs. If pot use has not increased significantly in states where it was legalized and current use only causes a fraction of the social stress that smoking and boozing do, then why not legalize it? Ultra conservatives, terrified by the cost of alcohol and ciga- rettes, will call for their banishment. I can’t say I agree with either of these positions. If we legalize everything, shit will hit the fan. How can you say that one harmful substance isn’t as harmful as another, simply because we accept it more out of tradition and eco- nomics than any actual desire to have it around? Besides, much of the reason alcohol and cigarettes take such a heavy toll on society is because of their widespread use. The number of people I’ve met in my life who have used heroin is closer to the number of people I know who don’t Continued: p.8