Rediscovering our military

It's time we understood the importance of our forces

By Linda Williamson, Toronto Sun

If you thought last week's string of massive military spending announcements -- $15 billion and counting -- was all about buying new toys for our boys and girls in uniform, you really missed the boat. And the plane, truck and helicopter.

It was about something much more fundamental: Our government finally doing its job by rebuilding our armed forces and reminding us all of their importance.

But if you didn't get that, you aren't alone.

Canadians' relationship with our military has been so eroded in this country over the past few decades that it will take a lot more than new equipment to fix the problem.

I'm not talking about the ambivalence of some Canadians toward our current, dangerous mission in Afghanistan. I'm talking about the ambivalence of many of us toward anything to do with our armed forces, period.

Thanks to government neglect and years of recharacterizing our fighting soldiers as "peacekeepers" (little more than armed foreign aid workers), many of us grew up thinking of the military as practically unnecesary and vaguely shameful.

Coming of age in the shadow of Vietnam and under the threat of nuclear war -- and too far removed from the two World Wars to truly understand soldiers' sacrifice -- my generation absorbed a largely negative view of all things military.

Government slashing of defence budgets seemed just fine -- less money for the war-makers, more for health care, right? Besides, this is Canada. Aren't we too nice to fight?

The scary thing is, this idiotic, naive attitude became so pervasive in Canada, it left us with a military crisis that is now going to cost us more billions and decades to turn around.

This troubling tendency to see our military as "peripheral" -- instead of crucial to our survival as a nation -- is the focus of a stunning chapter of the latest report by the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, released on the eve of the government's spending spree.

Most news stories on the report concentrated on its call for a lot more spending than the government's planned $15 billion (the senators, who have warned for five years that Canada can no longer defend itself against a serious terrorist attack, natural disaster or pandemic, want a much bigger, much better-equipped fighting force than even the Conservatives envision). But its passionate call for renewed public understanding of the military is its far more important message.

In fact, it's the title of the report: The Government's No. 1 Job (available online at sen-sec.ca)

"Too many Canadians are indifferent toward -- or wary of -- the concept of a healthy and effective Canadian military," the report warns. While it praises Prime Minister Stephen Harper for things like his stirring speech to the troops in Afghanistan about how Canada must stand strong in the world and no longer cheer from the sidelines, that's only a start.

From before Confederation through the Korean War, Canadians understood the importance of their military, the senators argue -- but post-Vietnam, they "lost touch" with it, culminating in a "monumental lack of interest" by governments and the public by the end of the 20th century.

"Everybody went to sleep," they lament.

Not vulnerable to attack

Even post-9/11, the attitude persists that as long as we're not the big, bad USA, Canada isn't vulnerable to attack (though perversely, many Canadians believe the U.S. will defend us if we are). Cost-cutting, vote-seeking politicians are equally to blame, say the senators, as are (hello!) journalists.

"We have more than 2,300 of our sons and daughters in one of the most dangerous places in the world, and 32 million Canadians should be there with them, but until recently most Canadians probably didn't even know they were there," the senators fume, in an urgent call for informed public debate.

We can -- and should -- argue with each other over the particulars of things like our ongoing mission in Afghanistan. (For instance, I support the mission and strongly disagree with Eric Margolis' view on Page C6 -- but I applaud him for furthering the debate.) What we can't argue with, however, is our duty as a country to rebuild an effective armed forces -- and to support them wholeheartedly in whatever we ask them to do.

"No matter what we think about the rationale for this mission, we have a duty of care to these people," the report declares. "They are there for us. We need to be there for them."

At last, we're giving them the tools they need to fight our battles -- the least we can do is give our hearts and minds as well.