Angry in the Great White North

From the Globe and Mail:

Carolyn Parrish, the former Liberal MP who stomped on a doll bearing the likeness of U.S. President George W. Bush and was kicked out of caucus for her anti-American statements, is negotiating with senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office and the party to return to the Liberal fold.

Presumably she'll be careful before bad-mouthing foreign leaders. That might be easier for her, given that her latest target is closer to home:

True to form, Ms. Parrish couldn't resist a little demonstration of her outspokenness in yesterday's interview, criticizing Canada's new Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, for his recent comments.

She called him "dangerous" and a "testosterone-filled general," and added that "somebody should put a clamp on his mouth."

General Hillier, of course, stated that the job of the Canadian Forces was to kill people.

"I'm totally offended by him. ..... We are also not a country that is going to easily throw away 100 years of peacekeeping reputation and noble reputation in the world by a testosterone-filled general, and I think somebody should put a clamp on his mouth."

After the long debate of the use of insults, I am going to use one because I see it as a statement of fact, rather than an attempt to belittle someone I don't like.

Here it is: Carolyn Parrish is an irredeemably ignorant woman.

She has no command of facts or history, making stuff up to support her preconceptions and to create an audience, desperate as she is for attention. Canada does not have a century-old tradition of peacekeeping. Peacekeeping wasn't invented until 1957 by Canadian Lester B. Pearson to attempt to defuse the Suez Crisis.

Canada's military tradition is one of courage under fire and fierceness in battle.

Consider the Canadian experience in World War I, going back 90 years:

Vimy, located in northern France, was one of the most heavily defended points on the entire Western Front and was thought to be an impregnable fortress. The Germans had fortified it with tunnels, three rows of trenches behind barbed wire, and numerous machine gun nests. The French and British had suffered thousands of casualties in previous attempts to take the Ridge; the French alone lost 150,000 men at Vimy Ridge in 1915.

The Allied commanders decided to launch another assault in 1917. The duty was given to the still relatively fresh, but previously successful, Canadians.

On April 2, 1917, the Canadian Corps launched the largest artillery barrage in history up to that point. They shelled the German trenches for the next week, using over one million shells. The attack was loud enough that it could be heard in London. At dawn on Easter Monday, April 9, the 30,000-strong Canadian Corps began the attack, using a creeping barrage, a new technique whereby soldiers walked across no-man's land just behind a continuous line of shells (an improvement over previous battles, in which both sides had often shelled their own troops).

Even non-combat units fought and killed that day:

The 87th Battalion suffered 50% casualties. The 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders, who had been intended to be in a supply and construction role, were sent into the battle and the division captured the hill by the end of the day.

And what was the cost of this operation?

By April 12 the Canadians controlled the entire Ridge, at a cost of 3,598 men killed and 7,104 wounded. The German Sixth Army, under General Ludwig von Falkenhausen, suffered approximately 20,000 casualties. The Canadians also took 4,000 Germans as prisoners of war. The loss of the ridge also forced the Germans to retreat to the lower plains that were far more costly to defend.

During World War II, 60 years past, Canadians were entrusted with destroying the German force controlling the Scheldt Estuary, thus controlling the critical port city of Antwerp. Here as the words of Lt. Osborne "Robbie" Robertson of the New Brunswick North Shore Regiment:

"On the 16th we made a fast advance and cut off a number of Jerries in a small village. Our platoon reached the outskirts and then we found we were surrounded in an orchard; the supporting arms had not followed closely enough. About 60 fanatical Jerries [Germans] charged us but we beat them off, leaving half their number in the mud. Twice more they tried it, like madmen, and each time our guns cut them to pieces. Suddenly one of my men was hit and I noticed shots coming from the rear. We got out of the orchard quickly.

"I took the wounded man on my back to get him to cover, but I was hit in the leg and went down. I let the wounded lad crawl to the safety of the canal bank, covering him with a captured German automatic rifle. Then I was hit again and this time I saw the gun that was responsible. Slinging my rifle, I crawled to the canal, slipped into the cold water and moved slowly to a covered spot just opposite the Jerry machine-gun post. I hurled a grenade and wounded one of the gunners badly. The other two ran and that gun was out of action. Another Jerry [machine] gun nearby opened fire on me so I dropped down and fired, getting the gunner. I then got the second man as he tried to use the gun.

"I was able to crawl on and collect my men but it took us some hours to get back to safety. The company stretcher-bearers picked me up and put me on top of a jeep. Away we went under a farewell flurry of Jerry fire. When we reached the regimental aid post the front tire was in shreds and there were 20 holes in the jeep itself. So ended my war."

The battle in the mud and the canals is considered by many historians to have been the most difficult battlefield of WWII, and the Canadians earned the name "Water Rats". They also earned these words of praise:

"The Canadians have proved themselves magnificent fighters. Clearing the Scheldt was a job that could have been done only by first-rate troops. Second-rate troops would have failed." Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, top British officer and second-in-command of the Allied forces in Europe

These Canadians had guts, and were willing to go to any length to defeat and destroy the enemy:

However, the Germans had reserves consisting of a Regiment of Paratroopers under the command of Lt Colonel von der Heydte who were excellent troops. Early the next morning, they commenced counter attacking the Hamiltons. German troops managed to overrun one of the defending companies. One officer, Major Joseph Pigott, saw that there was only one way to stop them and that was calling artillery down on his own HQ. Lt Colonel Whitaker ordered the artillery barrage, and 350 guns opened up and fired 10 rounds each right on Pigott’s position. Fortunately for the Canadians, they were well dug in and they suffered only one minor injury casualty. But the Germans who were counter attacking with tanks and self-propelled guns were completely destroyed.

Sure doesn't sound like peace-keeping. And let's not forget Korea, 50 years ago. The 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry fought Communist Chinese Forces at the Battle of Kap'yong:

About 1 a.m. April 25, a Dog Company platoon was attacked from three sides by large numbers of enemy troops. Two Patricias manning a Vickers machine-gun where killed. Waves of Chinese spilled into the company area. It was hand-to-hand-fight-for-your-life combat. Dog Company was on the verge of being overrun. The company commander, Capt. Wally Mills, requested that artillery be fired on his own positions. The New Zealand gunners obliged. The defenders hugged the bottom of their trenches while artillery shells roared in overhead. The shells scoured everything above ground level, driving off the Chinese. But they returned. More artillery fire followed. 2300 rounds hammered Dog Company positions.

There were many acts of heroism that night. Pte. Ken Barwise single-handedly recaptured the Vickers machine gun lost to the enemy early in the firefight, then took down a number of the enemy advancing towards him. Pte. Wayne Mitchell, a Bren gunner, used the light machine-gun with devastating effect on the enemy. Despite being wounded twice, he fought on even though weak from loss of blood. He was eventually evacuated. L/Cpl. Smiley Douglas, attempted to throw a live grenade out of harm's way to save injury to men in his section. He wasn't quite quick enough. He lost a hand. Ken Campbell, a Dog Company section commander at the time, was severely wounded in a firefight with Chinese swarming his positions. First, three burp gun slugs hit him in the shoulder. He fell, then took two more in the back. One bullet lodged in the lining of his heart; two others collapsed a lung. He eventually recovered.

Sounds like drawing the enemy out and then calling for thousands of artillery shells to be dropped on your head is a tactic they teach our guys. That's not something you teach to people who aren't willing to kill or be killed.

Peacekeeping indeed, General Hillier was right. Canadian soldiers kill people. That's what they've always done. That's what they train to do today. Peacekeeping is a political operation for which soldiers have been shown over and over again to be poorly prepared for.

They do it, though, because that's what their political masters have told them to do. The military has more respect for the civilian government than the civilian government, including the likes of Carolyn Parrish, has ever shown the military. Funny, since the civilian government would not even be here today were it not for the military successes against the enemies of democracy like fascism and communism.

But people like Carolyn Parrish don't care about that. The facts don't matter. What matters is that they see the world in a certain way, and anyone who doesn't see it their way is told to put a clamp on it, even if that person is demonstrably correct.

General Hillier deserves far better than what he gets from the likes of Carolyn Parrish, and so do the veterans she so cavalierly ignored.

A hundred years of military honours earned in the horror of battle by ordinary men who heard the call of duty to defend King and Country dismissed by a radical blowhard with no sense of history or of her own insignificance in it, eager only to score points with equally ignorant products of the post-Trudeau Canada that defines this country not in terms of the events that gave it birth and that were experienced by real living men and women, but in terms of the Liberal-designed network of social services for which the government and bureaucracy demands our unending gratitude.

Carolyn Parrish, go away, and take anyone who takes you seriously with you.

[small dead animals has more.]