How I learned to stop worrying and love the YFS
Written by Francois Villeneuve - Technology Editor
Wednesday, 16 November 2005
Many people have weighted in recently about the students who chased the Canadian military off campus. There have been a few demagogic sleight of hands that I want to comment about, and then I want to say why I changed my opinion on the whole matter.
One of the arguments that one person used was, roughly: How dare they criticize the people that defended democracy during WWII? Past performance of an organization, of course, is the only barometer of their current performance. Just like the Republican Party of America under Abraham Lincoln, that led the United States into civil war against slavery in the south; today, you would think that the Republican Party would be the party most friendly to African-Americans, right? Thought so.
Another argument brought forward is that the YFS councillors represent all York students, and therefore should be "apolitical", and not show any "bias". I am always amazed by these conservative politicians who ask other politicians not to engage in politics. YFS councillors and executives ran in a political election against other candidates and won. Of course they don't represent the opinion of every single student on campus. That's a fact of democracy. You can show your disagreement with them, but you should not attack them for exercising their right to free speech, whether they represent their elected constituency or not, Mr. Hummel.
While I do not agree with these criticisms, I agreed with these writers: I did not think that the Canadian Military should be chased off campus by students. The military is, after all, only doing what politicians are telling it to do. The people we should protest against really are the Liberals sitting in the House of Commons. Furthermore, the Canadian Forces are mostly involved in UN-sponsored "Blue Helmet" do-good missions, right?
Oh, could I not have been more wrong.
I was just reading the CCPA Monitor, an Ottawa-based publication, in which I found startling numbers. In 1992-93, participation in UN missions accounted for 92.7 per cent of Canadian Military spending. So far, so good. But by 2004-05, before the Liberal/NDP budget, the percentage of our military spending towards Blue Helmet missions went down to 0.3 per cent.
Holy shit. What happened to my Canada, the very creator of the concept of Blue Helmet missions?
Our "peaceful" and beloved country, from Brian Mulroney to Paul Martin, has increasingly moved our military to integrate with the United States. Sure, Ti-Jean did not send us into Iraq, but he sent the largest contingent of soldiers to Afghanistan, thus freeing U.S. soldiers to go fight that other war while we were mopping up after the U.S.'s "Bomb first, ask about reconstruction later" policy.
Since then, our federal government has ushered in the largest increase in military spending since WWII. According to the Monitor, we will be spending more money on our military than at any time during the Cold War. That was a global conflict in which the maximum threat was a total thermonuclear meltdown, the End of Life On Earth As We Know It.
Terrorism is not good, but for God's sake (get it?), this is a much smaller problem. Let's spend that budget increase on social programs instead of broken submarines, and please, kick the military off my campus.
Friends don't let friends fight on behalf of the United States.
