Interesting article about the state of the Canadian Military

Should we just take them over and make them do right?

The other damn irritating thing about Canadians is that terrorists aren't as eager to attack them. and they are liked around the world.

 

Canada should just pay tribute to the US, kind of like how countries on the outskirts paid tribute to the Roman empire.

 

when i think Canada, now...i think Grizzled. thus, i like canada. go canada!!!

 

The Nazis loved the Swiss too.

 

Canada has a military?

 

http://www.satirewire.com/news/feb02/warship.shtml

 

That was pretty funny. I laughed at this part:

"They were armed. With guns," said Omari. "Canadians. With guns. And a warship. What is this world coming to?"

"They were pretty rude, too," Omari added. "They started asking us all sorts of questions, like 'Where did that oil come from?' But first we wanted to know who gave them the damn warship."

 

stupid said:

I couldn't have phrased the current US foreign policy better. I see where they are pissed at the Germans for not spending enough on defense either.

 

Eh. What's the big deal? Who's going to attack them? Canada has only two neighbors, us and Russia. Hardly "threatening" nations. More power to them.

 

Glynch, are YOU calling somebody stupid? hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Anyway, Canada benefits when the United States confronts tyranny in the world. Canada always pulled its weight in previous large conflicts, and they should have stayed prepared.

 

He likes to be called stupid. That's why he cut the head of a Hydra and all he got was that stupidmoniker.

 

I am becoming increasingly convinced that Stupidmoniker is the biggest anti-conservative/jingoism person on this board, and just makes the kind of comments he does to act as an Archie Bunker-like lightning rod for right wing diatribe...Some of the comments he makes are so unbelievable and sophomoric that he just has to be chuckling to himself as he writes them...

On the off chance that he is serious, and is indeed putting into words the exact kind of attitude that I have expressed concerns over with regards to America becoming increasingly imperialistic and perpetuating might is right in the face of everything it once stood for, allow me to make the following comments...

As Antisonic pointed out, Canada is in a fairly interesting position...It has existed between the two largest super-powers in the world for quite some time, since WWII at any rate, and as such is in the position of being militarily irrelevant during peacetime. The purpose of the military arm of a country is to protect itself and, if it desires, enforce it's will upom others. The former is irrelevant, as the only two potential threats, the US and Russia/USSR had militaries with which Canada would be unable to compete even were it to bankrupt itself in attempting, by virtue of it's incredibly low population density, and Canada has, thankfully, never ever expressed any interest in enforcing it's will upon other nations in any capacity other than peace-keeping.

So, given these circumstances, what would you suggest they do? Lower the living conditions of it's citizens in order to create a redundant military arm? Do you seriously think that the American defense expenditure would be lowered one iota were Canada to increase it's own military budget?

In wartime, however, Canada is an entirely different animal...In each of the last two world wars, for example, Canada has had an extremely higher action rate ( % of population fighting) with significantly higher casualty rates for much, much longer than the US. Consider that Canada was given one of the 5 beaches on D-Day, with 2 each going to Great Britain and the USA, despite having less than 10% of either's population. Moreover, post war publications in Europe rated Canadians as having the best soldiers on the Allied side, albeit with some of the worst equipment. Rommell himself said that Canadians were the best natural soldiers the Germans ever faced, seeming impervious to fear or bad conditions..Albert Spper quoted several German Staff officers as saying that the German soldier was better than the Allied, for he combined the discipline of the British, the equipment of the Americans ( this was earlier on), with the character and physical prowess of the Canadians and Australians...( The saying continues that the only area in which they were outdone was when compared with the Russians in sheer volume and expendibility.)

So let's not confuse the Canadians lack of military prioritization during peacetime with a Swiss-like indifference. It is true that Canadians are generally very well liked throughout the world, and it is as much for their proven willingness to kick in during war as their policy of staying out of other people's business during peacetime.

And, in a final note, the comment about the Germans and Swiss was unfair, inaccurate, and offensive to Canadians and to Swiss. For one thing, there is no comparison, and the assumption that because Bush has decided that war is the way to go, contrary to worldwide opinion, equates with the situation facing everyone during WWII is ludicrous and childish. Secondly, the assumption that Swiss neutrality was somehow a tacit approval of the Nazi structure is very wrong, and the Swiss were loved by the Allies for being a bastion of relative freedom in the midst of an otherwise Axis european map as by anyone else for any other reason...Most Allied escapees from Nazi POW camps made for the refuge of Switzerland, and it provided for a center of Allied espionage operations in enemy otherwise territorymuch the same way that Ireland was for the Germans...

 

Why can't I edit my post?

 

It is extremely misleading to say that 'Bush is the only actor in the world that is in favor of removing Saddam.' It is simply FALSE.

I'm not sure how unfair it is in light of glynch's comment about 'terrorists not eager to attack them and they are liked.' The Canadians, like the Swiss, are not assuming the roles as France or Britian were pre-WWII, nor the role that the US has taken since WWII, and more importantly in the post-Cold War world. So they are not the number one target of people like bin Laden. A valid point can be made that an aggressor will not dislike nor attack an ally. The Nazis didn't attack the Swiss. Why? At least in the later stages of the war it was because they needed the Swiss to launder their plundered gold to finance their war machine. A task the Swiss were only to happy to do, and which resulted in their being the richest Euro country at the end of the war. I don't think it was ever intimated that the Canadians are collaborating with Osama & the Loonies.

The Swiss stole from holocaust victims and they traded with the Nazis and Italians. At least ATTEMPT to paint a balanced picture.

"As its trading partners began to refuse to accept the German Reichsmark, Germany increasingly had to turn to making payments in gold in exchange for foreign hard currency and for materials and goods vital to the German war effort. Between January 1939 and June 30, 1945, Germany transferred gold worth around $400 million ($3.9 billion in today's values) to the Swiss National Bank in Bern. Of this amount, the Swiss National Bank bought about three-quarters, worth $276 million ($2.7 billion today), and the remainder went directly to the accounts of other countries in payment for goods and raw materials.

...in addition to its critical banking role for the Nazis, Switzerland's industries engaged in direct production for the Axis and helped protect Axis investments; Swiss shipping lines also furnished Germany with a large number of boats for the transport of goods. Switzerland also allowed an unprecedented use of its railways to link Germany and Italy for the transport of coal and other goods. Switzerland provided Germany with arms, ammunition, aluminum, machinery and precision tools, as well as agricultural products. Swiss convoys carried products from Spain across France through Switzerland to Germany. Swiss banks serviced Nazi markets in Latin America. This conduct continued even as the Germans retreated and the threat of invasion evaporated. As late in the War as early 1945, Switzerland vitiated an agreement it had just reached with the United States to freeze German assets and to restrict purchases of gold from Germany.

The amount of Germany's gold reserves before the War was well known. Clearly, the evidence presented in this report is incontrovertible: the Swiss National Bank and private Swiss bankers knew, as the War progressed, that the Reichsbank's own coffers had been depleted, and that the Swiss were handling vast sums of looted gold. The Swiss were aware of the Nazi gold heists from France of Belgian gold as well as from other countries."

 

Hey, thanks Max! I must say that you’ve also dramatically changed my mental image of a conservative Texan, for the better.

Fadaway has a point here. And it isn’t only the "peace dividend" that our current government has been spending. There has been a lot of simple opportunism too. To a significant extent we live under the umbrella of the American military, so it has been believed by our current governing party that diverting spending from our military would make little practical difference. But these spending cuts been so extreme that they have begun to take a toll on our ability to even patrol our boarders. Several years ago we had several rusty boatloads of illegal immigrants from Funan province in China approach our shores. Two were intercepted at the last minute. One apparently made land in a remote area without us even knowing. That is EXTREMELY bad, IMO. If a rusty ship with a couple hundred illegal immigrants lands on our shores without us even knowing, how on earth are we going to be able to stop more sophisticated, discrete terrorists? This was pre 9/11, so I certainly hope boarder security has improved, but there is no doubt that our military is in a sorry state. And as fadaway says, we also can’t keep the Spanish (and others) from poaching all our fish. Perhaps this is a job for the Coast Guard rather than the military, but we don’t have enough of them either.
Chretien will soon be gone, however, and it’ll be interesting to see how Paul Martin changes our military spending. We don’t need to spend like the US does, but we need a certain level of. (The US, being a superpower, spends a lot but also gains a lot from the industry. It develops the technologies and sells them to us and other countries, and also reaps the benefits of spin off technology and industries. It would be interesting to know what the net effect of your military spending and industries is on your economy.)

And I think MacBeth is right about the nature of Canadians. There is some truth to the stereotype of the polite but diligent Mountie. We’re a bit gosh golly polite most of the time, but when there is a cause we strongly believe in, we band together and remain steadfast. This has many implications, one of which is that for best results you need to appeal to us as allies.

Anyway, enough of this. It’s Christmas eve! Merry Christmas all!