Dear Editor: Re: Lest we forget the peacekeepers, The Record, Aug. 9. While I applaud your editorial advice that we should honour those Canadians who have served us so well as peacekeepers, you are mistaken in creating a false distinction between "a strong, military nation ready for war" and "a nation that uses its strength to help others."
The success of Canadian efforts in past UN peacekeeping missions, whether in the Middle East, Cyprus or elsewhere, lay precisely in the fact that the soldiers we sent were ready for war. Canadian soldiers are soldiers first and foremost, that is, as General Hillier put it in words that were correct, although too blunt for some, their job is to kill people when we require them to do so. It is only if they are a strong military ready for war that they can be effective as peacekeepers. When they have been sent out in insufficient numbers or peacekeeping units have not been capable of fighting effectively, as in General Dallaire's doomed mission to Rwanda, they have failed miserably.
It is because the Canadian Armed Forces have kept the ability to fight and succeed when challenged that they can be successful peacekeepers - when the rules are clear and the parties they are separating know the consequences of challenging them.
The relative insignificance of our contribution to current UN "peacekeeping" missions, as opposed to our intense involvement in more active UN-authorized missions such as Afghanistan and Libya, is not because our soldiers have suddenly been given a new priority of being ready for war - that has always been their priority. We are engaged in fewer traditional peacekeeping operations because there are so few traditional peacekeeping operations left. The old model of enforcing a truce between two warring states, such as between Egypt and Israel, has little relevance to the issue of how to stabilize nations such as Afghanistan or the Congo. There are fewer Canadian troops wearing blue berets because there is less need for them and more opportunity now for regional powers, such as the African Union, to supply soldiers to help their neighbours when needed.
Canada has done what is has been called to do, and there is no evidence to support your suggestion that our soldiers are any less willing or capable to do their job as peacekeepers if asked to do so. Nor is there any evidence to support a proposition that Canada is less well thought of in the world because of our current international policies.
As for your suggestion that honouring those who defended Canada in the War of 1812 is "warmongering," the suggestion is insulting to all Canadians who value their own history. While you may not like to be reminded of the fact, Canada's emergence as an independent nation was never inevitable. We achieved what we have today through the struggle and sacrifice of many men and women in this nation. It is as ludicrous for you to suggest that honouring those sacrifices is wrong as it would be for you to urge that we abolish Remembrance Day as or that we resolve to ignore the centenary of the First World War or Vimy Ridge. Those events, like the War of 1812, are tragic and sad reminders of how much was lost by so many in the development of our country, but like the War of 1812 it would be a tragedy to allow them to be forgotten.
You do not have to denigrate the memory of others in order to honour the peacekeepers of Canada.
Mike Redmond
New Westminster
