"Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian between meals." -Ammon Hennacy

Last week, while having supper with the OL and Jeremy and Marie, an older lady dropped off a pamphlet at our table. It was a single 5x8.5 printed page promoting "peace". I read through the points it made and then borrowed a pen and beside each point wrote a response. Some of their (the them being the Saskatoon coalition for peace or whatever they're called) points made no sense at all and some were alright, but one point they made irritated me. Actually, it's a point that has also been made by the NDP and Green parties, and peace groups all over in Canada. The point is that Canada should pull it's troops out of Afghanistan. My response is "Bullshit!"

I would like to think I'm a pacifist, but I'm not foolish enough to think that if you just leave a violent situation alone it'll work itself out. If we had not had troops in Cyprus or Bosnia or Haiti, would the situation in those countries have simply "worked themselves out". What this group is actually promoting is a form of deep seated and ignorantly focused Anti-Americanism that blinds them into betraying the ideals that this country has promoted for years and that has made us respected and even loved in many parts of the world. Our military, by and large, serves one purpose; to stand in the gap between the violent and the innocent. Just because the ones that screwed the place up are the Americans doesn't mean we should stop trying to help the ones left behind.