April 2003
by Barry Stagg
Military readiness is a somewhat foreign concept for many modern Canadians. It is exotic and foreign in two senses: Firstly, it is associated negatively with our militarily potent southern neighbour and secondly, it is contrary to the conceit of neutralism that many have adopted as a national ethic. Both attitudes are shallow, not rooted in any substance and capable of change, both in the very short term and over the longer haul.
Canadians are little different from many detached Americans who prefer no role for military power in their lives. This element considers militarism as a function of domestic morality , in the sense of equating military power with violence and thus deploring it. This is the result of the moral and social laziness induced by nearly sixty years of peace since the end of the Second World War. Laziness is a better word than complacency here because the present attitudes are bereft of any concern for our security rather than an assumption that security is adequately served. After the September 11,2001 terrorist mass murders, Americans by and large have been shattered into the realization that security is a very live and dangerous issue. Canadians as a group have lingered a little longer in their cocoon of cosy obliviousness. There is absolutely no group homogeneity on these matters in either country.
What there is in Canada is a distressing group sense of moral superiority, an aloofness born of too many people assuming their white collar prosperity is self-generated and not a primary function of the commercial tranquility and certainty that American power brings to our continent and our part of the world economy. These people are further burdened by the inevitable rigidity of attitudes that come when a main demographic group- the post-war generation, the Boomers- reach middle age and beyond. Having lived lives of peace and never having had to serve militarily , our present leaders, say a 57 year-old Liberal born in 1946, are certain that nothing need now change.
Change, of course, is not a captive function of group planning no matter how pervasive the planning and managerial ethos may dominate society. Change on the matter of national safety, military competence and the relationship between security and morality has been thrust upon Americans by the brutishness of the terrorist attacks on them. Canadians have lagged on this, largely because of the casual and cost-free anti-Americanism of the government and its core supporters. Now the Liberal government is learning a basic lesson: Anti-American posturing is no longer a free commodity; there are significant costs for government and for Canadians as a whole.
Ordinary people, young and old, see the need to have tools in place to preserve law and order. National security and international protection from terrorist spontaneity are seen in common sense fashion as aspects of keeping order. The change in our country is in the realization that order must be kept by something other than recitations of the codes of political correctness. The days of pre-eminence are over for the Northern Peaceniks, the postmodern Pollyannas from Canada who effect moral superiority while hiding their heads in the sands of their favourite Florida beach.
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