By Mike Nickerson
Can you hear it? No? Good gracious me, your ears should be bleeding by now. The drums, old stick, the drums. No, not that snot-nosed little whelk down the street who thinks he’s the next coming of Keith Moon. That’s just prepubescent noise. No dear reader, I mean those pounding war drums!
Hyperbole you say? Tell that to your friendly neighbourhood generals, who will set you straight on the matter. They won’t be hard to spot: look for those rather frazzled and sleep-deprived folks with a lot of brass on their chest, jumping up and down and pointing at the sky as if it were about to fall. And I dare say they have plans to keep that sky up where it belongs, ones that involve just about every Canadian short of those on life support or in preschool. The great Canadian mobilization is nigh dear reader…time to start doing some sit-ups.
As reported in the Ottawa Citizen by intrepid reporter and Esprit de Corps senior writer David Pugliese, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan WANTS YOU! And not just you, but 399,999 of your fellow Canadians, to be ready to go to war when she starts banging that military drum of hers. Originally this was going to involve some 300,000 civil servants who were to be dragooned (well, strongly encouraged at least) into service, an idea that went over about as well as a lead F-35 when it came to light (and a tad cheeky to boot given that the civil service is about to be downsized). Nonetheless, what’s clear is that Canada’s military leaders are rather keen to get everyone (the “whole of society” or “WoS” in military speak) involved in preparing for the worst. Suffice it to say, our military wants Canada on a war footing as fast as our little patriotic feet can get us there.
The immediate reaction was one of laughter and ridicule, if for no other reason than our military currently can’t recruit itself out of a wet paper bag much less swell its ranks to numbers not seen since the Second World War. And even if they somehow manage to convince a citizenry that takes civics about as seriously as tales of the Tooth Fairy there is then the small issue of how we would provide the kit for our legions to march off to oblivion; perhaps we’ll just wave our hockey sticks in the air and hope for the best.
What’s clear though is that our military brain trust is seriously worried about how close to war we are getting. And you can’t exactly blame them given the various global threats, be it in the form of increased conflict and global tensions or the ever-growing pressures of climate change. As Brigadier-General Brendan Cook opined to a stunned audience last June, “we know that right now the peak threat to the world is about between 2028 and 2030.” Yes those war drums are pounding, if from nowhere else than our own military.
So while much has been discussed about swelling the ranks, the merits and perhaps necessity for mandatory service, along with a critical need to spend, spend, spend like (quite literally) there’s no tomorrow on whatever military hardware we can get our terror-stricken hands on, what’s not being discussed is what we’re doing to avoid a looming global conflict that is apparently only years away. Where’s that big bag of cash for Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand to go out there and help quiet things down? It should be all hands on deck for whoever’s left at Foreign Affairs, yet instead they’re dealing with more cuts!
Well here’s a little idea I offer up at no charge to the powers that be in Ottawa: if you’re going to somehow get Canadians onside with the need for not just billions in military hardware but this whole “WoS” concept that is currently about as palatable as a rancid dew worm, you better prove to them you’re doing something serious to avoid sending everyone off to another meat grinder. Few Canadians are hearing those war drums pound. It’d be nice if we could put some effort into silencing them before they do.
