These probably should be two separate posts, but some comments on both.
1) Six more Canadians have been killed in the line of duty -- and as is becoming all too frequent in Afghanistan they were felled by a roadside bomb. This in a week when NATO made some very significant gains against the Taliban in Kandahar. As we get set to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Canada's first significant victory in war but an extremely bloody one nonetheless, I still think Canadians are numb to the idea about why we're fighting. It still bothers me that many think that we're a peacekeeping nation and not a warmongering one.
It bears repeating that Canada is not nor has it ever been a neutral state. We stand on the side of democracy and we will protect those interests where and when we see fit. Furthermore, one can't keep the peace if there is no peace to keep; and we're not the ones who fired the opening shot -- the Taliban did when they attacked one of our allies on 9/11 and murdered two dozen Canadians in the massacre. We're probably been longer in Afghanistan than we should have but we've made a commitment to stay until 2009 and we have to keep it. NATO's cutting and running there is entirely different than that "other war" that has the States bogged down -- because it's in Afghanistan that the terrorists have their real home and we need to get rid of them.
No, I'm no pacifist. The price of war is casualties and we have to deal with that. It's time for the media to tell the people that war is hell and not a picnic. To defend religious freedom against those who want one world religion and one totally alien even to devout Muslims we have to draw a line in the sand.
2) Johnny Hart, the creator of the B.C. comic strip and co-creator of The Wizard of Id (which he co-wrote with Brant Parker) , died yesterday at his home in Endicott NY. He was 76.
I really liked both cartoon strips for being so topical about contemporary events even though they were set in time periods having nothing to do with the present (pre-history and the Middle Ages, respectively); and for being politically incorrect before the term P.C. became part of the lingua franca. One memorable strip from Id shows a condemned man about to be hanged. The prisoner is asked if he has any last words. The prisoner asks the king if it's being shown on television. "All three networks." The prisoner, hooded, breaks the fourth wall and says, "Hi, Mom!"
In later years both cartoons became extremely controversial (although the controversy was fermented by the MSM) because Hart, a devout Christian, embedded religious and political messages in his strips. Frankly, I think the censorship he faced that came from liberals with B.C. was just as bad as the kind sought by Joe McCarthy during the 50s and by neo-cons William Donohue and Brent Bozell III today.
One showed a woman washing her sheets in dirty and bloodied water and shocked to see them come out pure white. She looked up the hill and saw the three crosses as Golgotha. Another showed a menorah turning into a cross which insulted Jewish people. A third showed a guy going into an outhouse and slamming the door. (The "slam" was written in a narrow bar as if to say "Islam" and the outhouse had the stereotype crescent moon which is also a Muslim symbol.) Some newspapers fearing their readership pulled that day's strip all together.
A fourth strip from last December, on the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, showed a guy looking in a dictionary for the word infamy. The definition: "A word seldom used after Toyota sales topped 2 million."
Offensive? Damn right. But Hart called it like he saw it and in that way was a hero to people on both sides of the divide as well as those in the middle like me. If he managed to stand tall in the face of persecution, then we need to do so as well. Especially with what's at stake in Tora Bora and Kandahar and Kabul.
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