Silly Little Country

An Excellent Sad Post from Terry Glavin

Terry Glavin's frustrations with former allies gets some pretty clear expression in this post.

One last thing, though. Say Dobbin's right, and the Afghan mission really has changed Canada in some historic, fundamental way. How will historians look back on these times, and what big shift in the nature of Canada will they see?

It is my fear that the smart historians will notice that it was in Afghanistan that the Canadian Left's progressive internationalism died, and was buried, after autopsies revealed the cause of death as the replacement of international solidarity and socialist polemics with delusional windbaggery and the rote citing of neo-fascist drivel. Maybe we will even look back and remember the Afghan conflict as that critical historical moment when the mainstream "Left" in Canada ceased to be an effective force for progress entirely, and instead became a force of reaction and an irrelevant echo chamber for conspiracy theories and urban legends.

...

Meanwhile, in Kandahar, seeing to the enrolment of just one woman in a maternal and infant-health course is not just a profoundly meaningful and concrete act of solidarity, and it's not just an expression of progressive internationalism, either. It's a revolutionary act.

Over the past nine months, thanks the efforts of soldiers like Tylere Couture and rest of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, Kandahar's Department of Public Health has delivered maternal and infant-health courses to about 800 women. That's 800 little revolutions.

So go right ahead and wring your hands about the Americanization of Canada, and feel free to wet your pants about imaginary pipelines while you're at it. There's work to be done, now, and that's why I'm sticking with people like Tylere Couture: Idealist, progressive, essayist, soldier.

Read the whole thing and add him to your daily reading.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:36 AM