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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
July 14, 2002
Killing people
Today for a change I shall write about something that should not be controversial. My subject will be "killing people" and I shall argue in favour of this. To be clear I should immediately explain that I am not in favour of killing people casually or indiscriminately. Neither my secular political principles nor my religious beliefs would countenance such behaviour. Instead I favour killing people such as terrorists or soldiers of monstrous regimes for the express purpose of preventing them from killing others including ourselves. Better of course if we can somehow induce them to surrender en masse; persuade the whole lot of them to put down their arms go back where they came from and live in peace. But in the meantime we must continue killing them. It is a position that was not in fact controversial until quite recently in our history. There are surprisingly few people who came of age before the later 1960s who have much doubt about the necessity of killing people in personal or collective self-defence (which most certainly includes hot pursuit). It was almost universally held that in the state of war (always of course assuming that the war is justified and necessary) one sets about purposely to kill people on the other side -- uniformed military by preference. This was in a larger context in which it is understood that the enemy is also trying to kill people on our side -- again only uniformed military if that enemy has any decency at all. Only within that formalized arena should life be reduced to kill or be killed. And let me add cherubically: that if we can capture them alive without mortal risk to ourselves and keep them reliably under lock and key so much the better. For there is one more concession to be make to the "liberal" impulse which is a fine thing within the boundaries of reason. Even if for sake of argument the enemy were upon us and there were some way to defeat him with no loss of life such as a way to sever his supply lines and surround him with overwhelming and irresistible force so that he comes out with his hands up and no tricks I'm game for trying. We must always prefer to accept a surrender. War is war but everything that helps to distinguish it from mere carnage is worth some extra effort. That's enough concessions. Now down to business. Our troops in Afghanistan -- and I am referring today to our Canadian troops -- were sent to help the Americans fight an enemy who observes no rules of decency has no intention of surrendering under any circumstances and will if left unmolested perform fresh deeds as malicious and spectacular as the attack upon Manhattan last Sept. 11. Here is an enemy so perfectly demented and satanic that he leaves us no choice but to hunt him down and kill him as we can. I wrote two weeks ago on the eve of Dominion Day about the "two nations" Canada has become; the one being the old actual historical one that among its many real accomplishments proudly fought and contributed so much to winning two 20th-century world wars; contrasting this the new bloodless unhistorical fake designer Canada with which our Liberal party has been replacing it for more than a generation. This is the unctuous self-indulgent "peacekeeping" Canada which observes a kind of state vegetarianism in the face of the evils of this world. The old Canada had a proud martial tradition; and some of it survives to the present day. Our contribution to the wars in which we vindicated the liberties of our Western civilization were out of all proportion to our size. Even today our troops though practically disarmed by a federal government that ranks national defence among its lowest priorities continue to benefit from a tradition of training and leadership that made the individual Canadian soldier among the world's most feared in combat. Nothing could express the disgrace of the "new Canada" so eloquently as what we learned last week: that we would have to read Soldier of Fortune magazine to discover the heroic exploits of our snipers in Afghanistan. For our government our Department of National Defence and even the media class of this "new Canada" are now so timidly "politically correct" that they can't bring themselves to mention what our troops do. During Operation Anaconda in March two three-man teams of Canadian snipers from Edmonton's 3rd Princess Patricia's took out Al Qaeda and Taliban machine-gun nests and mortar positions while covering U.S. infantry under intense fire on the slopes of the Shah-i-Kot on the east side of the valley above the village of Sherkankel at altitudes up to 12 000 feet. They killed more than 20 of this enemy with rifles only including according to the report confirmed kills at 2 400 and 2 310 metres. (The previous .50-calibre world record of 2 250 metres having been set by a U.S. marine near Duc Pho Vietnam back in 1967.) They thus saved the lives of many American soldiers ascending a ridge free of vegetation and entirely exposed. And they did it resourcefully adapting U.S. army ammunition when their own inadequate supplies ran out; and wearing British desert kit because the Canadian Forces couldn't even supply them with proper clothing. At one point to get resupplied a certain Corporal "Ed" (nom-de-guerre) of Manuels Nfld. had to run down the ridge under enemy fire across the valley and back loaded down nearly fainting on his return from altitude sickness. On his way back he had been put to the trouble of eliminating Al Qaeda firing at him from the cover of a streambed by dexterous use of a 40mm grenade launcher he happened to be carrying. These are the guys we don't want to know about. Think about that for a few years. As postscript I would like to say something about our Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson. She is taking seriously her symbolic role at the head of our armed forces. I understand she prevailed over political resistance to establish an important new Canadian military award the Commander-in-Chief Unit Commendation. It goes for starters to 1st Battalion Royal 22nd Regiment "Vandoos" for lifting the Serb siege of the Sarajevo airport in the summer of 1992 (enabling humanitarian relief flights to land) and to 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's for service in Croatia in 1993 (where their gunplay prevented a Croat attempt at "ethnic cleansing"). I can't recall ever previously having said anything good about Ms Clarkson. But in this case a heartfelt "Bravo!" David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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