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Originally Posted by Hondaracer
There’s no honour in fighting wars based out of legislatures and office buildings.
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Wars have always been fought out of office buildings and wars, invariably, are started by horrible people - today it's Putin and Netanyahu, yesterday it was Hitler and Kim Il Sung. Somebody wants more power and diplomacy doesn't get it for them so war it is. I'm not here to advocate for war - war is bad but sometimes we have to do our part and get our hands dirty. It doesn't mean we put troops on the front lines either - it can be money, resources or people, it can be in support of the war machine or directly as the war machine (let's be real, we're not really capable of being part of the war machine).
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Originally Posted by Hondaracer
Canada was backed into a corner once again by the states with their spending commitments to defence, we dropped the ball for so long and relied so heavily on the US for protection that they finally woke up. All this spending on Ukraine can be largely chalked up to making up for historical shortcomings Canada has always been a part of.
Now what? We’re going to have to pay the price with both $$$ and man power?
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You know that we've been engaged in wars for a long time right?
Over the last 60 years, Canada has deployed troops to Europe (NATO), the Middle East (Cyprus, Sinai, Lebanon, Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria), Africa (Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Mali, Congo), the Caribbean (Haiti), and Asia (Korea observers). We've actually had troops in Ukraine since 2015 (doing training). Present day we are in Latvia, Ukraine, Mali, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Congo, South Sudan, and Cyprus.
The idea that Canada is open to putting troops on the ground in another war zone is not novel and not new - Ukraine is just the latest potential deployment of an over-extended military to support our partners.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hondaracer
There’s going to be a time, likely pretty quick, where the general public is going to lose its appetite for engaging in these conflicts.
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We seem to have an ongoing appetite for this considering how many theatres of war we've been a part of in the last 60 years. The reality is that we've pretty much been at war for the past 60 years in some way and the public is largely unaware of it (you clearly were not).
Again, I'm not here to say we SHOULD send troops to Ukraine (or anywhere else for that matter) but it's always an option anytime there is trouble in the world and Canada has been doing it consistently for decades - where that line is for when we should and shouldn't isn't mine to decide nor can I form an educated opinion on what that should be (there's just too much to consider). I leave that to the federal gov't.