Just sent this to Lorrie Goldstein a couple of minutes ago. It won't make a difference, but at least he now knows w/out a shadow of a doubt what the msn of the CF is, and has been for as long as I've been around, (50 yrs)
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[email protected]
Your column "Death of a Soldier" dated 12 July 06
Lorrie,
I am a retired army reserve sergeant with twenty years service. Please allow me to comment on the last couple of lines of the above noted article.
I joined the Canadian Force (Militia) in 1975. At that time Canada was involved in several major peacekeeping missions including the Golan, and Cyprus. When I joined the first thing I learned was the mission of the Canadian Armed Forces. Lorrie, it was NOT "to maintain the peace between warring or hostile factions". It was:
To close with, and destroy the enemy.
I was told that, and I remembered it from day one. No one who joins the reserve has any doubt about the mission of the CF, and no illusions about peacekeeping vs. peacemaking. To this day that remains the mission of the Canadian Forces.
Peacekeeping is just another task in the CF, just like sandbagging floodwaters in Winnipeg, or fighting forest fires in BC--both very civil pursuits carried out by a large body of trained, physically fit, and disciplined young men and women. But back in 1975, just as now, the Canadian army's mission was NEVER peacekeeping, or sandbagging, or firefighting. It was war fighting. Please do what you can as a journalist to put this silly and pointless myth of the CF as peacekeepers to bed. We did peacekeeping when that was what our government ordered us to do. We do warfighting when the government calls us to that.
Yours truly,
TWL