Sunday, August 31, 2014

Con Canuck cold warriorerness

Laurie Hawn must be feeling downright nostalgic these days, what with RCAF CF-18s in Europe squaring off against the Ruskies, again. He was there in the 1970s driving CF-104 Starfighters. In the linked Star piece, Hawn talks about being chased out of East German airspace by their MiGs. I thought this was interesting so I googled around and found a more complete account of Hawn's navigation moment that paints a less macho picture of events. Seems Hawn got lost and accidently found himself somewhere over East Germany where MiGs were scrambled to meet him. He turned around and zoomed back to West Germany only to be intercepted by NATO Phantoms. Read between the lines in the second, and you realise that he was likely nearly shot down by both sides.

However, for all the ridiculous swagger coming out of the Cons about the Russians, they're about as bad as it gets when it comes to defence spending. Take heart though because Canada's views and means matter little.

Where we used to have strength was in mediation and negotiation between adversaries.  At one point, we'd a lot of good thinkers and worldly people in our diplomatic corps. Peace was a national policy objective and something to be proud of, but for a few hillbillies in the hinterlands. Now Canada's got nothing but childish jingoistic hillbillies who will mouth off on Twitter (seriously!) about Putin and the Russians knowing they can scurry behind serious NATO members.

Keep this up, and the Germans, Americans, and British will tell Canada to keep its yap shut whilst they get on with the deadly serious business of avoiding a major war with Russia. Come to think of it, Hawn's experience may have been an uncanny foreshadow.

2 comments:

Steve said...

Putty Pout is a serious man filled in with life experience,Fat Steve only has filling.

Fact of life superpowers feel they have a manifest destiny and works both ways.

gingersnap said...

What do you mean people? Harper the hero told Israel, he will back them up to the hilt and encouraged Israel, to make war on Palestine. Israel has now appropriated land from Palestine, to build a new settlement for themselves. How is that for disgusting?

Actually Dobbin said, Harper is the Americans useful idiot. Harper and Baird are dumb enough to threaten other countries with their big fat mouths when, Canada can't fight their way out of, a wet paper bag. Harper chopped our military, right down to the bare bones.

We went to war so, we wouldn't have a fascist dictator, running our country. Quite frankly. Harper is not worth our young Canadian boys dying for.