View from a bubble
Wente's Remembrance Day column starts out as a fairly standard, if boring, family memoir about veterans. But it reveals its true colours at the end.
She writes of her childhood as a "still-patriotic age", implying that neither Canadians nor Americans today are patriotic anymore. Oh really?
She writes nobody argued about the morality of wars back then. It was a simpler and more innocent time. Wrong on two levels. First of all, if you fight and kill without hesitation, that makes you less innocent, not more. Second of all, neither of World Wars I and II were uncontroversial. Quebec largely opposed both and reacted furiously when conscription was imposed. The United States delayed entry into both for years because of its strong sense of isolationism.
She goes on to complain that war is no longer a universal experience, and that, apparently is a "loss". The estimated 650,000 Iraqis who have died in that country's conflict would beg to disagree. Rich, powerful countries no longer fight each other as they did decades ago; they pick smaller, weaker victims who do most of the suffering and dying.
And let's not forget that Margaret Wente supported the war in Iraq - a war that even she now admits was a mistake. It is easy for her, sitting comfortably in her cosseted newspaper office, to call for death and destruction to be rained on someone else's country.
She writes of her childhood as a "still-patriotic age", implying that neither Canadians nor Americans today are patriotic anymore. Oh really?
She writes nobody argued about the morality of wars back then. It was a simpler and more innocent time. Wrong on two levels. First of all, if you fight and kill without hesitation, that makes you less innocent, not more. Second of all, neither of World Wars I and II were uncontroversial. Quebec largely opposed both and reacted furiously when conscription was imposed. The United States delayed entry into both for years because of its strong sense of isolationism.
She goes on to complain that war is no longer a universal experience, and that, apparently is a "loss". The estimated 650,000 Iraqis who have died in that country's conflict would beg to disagree. Rich, powerful countries no longer fight each other as they did decades ago; they pick smaller, weaker victims who do most of the suffering and dying.
And let's not forget that Margaret Wente supported the war in Iraq - a war that even she now admits was a mistake. It is easy for her, sitting comfortably in her cosseted newspaper office, to call for death and destruction to be rained on someone else's country.
posted by Tyrone at
9:42 p.m.
3 Comments:
And when she has no kin and skin in the killing fields, so to speak!
By
susansmith, at November 12, 2006 9:16 a.m.
You nailed her on her witless "nobody argued about the morality of war" as quite clearly francophones did in this country (when it was viewed mostly as an Anglo-European imperial squabble) and Americans did by delaying their participation.
It's just this kind of assertive ignorance that Wente indulges in so often in that discredits her completely.
By
Anonymous, at November 12, 2006 12:19 p.m.
I'm a couple of years older than Wente, but my memory is still good enough to remember that the Vietnam War didn't exactly get universal support. I also recall how incensed the United States was at Canada's refusal to participate. So maybe she's senile. Seems to be common among Canadian media stars.
By
Anonymous, at November 15, 2006 4:35 p.m.
Post a Comment
<< Home