Response Regarding Support from Mississauga Councillor

To Soldiers currently serving overseas:
First - please know that I support your hard work, passion, efforts and commitment 100% as well as the majority of Canadians do... now..
Secondly... cover your eyes and skip to the next posting.

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

~ Mahatma Gandi

To the remaining readers:
Well.. I hummed and hawed about posting this email that I received. After some thought, I decided to do so (at her request).
This is a response (one of many received by Military Parents and Soldiers) from Mississauga's Councillor Carolyn Parrish.
Should she be working for the people in an elected office in Canada?

___________________________________________________________

Received on: July 18, 2007 10:29:25 AM
Received from: Carolyn Parrish,
Ward 6 Councillor, Mississauga, ON

Many people put their lives on the line
every day.My dad, as a Toronto cop, did
so for 37 years.He knew that when he
joined the force - as do firemen, guys
who man oil rigs in the ocean and many
other jobs people do every day.
They're all trained to be as safe
as possible,as are our soldiers fighting
under normal circumstances.Afghanistan is
not normal.  Many of our soldiers signed
up not knowing the conditions under which
they'd be fighting.  And Canada is not
under attack.Politicians sent them there
for political reasons - reasons I don't
agree with.  To those who hove returned
from fighting I say "thank God you're
home safely.I'm sorry you had to endure
terrible hardships to make some politicians
happy."  I'm sorry, but we'll have to
agree to disagree on Afghanistan.
I hope you broadcast this and my other
response to your network.
For me, the subject is now finished.

Sincerely,
Carolyn

Ward 6 Councillor


.. and... This was her first response to
Supporting Our Troops: 

Received on: July 13, 2007 2:09:08 PM
Received from: Carolyn Parrish
Ward 6 Councillor
Mississauga, ON

Dear Military Mom,

Thank you for your e-mail and for attaching several others.
Since they do not include e-mail addresses,
I would hope you'll forward this
response to them.

As a former member of the federal government, I'm well aware
of the various methods used by the highly-paid spin doctors
to garner support for a government position.
Today, polls show 67% of Canadians do not support our current
military involvement in Afghanistan.  We have a long
tradition, starting with Lester B. Pearson, of Peacekeeping.
And the world recognizes this.
Ergo, a campaign to try to subtly blur support
for troops with support for our activities
in Afghanistan is being undertaken to win over more of
the 67% who are not on side.
The Dominion Institute recently conducted
a survey that shows how non-political Canadians are.
Only 58% know the first two lines of our national anthem
and 18% can't name the Prime Minister while only 38% can
name our four political parties.  The spin doctors take
these statistics and launch simple campaigns to swing
public opinion in favour of Ottawa's projects.
Equating loyalty to our soldiers to patriotism is
their attempt to substitute loyalty to troops to
support for our battles in Afghanistan.

Of late, the Afghan political leaders have
criticized the U.S, Britain and Canada as overly
brutal and careless.  In their zeal to attack the
Taliban, hundreds of innocent women and children
are being killed and orphaned by the N.A.T.O. troops.

Canada fought hard to keep the world free
of the tyranny of despots and villains like Hitler.
Over the last fifty years, our population has not
grown sufficiently and spending on the military
have not kept pace with true military powers such
as Britain and the U.S.A.  Under former Prime
Minister Lester B. Pearson we carved a niche for
ourselves as the best Peacekeepers in the world.
Places like the Suez, Cyprus and Bosnia require
crack forces with U.N. or N.A.T.O. backing to
keep peace in the world's hot spots.
We have also perfected technologies for de-mining
countries such as Bosnia and Cambodia so fields
can once again be used to grow food rather than
rip arms and legs off.  Of this we are all
proud.

In this week's Macleans Magazine there's an
excellent article by Andrew Potter entitled
"Support the troops but not the war?  Sheer hypocrisy."
He asks, "does it make any sense to support the troops
and not the mission itself?"  He concludes:

"There are only two intellectually and morally honest
ways of supporting the troops.
One is to put the full economic and political
power of the state behind the war effort in
order to achieve victory as quickly and with
as few casualties as possible.  The other is to demand
that the government bring them home, now.
Every country relies on petty hypocrisies in
its political life, to minimize division and enable
competing factions to at least try to work
together.  The 'support the troops' movement is one
of those: the anti-war faction pretends to support
the troops, and those who support the mission pretend to
believe it.  Given the half measures that result,
it isn't clear that our soldiers should appreciate
the gesture."

I support our troops in their peacekeeping role,
in their assisting with national disasters like floods
and ice storms and in their efforts to de-mine
and improve countries previously destroyed by years of war.

I do not support sending our troops to Afghanistan
to bring western-style democracy to a country
whose people don't appear to want to move that far,
that fast.
I do not support sending our troops into Afghanistan to
relieve American forces so that they are free to send
more U.S. soldiers into Iraq where they're
causing civil war and chaos.

One father who recently lost a son wrote me:
"Everyone supports our troops and the ribbon has
far less to do with that than it does about
promoting a war in which people on both sides are
dying every day." "I recently lost my son so I
have some sense of what the families are
going through.Life is so precious and this conflict
is so needless."

As military parents, your positions are obviously
the only ones you can take.
Otherwise, how could you stand sending your daughters and
sons into harm's way so far away from home?
They are defending your right,and my right, to have
opposite opinions on this war and to express those
opinions openly.
I sincerely hope all your family members return safe
and sound.

Sincerely,
Carolyn

Ward 6 Councillor

Previous Post