Salutations!

[CA Cop]

:rolleyes:

[metallicat]

:rolleyes:

You don't like Canadians do you CA?

[CA Cop]

Relax, just friendly banter, nothing wrong with being a Canadian. Don't take my sarcasm too seriously.......I like to joke around about Canada's "military", nothing more than that. ;)

[BlakeStone]

Relax, just friendly banter, nothing wrong with being a Canadian. Don't take my sarcasm too seriously.......I like to joke around about Canada's "military", nothing more than that. ;)

What military? :confused:

[metallicat]

What military? :confused:

It's comments like this that don't get looked upon too favourably here. I take offense to it personally, and I have never been in the military. We have men and women serving our country, and they deserve more respect than this whether you are joking or not.

[CA Cop]

It's comments like this that don't get looked upon too favourably here. I take offense to it personally, and I have never been in the military. We have men and women serving our country, and they deserve more respect than this whether you are joking or not.

Country? I always thought that Canada was a province of France. :D

[metallicat]

You're just doing it to get me riled up CA, but your sarcasm/wit is not funny at all.

[chewy]

It's comments like this that don't get looked upon too favourably here. I take offense to it personally, and I have never been in the military. We have men and women serving our country, and they deserve more respect than this whether you are joking or not.

Had you been in the military you would understand that we ALWAYS joke back and forth about these things. It's our form of "love" for each other. Lighten up.

[chewy]

You're just doing it to get me riled up CA, but your sarcasm/wit is not funny at all.

Ohhhh, I beg to differ. I find it quite funny.

[oscarmitre]

I'm not Canadian or American and I have no military service so I think I am probably well qualified to jump in here.

In a functioning liberal democracy the military occupies a pretty low key state in terms of visibility. We know they're there, we're glad they're there but we don't make a fetish of them. When they're needed they will come out to play but for the most part they stay in barracks and train and occasionally get to party. In some garrison towns in Australia where the military provides much of the impetus for the local economy they are even treated with something approaching disdain. I'm not particularly pleased with that as I prefer to take people as I find them rather than operate on outdated stereotypes but it happens. Anyway they can always sustain themselves with the view that no-one likes a soldier until the enemy is at the gate. Like it or not that's actually a healthy view. Faithful, loyal and brave servants, ready to serve at the bidding of their civilian political masters.

Let's put it in perspective. Canada has a fine military with a very fine historical tradition. As I said, I'm not Canadian but I know enough just by being alive to remember that Canadian forces fought in major campaigns in WW1 from the beginning (a reminder, WW1 commenced in 1914). Canadian forces also fought in WW2 (again a reminder that WW2 started in 1939). I remember reading about Canadians in the Italian campaign, particularly at Monte Cassino when - with British forces - they were up against the cream of the Wehrmacht who were holded up in the former hangout of St Thomas Aquinas. They were also in the D-Day Normandy invasion.

Let's not insult each other's military prowess, it doesn't matter what we think or say, the facts will speak for themselves. And let's not use the military as a measure - positive or negative - of the quality of a country. A country's value or worth is as a place to live, as a citizen of the world, as a contributor to the wellbeing of the planet. If we go down that path of overly lionising the military we are hastening the shift to the incorporation of the military into the political state, something well represented in a film I recently saw - "Triumph of the Will" by Leni Riefenstahl (I recommend a viewing, very instructive).

The most practical thing any of us can do to show our thanks to our military is to make sure those bloody flag-waving politicians who like to surf in off the jingoism that any country is capable of actually pay our military a decent salary and ensure that they and their families are able to have a decent standard of living both when serving and when retired.

[chewy]

Let's put it in perspective. Canada has a fine military with a very fine historical tradition. As I said, I'm not Canadian but I know enough just by being alive to remember that Canadian forces fought in major campaigns in WW1 from the beginning (a reminder, WW1 commenced in 1914). Canadian forces also fought in WW2 (again a reminder that WW2 started in 1939). I remember reading about Canadians in the Italian campaign, particularly at Monte Cassino when - with British forces - they were up against the cream of the Wehrmacht who were holded up in the former hangout of St Thomas Aquinas. They were also in the D-Day Normandy invasion.

The Coast Guard faught in those (well, maybe not the Italian thing) too and everything since but I don't see any one jumping up and screaming foul when people banter me about the CG!

RELAX, Dont do it when you... never mind. It's all in fun, my god you people are touchy.

[oscarmitre]

It's well known that military units joke about the others, but if a non-military person dare to make the same comment then they would be jumped upon by those other units. That is the quintessential difference.

Problem arising here is that this is now desending into nationalistic quarreling and that can only end up in a flame war.