Give Peace A Chance

Their little eyes were fixed on the aged storyteller, pacing slowly back and forth across the gymnasium floor.

Even the youngest, though unable to comprehend every word, realized he was telling “true stories”, not make believe.

The eleven and twelve year olds, equally fascinated, also realized this gray-haired veteran had experienced real bullets, real bombs, and real friends who went down and never got back up.

Many of you reading this letter may not yet have played Halo 2, or even Halo 1 for that matter. Halo is a stunningly graphic video war game where your victims fall before you in a pool of glowing blood, and flamethrowers can roast your screaming adversaries alive.

I know of what I speak. My eleven-year-old nephew burned me to charcoal the only time I’ve played Halo.

As fixated as my young warrior and I were in our moments of simulated death, we won’t be changed forever by the drama of the moment. The real life, real time, former warrior now pacing the gym floor in front of us, was changed forever in his years on foreign shores in foreign wars.

He did not describe gruesome details, though he had seen them. He did not graphically depict moments of terror, though he had felt them. He did not divulge his every tear, though he had shed them.

His was not the cheapened ‘sharing’ so shamelessly broadcast daily on pandering reality TV shows for reality-starved viewers. His mission was to remind the gathered young that our present freedoms are not free at all. His missing buddies and his own missed youth form part of the unpayable debt.

At another ceremony attended by well over a thousand young and old, the veteran at the microphone wondered out loud why some school curricula is being ‘sanitized’ regarding Canada’s world-leading involvement in modern major wars. He also questioned the slashing of funding for National Defence for our courageous troops.

Following the ceremonies, I talked with soldiers past and present at our Legions around the constituency. It seemed to many of them that our own governments were accomplishing what our enemies never could: the decimation of our armed forces.

Why the lack of commitment to required resources? The problem is partly philosophical. Modern liberal thinking cannot accept the ancient reality of the human condition, that this species called Homo sapiens can, in fact, be desperately selfish and evil.

One necessary way to curb bullies and bandits in our neighbourhoods is to have a police force always present. This helps to keep the peace.

In the global village, there will always be bullies and bandits with evil desires to kill, crush, and control entire neighbourhoods and nations.

The presence of armed forces from nations committed to preserving peace and freedom is one necessary way to keep those malevolent belligerents at bay. A famous historian and diplomat once said, “Diplomacy without armaments is like a symphony without instruments.”

It is time our post-modern escapist thinkers took a step back and joined the students listening to an old soldier who understood the price of peace.

It is time our governments awaken to the truth that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

The threat of war will always be a part of the human condition. Having properly equipped armed forces means the risk of war will be diminished, and the times of peace will be enhanced.

Someone just told me that the poem “In Flanders Fields” is being banned in some schools. “Too graphic,” they say. (Those critics have obviously never seen Halo.)

I, for one, have decided to step up to the front lines with our wise old warriors and do all I can to demand the restoration of proper wisdom and proper funding. I’m willing to pick up the torch from failing hands.

If you are too, then call your school board, call the Minister of Education, call the Minister of Defence, and call your M.P. Let’s give peace a chance. It’s time.

Stockwell Day,
Member of Parliament for Okanagan-Coquihalla