No one will attack us, they love us!

 So at one point in the not so distant past the government of canada decided to buy several F-35 lightening II aircraft from lockheed-martin. The aircraft where designed so that canada could replace it's aging F-18 fleet that have lately been falling out of the sky.I remember thinking to myself thank you up there, thank you for remembering that canada needs a defence in the air and that relying on another country for our own defence is pretty much handing it over to them. Then i read the link below and saw that so many people have very little idea why these aircraft are so very important; most of them see the aircraft as a waste of money and can't understand why we need to spend now before the cost is too high.

I read a few comments on this cbc news site that read something to the tune of good for the liberal government for stopping the needless spending of money. While i am no politician, and my opinions are my own and reflect no organization, business or otherwise I would like to point something out...wasn't it most of us who joked about the sea king helicopter "seeking the ground" ? These are the same people that now look to canada's defence force and question buying of new equipment and can't understand that if we don't update our troops with new technology and better equipment in general we will be signing off on countless lives lost in wars. I can recall so many times when people have joked about how outdated our military is and how we have nothing really left to call a defence force, yet countless people will say we shouldn't spend the money on defending canada. I'll put this into easy to understand terms to avoid any confusion, not to say that readers of my blog are somehow unable to understand this concept, quite the opposite infact. I believe that using an analogy will help you as the reader educate quickly the multitude of people who don't understand. If i left my expensive car in downtown toronto, unlocked and unattended, how long do you think it would stay there untouched and unharmed? I am not saying that Toronto is a crime riddled city by any means, I merely use a large city as a reference to support my point. so by the same logic, would you leave Canada unlocked and unattended for any other country to come and take for a joy ride?

So many Canadians feel we have no enemies to worry about and the bottom line is while we are not a war like country by any stretch, simply by existing we have enemies by which to defend ourselves from. It's far to easy to sit back and say we have no enemies when we have sent troops over seas to countries in the midst of civil war and then say we have no enemies to worry about. Using the car as the example, to your knowledge if you were to leave your car somewhere unlocked, do you think the person taking it for a joy ride would be someone you know? The enemy we don't know about is the hardest one to fight against and the hardest to defend against as well, it's why everytime you leave the car you lock the doors.

If Canada continues to put it's military spending on the back burner, then at some point the country that didn't will come knock on our door and demand we work for them. Remember our national anthem states clearly "the true North strong and free" if we are not strong, we may not be free for much longer. This is not to say we should simply spend all of our money on military equpiment, but it does mean that we should take a serious look at our position on the world stage.

John Diefenbaker was running the country and ended the AVRO Arrow project because it would cost Canadians too much money he claimed. Years after we all look back and think about what he was thinking and why he ended a program that could have launched us to the forefront of technology and kept Canada safe for years to come. Now that Canada is in a reccesion and the government wants to spend the single most amount of money they have ever spent on the military we are all saying " this will cost too much". When John Diefenbaker said the same thing you all thought about how crazy that sounded, but when the same situation came up in the modern day everyone questioned it. The only difference between then and now is that more money is at stake, and much more advanced technology is being used to defend us all. 

In short, don't be so quick to say that we shouldn't spend the money on the military to get the needed upgrades to our defence force. After all, when we thought the AVRO Arrow was a bad idea and a certain someone said we should have AVRO begin making cookware for families...we could do that now, but when some country decides to come here I am certain the last thing they will want us to make after we have been conquered is cookware. 





http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/07/15/liberals-fighter-jets.html