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I saw something the other day that really irked me. It was a poster for an anti-war rally this Saturday with a picture of a howitzer on it. The subtitle read: “Does this look like the weapon of a peace-keeper?”

I believe the answer to that would be “Yes”, followed by “Don’t be an idiot”.

Now, advocating to bring the troops home on the surface is an honorable thing. As a nation, we must do what it takes to ensure the safety of our people. However, if we are to have them out there in any capacity at all, they need carte blanche on the tools they need to do the job. A howitzer you say? That was probably the cheaper option for the military budget. They need things like body armor, GPS and GIS systems, and autonomous combat drones, but they’re not likely going to get these things if we carry on this attitude about what “peace-keepers” can and cannot have to protect their people.

I may not support American foreign policy vis a vis the War on Terror, but I support this mission to Afghanistan. Unlike the tenuous intelligence that led to the war in Iraq, the leadership in Afghanistan and in al Qaeda were basically determined to be one and the same. The country still isn’t completely stabilized, and an immediate pull-out would probably allow Al Qaeda to return. It’s also the work of an United Nations coalition, and our involvement underlines Canada’s solidarity against terrorism, just as our non-involvement in Iraq underlines our stance against unilateral military action.

A strong military is necessary for Canada to have diplomatic bargaining power on the world stage. It’s not just for blowing up mud huts in the desert. Think of the good will we generate when we use our military for disaster response, protecting foreign aid missions, or guarding fish stocks. Canada had boots on the ground in New Orleans within 72 hours of Hurricane Katrina. If we expanded our capability, we might be able to handle humanitarian disasters like Darfur and Rwanda. Furthermore, our military may become a large enough help to make a case against unilateral actions like the Iraq war. America may not be so quick to throw it’s weight around if losing our support suddenly became an issue.

The key to winning any war is to win without fighting. We may be a peace-loving nation, but that does not mean we need to be ineffective.

Did anyone else get chills when they saw the Bill Clinton/Ed Wallace interview last week? It was like watching a great hockey fight- completely out of line, but really satisfying to watch. In politics and in business, folks are called upn to keep a straight face, respect their opponents. When you blink, get mad, get opinionated, people label you as uncontrollable. However there was something about Clinton’s interview that gave me pause.

This was not like the various tirades against Bush by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or by the legions of protesters around the world.

I’ve been reading some of the conservative op-ed pieces. They attack the veracity of the claims, the idea that it may have been calculated, most strangely the idea that it was a tactic to smear the hard-hitting fox news network as a conservative mouthpiece (which is hardly disputed)

However, Clinton was not forced to come on Ed Wallace’s show. He could have easily avoided confrontation by sticking to liberal-friendly programs like the Daily Show. Fox News was conversely not forced into having Clinton Appear. I would wager that Clinton was quite prepared for Wallace’s question, and responded in kind.

What fox news tends to pass off as “hard-hitting” journlism amounts to questions along the lines of “Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?”. This took the form of “Why didn’t you do more to catch Osama Bin Laden?”

To ask that question is to imply that Clinton is to blame for Bin Laden’s freedom. Clinton waited until that exact moment to strike back, and I think he should be commended for it.

We can only hope that this is a preview of the kind of rhetoric that Democrats will use in the coming mid-term and Presidential elections. Democrats lost the ability to go on the offensive when they started to treat the voting public like a marketing demographic. Human beings have emotions. There is a big difference between appealing to voters and actually connecting to them.

That is exactly what Bill Clinton did in this interview. Conservatives may hate him, Liberals may love him, but the fact is he annexed a piece of the American consciousness right there on national television.