Hey,
first off, I have to establish that I'm also a member of Block the Empire. It is hard for us all to consult each other for each reply on this forum. But since we are not completely and dogmatically communistic about everything all the time (we're anarchists after all!), I figured I'd chime in from my own part of cyberspace. We'll keep replying as Valcartier2007, but I hope other members of BLEM, and other comrads from QC can register as themselves and chime in if they feel like it. Don't be surprised to find that my writing style is different from that you got used to from Valcarier2007. I just was not typing before - I stand a 100% by what we've posted so far.
Another thing is, I'm a franco, so please bare with me if my grammar or spelling is flawed. I'll do my best, but some sentences are probably going to come out a little wicked.
And thirdly, I do want to insist that that
my interventions will reflect my own interpretation of this issue, and will not necessarily be shared by everyone in BLEM-Montreal, and/or Guerre à la guerre-QC (and even less so between us and the various pacifist groupings in Quebec, with whom we don't always see eye to eye, but genuinely respect and often work with).
First, I'd like to say that, in my opinion, this thread is very interesting on many levels. In terms of what's being said - arguments and counterarguments - and also from an anthropological stand point - the way things are being expressed, people's various attitudes and the evolution of the debate itself.
One can appreciate the varying degrees of civility of individuals throughout the thread. Some folks had very epidermic (can you say that in English?) reactions last Monday and Tuesday (J11 and J12) when they learned that we had sent letters to the soldiers in Valcartier. It ranged from the disgusted to the enraged to the extremely hostile (didn't someone make a thinly veiled death threat at some point?).
Initially, we were thought to serve the Taleban and other assorted "terrorists" by sending letters to soldier's home addresses. Then it was revealed that we had made a mass mailing, and did not actually know the soldiers' addresses. Then most entries were about whether or not it'd be a good idea to file a legal action against us. Then this gave way to passive-aggressive comments about how all "us people" smoke pot and don't wash, or what have you.
And we started to reply as Valcartier2007. And suddenly it turned from a peacenick bash-fest to a somewhat civilised debate.
One can see how people are conditioned to think of "the other" as some kind of cliché, an amalgam of stereotypical ideas that we cultivate in our own minds.
We went from terrorists (or terrorists lovers) to criminals, to useless hippies to intelligent people you can actually exchange ideas with and maybe even learn a thing or two from.
We are not exempt from this reflex. We also do tend to have a pretty caricatural picture of the military men and women. But we don't think soldiers are stupid, as some people have implied on this forum. As we mentioned elsewhere, we do respect soldiers as human beings capable of individual reflection, critical judgement and ethical action, and this is the actual premise of our action.
We were conscious that soldiers would not immediately respond to our call and defect en masse. We're not stupid either. But we did, and still do, hope that down the road, Canadian soldiers will start questioning Canada's role in Afghanistan, Canada's posture as a great humanitarian country and, eventually, their own involvement in the centuries old colonialist/imperialist imposture that is Canada.
We hope that our endeavor will generate doubt and debate. In the media, yes, but we're not counting on the mass media to start questioning the legitimacy of the Canadian State, or that of it's foreign policy, or even that of it's subservience to the White House mandarins (and the shady cabal of Global Rule financiers, let's not forget these fu***rs!), for that matter, any time soon. The media complex is one cog wheel in the imperialist machine.
No, we hope that this, and the demonstrations that we intend to hold, and continue to organize, will start a movement from the base up. We hope that the doubt and debate will propagate like a virus through the public, within families, among coworkers, at grocery stores and doughnut shops across this great territory. The country is already divided right down the middle on the issue of Afghanistan. That means that
A LOT OF PEOPLE already agree, at least to some extent, with what we are thinking and saying, and writing on this forum
The "Support Our Troops" rhetoric is but another tactic of the State to garner support
for their own agenda. That of global domination by Western elites, the same elites which have been putting the rest of us down for centuries.
And people are not buying it. Buying it less and less. What we are attempting, with our daily work, with these initiatives, is to build this skepticism into a tidal wave, a movement that they will not be able to ignore any more.
At some point, soldiers are also going to break with this transe-like conformity, and they will start to say: NO MORE! Enough of this crap! Ya Basta!
Why don't
you say it too! It feels good, I assure you. And then we can start building together a better world for all our children.
Canada must get out of Afghanistan. Because we don't belong there any more than we belong in any other sovereign state. Us being there is us taking our moral superiority for granted. It's racist and it's wrong. We're there on false pretexts, and we're being lied to, day after day after day.
I guess what I'm getting at is a beginning of an inkling of an answer to "THE BIG QUESTION": what will happen in Afghanistan after we leave? What's our solution, if we're so smart, hey?
We don't have one convenient prepackaged answer to this question. And no one does. It takes time and, to be blunt, the Afghans need to figure out what the hell they want to do with their country. Not us.
Our role would be not to interfere with their evolution. Not to train and arm fundamentalist bastards that'we'll later use as an excuse to invade. Not to install puppet regimes that serve our elites' interests. Not to protect the war criminals and murderers who are on this government. Not to brutally occupy their ancestral territory. Not to pretend helping them by building a road in the North while shooting farmers in the South. Not to fight a ludicrous "war on drugs" while almost all of the drugs production pours into our markets and boosts our twisted economies. Not to indulge in this maniacal fantasy that is the "War on Terror". Not to plunge head first in this vicious circle of violence and terrorism (we are the terrorists!), and create generations after generations of young people willing to die because we killed their parents and their parents' parents. Not to kill these kids' parents.
Not to follow the US Empire, like the pathetic poodles that our politicians make us to be.
Not to buy that second car, that third TV, that fifth cell phone, that razor with 14 blades and 3 speed vibrate mode, that GI Joe action figure for little Timmy: all that goddam crap that we fill our empty lives with.
Not to keep up this unsustainable
addiction to oil, that is the one fundamental reason for these wars we wage everywhere; because it's OUR crap, and we want to keep it, and have more of it.
Not to bury our heads in the sand, like we've been doing for to long.
By realizing that our comfort and privilege is their pain and suffering; that our unsustainable wealth is their unlivable misery!
You know?
So yeah, I don't know what to tell you about Afghans and their lives after we get the hell out of it. But I can tell you that we should never have been there in the first place. And we did go there because, our world is fucked up, excuse my french.
And it is in this sad state because we have let the global hamburglar Capitalists make it in their own image.
I hope my comrads will take me up on this and add their own two cents. Once again, our attempts at a solution is SOLIDARITY.
I've ranted for way too long, never thought in my life that I would write on an army forum (!!), I'm tired, working in a few hours, and have a lot more to do because, yes, we will be marching in Quebec City on Friday and we will be loud cause, folks, that is the only thing we can do.
I won't give my real name here, cause I am not too fond of goons sending death threats to me and my loved ones.
I'll go by Not In My Name. You can call me whatever you want, I'm sure there will be coloured epithets... (please be more imaginative than "idealist", that is lame)
Peace out.
P.-S. I invite you to visit our media section at
http://www.valcartier2007.ca/media_eng.htm where we have gathered a lot of articles and analyses pieces on Canada's role in US Imperialism, on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, on the trick that's being played on Canadians with "hearts and minds" operations, and the so-called "4th block", which is PR and propaganda by another name, to ease this bullshit War down Canadians' throats.
Also, to know more about what we - and millions more ragers around the world - are about, please visit the People's Global Action
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en/.
Cheers.
