Sixteen professors at the University of Regina have written a letter protesting their institutions involvement in Project Hero. This scholarship program provides children of fallen Canadian soldiers with free tuition for their post-secondary education. Several post-secondary institutions across the country are taking part in the program.

The 16 profs in question believe the University of Regina should withdraw from the program. They denounce the program as “a glorification of Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan and elsewhere.” and “support for Project Hero represents a dangerous cultural turn. It associates heroism with the act of military intervention. It erases the space for critical discussion of military policy and practices“.

Are these people so far up on their ivory towers they don’t know how to find their way to a simple dictionary? I managed to find one and discovered that one of the meanings of ‘imperialism’ is: the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.
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Okay Harper, you opened the door on the weekend by taking a partisan shot at the Opposition and accusing them of maligning Canadian soldiers over the handling of detainees. You just can’t resist taking your grossly inaccurate potshots at the Opposition no matter where you are in the world can you?

I’ve been watching this furor over the handling of detainees. This isn’t the first time this issue has come up since we sent our troops into action in Southern Afghanistan. Neither time has anyone tried to even imply our troops did not treat detainees properly. They did what they had to do and turned them over to Afghan officials as the government, first the Liberal government and now the Harper Conservatives government, had negotiated with the government of Afghanistan. The Conservatives have now been in power for four years, they own this issue and should have been taking steps to solve it.

It is those agreements and how they, or if, they were enforced that is at question — not the behaviour of our troops. Quit hiding behind them when you need to be showing some leadership Harper. First your ministers try to portray the whistle blower, Richard Colvin, as a Taliban sympathizer for insisting on his unheeded warnings coming to light. When that fails to gain any traction, Pamelin Wallin tries to appeal to Canadians to stop blaming the troops when no one was. Then you give that some treads by using a photo op on a Canadian ship to try the same claim and then you had it repeated in the House of Commons. Read the rest of this entry »