When Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, "Canadian Forces chief of land staff", testified to Parliament that the entire Canadian Forces "would need a year-long break from operations after the mission in Afghanistan winds down in 2011," Greg Gutfeld's reaction on Fox News' comedy Red Eye was, "The Canadian military wants to take a breather, to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants."
That's funny stuff. And it's not hard to see the humor in a national military "taking a year off" -- or at least it's not hard if you have any conception of a vigorous national defense. And anyway, it was a one-liner in a one-off cable show at 3 AM Eastern; a secure, confident nation wouldn't take any notice of it.
But in the great Canadian tradition, a silly comedy segment at 3 in the morning on American cable TV became the subject of national outrage, condemnations and demands of apology from the Minister of Defence, front-page newswire stories, editorial cartoons, demands of retaliation, calls for censorship, and general smug, contemptuous America-bashing ("ignorant Americans", etc., etc.) -- the "we are all Canadians in the Age of Obama" having apparently worn off just two months in.
Gutfeld's first question, "Isn't this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country? They have no army," ought to have been a clue to outraged Canadians that the whole thing was a laugh. But then, Canadian newspaper editorialists actually write earnest editorials accepting as fact that the United States is planning to annex Canadian water supplies, so maybe such an obvious joke was lost on them.
For the record, Red Eye is completely silly -- not serious news or commentary -- and Greg Gutfeld's Red Eye persona on political matters is a caricature of the "Ugly American". IT'S ALL A JOKE.
Gutfeld and most Americans, it is true, do not take Canada seriously as a power in the world or as a country with any national martial vigor. So if that is the Canadian complaint with this 3 AM Eastern cable show, at least it wouldn't be a mischaracterization of Red Eye and American opinion. And when the overwhelming majority of Canadians want to withdraw their couple thousand troops from Afghanistan before the war is won and blithely conclude "we can't win," and when Canada's opinion leaders deliver daily homilies on how Canada must reject such militarism and return to "peacekeeping", and when the Canadian Forces brass says the military needs a year off, and when the national armed forces excises the word "armed" from its very name -- then good luck defending Canada against the charge it's lost any vigorous martial impulse.
But if the issue is the troops themselves, neither Greg Gutfeld nor any American that I've ever heard would think to disparage the great courage and sacrifice of any soldiers fighting alongside their own. The individual Canadian soldiers who have served in Afghanistan are heroes all. They deserve all the honor of the American heroes fighting in the same valorous cause.
Those Canadian soldiers carry their weight and then some, but they are only a handful, and they are in the service of an elite and population that have absolutely no stomach for a fight, so when the chief of land staff of the Canadian Forces is actually reporting to the Canadian Parliament that the military needs a year off, that is a separate issue entirely from the honor of Afghanistan veterans, and eminently worthy of a joke.
To react to a segment on a show like Red Eye with such a national furor is humorless, petty, thin-skinned in the extreme, diminishing of the nation, not to mention clueless about the cause of the offense. It's all a joke, Canadians. Actual, original, politically-incorrect humor; not shrill Democrat Party talking points couched as comedy, like The Daily Show, and not strained-peas comedy for the arthritic set who take up the prime column space for a hero's wage in Canadian newspapers, like The Royal Canadian Air Farce.
The irony is that the reaction has actually affirmed the premise of the joke.
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We lost 4 Canadian soldiers that week, so its an insult to the sacrifice that they have made. There was no humour. It was just a blatant attack. And what the General said was taking out of context. He did not say "They wanted to go on a year vacation". He said they wanted a year break to be able too refinish and restock our arm forces. I find it hard to believe that you actually go along with their views, there was nothing funny about it or any type of misinterpretation. If Red Eye were to make fun of the American arm forces, do you think that their arm forces would treat it as a joke? I suggest you turn in your passport and renounce your citizenship as a Canadian. You simply do not care about Canada anymore.
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