It has been eight years since the United States and other Nato nations entered Afghanistan. Seven years for the Canadian military. In fact Canada has now been at war with the Taliban longer than they were at war in World War 2.

For many Canadians in the years after World War 2 until 9/11 many did not understand or appreciate the work their troops did to fight for their freedom. Canadian soldiers lived, died and were largely mistreated by the people they were defending.

In Bosnia as UN peacekeepers the Canadians were forced into the middle of one no win situation one after another. As they put their lives on the line trying to prove War crimes the government and population were slowly strangling their financial lifeline.

In Somalia, an incident with the Airborne forces led to conclusions that our soldiers were not defenders of freedom but some kind of Rambo crazies. The Liberal government left the soldiers to pay the price for their own mistakes, thus the morale was placed at an all time low.

Yet time after time troops were shuffled like pawns into hellhole after hellhole. For the most part they did outstanding work with tiny resources, apathy or loathing at home. The truth was that most Canadians did not understand the need for the Armed Forces. They saw themselves defended by the United States and military spending as somehow redundant.

But yet we sent our men and women in the fire line over and over to act as peacemakers and peacekeepers.

I perceived that this has slowly changed since the terrorists attacked the United States. It showed no one was safe. And then terrorism came to our country once again. We arrested plotters bent on causing death and destruction in our back yard. Suddenly, it all changed. Now many of us sympathize with the soldiers, their deaths which have mounted in Afghanistan has brought back the realities of war.

Politicians are now referring to our troops outside of November 11th. The concerns have led to bitter debates over the role of troops in Afghanistan. As well there is a slowly growing discussion of the misuse and abuse our soldiers face. The government for the first time in twenty years are beginning to invest in the military. Sometimes badly and with no thought to what they are doing but they are slowly changing the lives of many.

Too often in Canada we have left to fall the torch passed to us by Canadian poet John McCrae in World War 1 when he wrote In Flanders Fields. He would die during the war of pneumonia but his message has lived on for nearly a century.

In remembering the sacrifice of our soldiers we often quote the phrase Lest We Forget, however, often we do forget.

My point here today is that giving our Armed Forces nothing to work with creates nothing good. We are the second largest country in the world. It is important that we defend ourselves and act more like a part of the free world rather than freeloaders. To do that we must continue to renew the faith with our soldiers.

Given that let us remember they are not just a tool for us to use. We should treasure our soldiers and not misuse them in places where they will be sacrificed for cheap reasons. Afghanistan needs to mean something, otherwise we will have wasted much for little.

To do that we should push our allies for meaningful contributions and continue to insist those who went into Afghanistan must not allow others to do the heavy lifting for them. Part of the reason others want Canada to stay past 2011 is because they are unwilling to do the hard things needed.

Part of the faith we have with our service men and women is for politicians to not just pay lip service to their defence of these troops. Thinking about how often our veterans continue to struggle to get the basic necessities because our government forgot about them. Let us not do that any more, let us not break faith anymore.

In Flanders, Vimy, Dieppe, Juno Beach, Kapyong, Medak and Panjwaii Canadian troops have entered the line of fire. We should recognize each of these places for their importance to our troops and not avoid mention because it is seen as jingoism. Our military history is significant to the country and should be honoured more than just on Remembrance Day, lest we really do finally forget.

Lest We Forget – Stepping Up

Lest We Forget – Forging a Nation

Last Sunday I woke up feeling really ill.  I was dizzy and sleepy and off and on really hot.  I fell asleep about 1pm and woke up around 4pm, yet I still felt myself exhausted.   So at 9pm I went to bed for the night.

Feeling that way I called in sick the next day for work.  Then feeling a bit better that night I went to a meeting and Tuesday I went to work.  By Wednesday it was obvious I was still feeling the effects of some sort of flu, in fact each day until Friday I felt ok in the morning and awful as the day wore on.  By wednesday just sitting at my desk I broke out into a sweat like I was running a marathon.

So I went home early and stayed away from work for the following day.  Only on Friday did I feel good enough to go back into work and actually do normal things.

At this point if you have not tuned out I will explain why all this description is so significant.

Our local hockey team the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday announced that at least one player had come down with the H1N1 (aka the swine) flu.   At the same time many other players on the team had gotten the flu over the past week or so. 

Meanwhile in a panic our local government rolled out the H1N1 vaccine which was a complete disaster where people lined up for over five hours in some cases to get a vaccine, and now they have run out after doing only 1/10th of the population.

I am not sure if I had that particular flu, or a couple of others did or not but I definitely had a number of the symptoms.  As the week went on it turned out that many in our ward had also been infected by H1N1.  So suddenly on Saturday warning that the church was initiating pandemic rules and that the ward was going to have to go through some strict rules.

So on Sunday, I left a couple of our family at home who were still suffering symptoms.  Amazingly the church was set up in a very specific way.   You were allowed only into doors that were close to the washrooms.  At which point if you were suffering flu like symptoms you were asked to go home.  If you were not you had to immediately wash your hands.

My son who was holding the mike for a blessing and passing sacrament had to wash his hands a few more times.  It was an incredible introduction to the organized way the members were watched over by the leaders of the church.

So after my flu filled week it was fascinating to see how each sector of our society dealt with a possible outbreak of a serious virus.

Well, today was first day of my Masters degree.  After a year and a half since my last class ended on my Bachelors I have anticipated this day for a while.

So far getting familiar with a new professor and a new system of dealing with submissions, discussions and readings has left me grasping a bit this morning.  As I had to go back to my fourth year history course to grasp exactly what was required.

It has taken a bit of stumbling and crawling around back with words and phrases that are not part of normal conversation.  Précis comes readily to mind.

After about an hour though I am finding my stride again, should be interesting course “Historical Research Methods” while seemingly a boring title underlies an important phase of historical understanding.    The course has reminded me a lot of my US Civil Rights course in that it offers a seminar style which obviously is the way graduate courses work.   The good thing is that the style is familiar.

Hopefully it is the start of better things to come.  As always as I work with the focus of my arguments I will bring some of them here for your perusal.

Anyway, self indulgence away!

Ok lets be honest.  An appeal to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is probably the stupidest thing a government wanting to stop something could do:

The British Columbia government will not launch an appeal after criminal charges against two polygamist religious leaders were recently thrown out of court, the province’s attorney general announced Thursday.

Instead, Mike de Jong said he will ask the B.C. Supreme Court to clarify the controversial polygamy laws, and rule on whether they violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The announcement comes a month after a B.C. court threw out the charges against Winston Blackmore and James Oler.  Read the rest of the article here.

That sounds good in theory, but the record of the Charter on ruling on these things is well pretty poor.  Courts have ruled in favour of the following:

1. Same Sex Marriage – see in Canada it is a civil right, sorry Elder Oaks

2. Group sex um parlours – yeah less said here the better

3. Abortion laws and other moral laws get thrown out often

So asking the BC Supreme court to rule on the whole of Polygamy and charter rights sounds like a land mine waiting to be stepped on.  I get the impression they just do not get it.  Of course I could be wrong and maybe the court will rule against them but I suspect the FLDS will be head over heels at present.  Unable to bring a charter challenge themselves they have goaded the BC government to do it for them.

British Columbia the new home of Polygamy, just in time for the Winter Olympics, maybe that Egyptian bobsled team can bring their wives now.

Just reading the latest John Whitmer Association journal.  In it is an excellent article on the Cutlerites.

For the second time in the last few months I came across the idea that the church wanted to get the Nauvoo temple finished before they left because if it did not it would be under condemnation.

the specific verses are in Doctrine and Covenants section 124:

31 But I command you, all ye my saints, to build a house unto me; and I grant unto you a sufficient time to build a house unto me; and during this time your baptisms shall be acceptable unto me.

32 But behold, at the end of this appointment your baptisms for your dead shall not be acceptable unto me; and if you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God.

33 For verily I say unto you, that after you have had sufficient time to build a house to me, wherein the ordinance of baptizing for the dead belongeth, and for which the same was instituted from before the foundation of the world, your baptisms for your dead cannot be acceptable unto me;

I focus on the bold because I have seen two instances where this comment is used to justify various ideas.   For Cutler and Strang the fact they did not get the church built meant that the LDS church was condemned thus their strains were approved.

In the LDS faith it meant that the church continued working at finishing the and dedicating the temple right until the end.

For me that seems like a very strange leap of logic to say that the Saints failed, as the Cutlerites, and I believe Lyman Whight and James Strang also argued (I will reference these later when I can find them).   It seems like an excuse and nothing more.   One thing I have seen from the revelations we have is that the Lord is not a god of absolute demands of his mortal children.  In fact he appears to accept the “good effort” often enough.

In fact that whole of our faith is built on the idea that we are fallible creatures in need of salvation from our perfect older brother to make up for us.   So I could hardly see God faulting Saints under extreme pressure to get out of Nauvoo from taking right to the bitter end to finish the work on his house.    The fact they even got it finished speaks of an acceptable offering.

For me the faith that I have in God predicated on the understanding that we all fall short of his glory allow us to not live up to his ideal.  Certainly I do not.