Canada’s Participation in the Military Industrial Complex

It’s easy to shit on America for the human rights abuses they commit at home and abroad. Whether it's arming foreign terrorists such as the the Taliban in the 80's or the Israeli Defence Forces today, locking up and stripping voting rights from American minorities for non-violent drug offences, or protecting oil companies from the consequences of their crimes, America's violent commitment to protecting and spreading capitalism, er, freedom, has resulted in insurmountable suffering, death, and environmental disasters. And much of this violence has been outsourced to private firms resulting in a gross amalgamation of business and war. But we can’t let the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity outdo the violent acts that other countries are outsourcing in the name of democracy or peace. It turns out, Canada is one of those countries.

If we were only sending the military or peacekeepers to war zones, then at least it would be easier to hide our motives. However, to spend millions of our tax dollars to send private, for-profit security contractors to Afghanistan makes it fairly obvious that this war has always been one giant grift. The total cost of our activities in the Middle East are hard to come by but it was estimated we spent $18 billion up to the point we ended our military role and that doesn't include how much we spent supporting attempts to rebuild the country afterwards. Both those who are concerned about human rights and those concerned about government spending should be united in their outrage by the amount of money we likely spent in Afghanistan over 20 years that resulted in 100s of thousands of lives lost and absolutely no lasting progress as evidenced by the ease of the Taliban’s resurgence there when America's military pulled out in August.

The tentacles of the military industrial complex surround the globe and our supposedly peace-loving Canada is quietly participating in these imperialistic activities that have yet to actually bring freedom and democracy to any foreign nation. This doesn’t mean the coups, invasions, and influences in elections that we participated in weren’t complete failures though. They achieved and continue to achieve the ultimate goal: to make it easier and cheaper to extract resources and profit from foreign countries. As usual, the rich get richer and more powerful, and true democracy continues to decline both at home and abroad.