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For some insight on this matter read Retd Gen Mackenzie's discussion on the Globe and Mail site today (2006-04-25). I'd be interested in comments from the peanut gallery on his views of the contraversy.
Blair, face it you, I, and the whole country know the real reason for no more flags at half mast as well as coverage of arriving dead soldiers and al.
LFP,
Here is someone who would disagree with you on that:
Globe and Mail editorial 2006-04-25
The half-mast protocol
Many Canadians are outraged that the government is declining to lower the flag to half-mast when Canadian soldiers die in Afghanistan. They should not be. It has been the practice for decades to lower the flag for all soldiers on Remembrance Day, when Canada honours its war dead. Only in 2002, when four Canadians were killed in a friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan, did the previous Liberal government beginlowering the flag for individual soldiers who died in combat. The new Conservative government obviously meant no disrespect to Canadian forces, whose mission in Afghanistan it supports to the hilt, when it reverted to the traditional protocol.
The government may have erred in its handling of the decision, failing to adequately explain its reason until the deaths of four soldiers on the weekend raised the issue again. But its reasoning is sound. However brave they were, these four were no braver than the Canadians who died in Bosnia in the 1990s, in Korea in the 1950s or in the two world wars. To lower the flag for more recent casualties was to make an unfair distinction.
It is a grim fact that Canadian deaths are becoming almost routine in Afghanistan, the most dangerous mission for our troops since the Korean War. Canadians must steel themselves for the fact that quite a few more men and women may lose their lives as Canadian forces struggle to give hope to the Afghan people and prevent international terrorism from flourishing in their country again, an important and noble cause if there ever was one.
To make a national show of mourning over each soldier who dies -- lowering the flag on Parliament's Peace Tower and other public buildings; sending the Prime Minister to meet the bodies when they are brought home to Canada -- almost suggests that the country has been shaken to its roots. That is not the message that Ottawa wants to send at a time when our soldiers are facing a ruthless foe in foreign fields. Far better to mourn in quiet dignity, marking the loss and then moving on. This is what soldiers do when they lose one of their comrades. This is what we at home should learn to do, too.
Ottawa should not sanitize what is going on in Afghanistan or try to play down the fact that our soldiers are dying, but neither should it let grief undermine resolve. It is a thin line to walk. Deaths like this weekend's are a tragedy but they are not a crisis. We have seen their kind before in our history and we will see them again. They are the cost of defending freedom.
LFP,
By the bye, a note of trivia for you all courtesy of my father (a former peacekeeper) who I might add disagrees with LFP et al. and approves of not moving the flag on a day-to-day basis.
A flag on land halfway up the flagpole (or flagstaff as it used to be called) is at half-staff.
A flag on a ship halfway up the flagpole mast is at half-mast.
A flag cannot be at half-mast on land only at half-staff.
Blair, some individuals are pretty smart. They know who is in power and curry favor with their comments. Irrespective the whole Afghanistan issue is split amongst Canadians just as it is amongst prominent Canadians. What I find perplexing is that the opposition politicians and public personalities are as of yet still skirting around the war issue and as of yet are not coming completely out of the closet in saying our changing mission there should be reviewed and planned to be terminated. I predict they will come out of the closet on the heels of a given, unforseen and terrible incident, God forbid.
LFP,
Our mission there hasn't changed. The locations of our troops changed from the relatively safe boroughs of Kabul to the much scarier sections of the country, but the mission itself and Canada's role in the mission is identical to the one that Mr. Chretien committed our troops to while he was still PM.
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