[GZG] Grossly Off-topic ANZAC Whining

> "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Lots of whine, whine, whine.

> If your nation is fighting for good press in the United State's

Please keep your politics off the list, it's only going to end in a flame war.

-p.

Perhaps it should be noted, that I suspect that John is railing, not against
the quality and fortitude of the Commonwealth soldiers he's talking about,
rather that the policies of those governments have cut their spending and
numbers to the bare minimum. Canada got so bad that they had 15 tanks spread
among 3 bases across Canada for a time. That's total in the entire "Canadian
Forces". One of my friends bitches up a storm when that period's force
'design' comes up along with the government responsible for the changes. The
same goes for the Australians I know.

Frankly, I find the policies of those past governments and their continued
paltry contributions to be far below what those two countries provided in
years past. Hod does it go? "Canada fed the UK through it's darkest hours,
it's chromium armed and armoured the allies, it had the second largest
Airforce in WWII, the third largest Navy. Canada used to have an aircraft
carrier, now they have the CBC, I think we lost something somewhere."

I have no particular bias but why does Canada need a large army?

The only country that can effectively invade it in a realistic timescale

is the US and even if Canada devoted 80% of its GNP for the next decade to the
military, it would still be outmatched by several orders of magnitude. It is
much more realistic for it to fight a war as a "supporter" than a "fighter".

Eire has a similar outlook since the only country that could invade it is the
UK and the UK can barely guard its own shores let alone invade someone else.

It should be remembered that just because a "country" supports something

that another country is doing (for example the war in Iraq), that doesn't mean
the population of said country support it. While many governments want to be
seen as "good allies", they are normally elected officials and have to keep an
eye on their voters.

> Ryan Gill wrote:

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s is an interesting point and, whether it means they spend too little or we
spend too much, there are several states in the USA with more combined
firepower than that of Canada or many other nations for that matter.

This has absolutely no bearing on whether they are good allies or not and
frankly if I ever meet that sniper team from the land of the big red leaf, I
will buy them dinner for the many times they have pulled asses out of the
fire.

It could even be argued the better ally, in spirit, is tha lly that has
nothing to gain or lose and little to offer in the first place, but who still
throws in. Canada and Japan are both good examples of this.

-Eli

-------------- Original message --------------
From: Adrian1 <al.ll@tiscali.co.uk>

> I have no particular bias but why does Canada need a large army?

> is the UK and the UK can barely guard its own shores let alone invade

> On 7/27/08, Adrian1 <al.ll@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

> I have no particular bias but why does Canada need a large army?

They would if the citizens of Canada were serious about being taken seriously
by Americans, rather than wanting to spend paltry amounts of money on their
tiny army, and then bitching on the internet[0] that they don't get taken
seriously.

As long as they are suckling the Yankee tit, no, they don't need a large army,
nor (more to the point) do they need one capable of operating as anything
other than an extension of a US or UN operation
with Someone Else[1] providing 95%+ of the logistical support.  But
then again that's every one in NATO, besides us and the Brits.

Please take this off list.

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...

Though in my interaction with Canadian friends during my college years this
would ring about true.

-Eli

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@gmail.com>

> On 7/27/08, Adrian1 wrote:

> money on their tiny army, and then bitching on the internet[0] that

> On 7/28/08, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:

Agreed. Let's please get back to arguing about 40k and whether the FSE has
been holding back in its troop committments to fight the Kra'Vak. There are a
million forums for politics.

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eed.

Besides, I think the whol Kra'Vak threat was concocted by the UN to keep then
ations from exploring space on their own..;)

-Eli
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Robert Mayberry" <robert.mayberry@gmail.com>

> On 7/28/08, Doug Evans wrote:

> has been holding back in its troop committments to fight the Kra'Vak.

> At 3:14 PM -0400 7/28/08, Robert Mayberry wrote:

Cause realtime warfighting and funding have NOTHING to do with this
list. ;-)

> At 8:27 PM +0000 7/28/08, emu2020@comcast.net wrote:

What's this, the "Loose NAC dollars" documentary lead in?