The Dead and The Disgraceful

What to say, but my heart goes out to the families of the six new dead in Afghanistan, while my heart also goes out to the over 60,000 WWI dead. Imagine those numbers, at Vimy alone, close to 3600 dead in four days, for their new country at that time. It's hard to imagine the losses. It wasn't instant news at that time, so every community made do the best they could, without really understanding how many young men and women were giving their lives.

Today, three speeches were given at Vimy, that I couldn't watch live because I had to work. Thankfully you can see some of the Vimy Ridge coverage at CTV. Go to this site, then click on Remembering Vimy, watch PM Harper's speech, the PM of France, and the Queens, they were very inspiring.

Now, to the disgraceful, well is it any shock that it might be Layton's NDP (who couldn't bother to show up at Vimy) and the Liberals? The Bloq who cares, the Quebec French didn't fight at Vimy, so why should they even be there?

NDP Leader Jack Layton called for major changes in the mission.
"We believe that this mission is not going to be able to succeed in the long run and more and more people seem to be drawing that conclusion. A new approach is needed," he said.
The NDP has held the current approach focuses too much on counter-insurgency and not enough on development.

Oh, and let's not forget the Liberals. Where was Dion anyways? He's like Alice in Wonderland, he's gone down the hole into a strange new world, never to be seen.

Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff urged caution in linking the two.
"I think it's right to take pride in our military traditions but we ought to be very, very careful about using them to justify current conflicts. Let's keep them separate," he said.
Harper didn't raise Afghanistan in his Vimy speech Monday. (Guess he kept politics out of it, too bad the Liberals couldn't) He didn't take any questions from reporters during his two-day stay in France. (that must have ticked them off big time!)

The Liberals have said the mission should not be extended beyond February 2009.
Huebert said the Taliban's goal is to make the cost so high that the Canadian public gives up and say, "enough already.
"Conversely, it's very important for Canadian leaders to understand, now they are engaged in this conflict, that ... is what they're up against. And they have to make sure the political will remains (so) that they can in fact stay the course."

The public is the last piece of the puzzle. Are the weenie, lefty, hippie, tree hugging, marching with Hezbollah crowd, going to win this battle, or are the common sense, God fearing, people who love Canada, and truly support the troops going to triumph?