Glad Hand is Torontoist’s political cartoon, created by Brett Lamb and appearing here every Friday.
Comments
http://undefined MariaPD
Wow. This is heavy.
http://www.adammedley.com Adam M.
What brought this on? Have we invaded another country?
Brett Lamb
Veteran’s Week, Nov 5-11.
http://www.adammedley.com Adam M.
THEY GET A WHOLE WEEK NOW????
Brett Lamb
It’s a great deal … they get more honour and in return the government pays them less pension and health benefits.
http://paul.kishimoto.name Paul Kishimoto
Huzzah for Glad Hand!
It’s fashionable to be down on peacekeeping because it “doesn’t reflect the asymmetrical nature of conflict in the 21st century” or similar BS. People have been fighting wars for 5,000 years, while peacekeeping is a very young concept at 50-60. It’s far too soon to say, “Well, that’s not working; let’s give up and go back to the old thing.”
http://undefined Andrew
Plenty of problems with peacekeeping:
1. It is limited in usefulness: the UN only sends in peacekeepers when all sides consent to their use.
2. When shit hits the fan, the peacekeepers’ mandate does not necessarily let them protect the civilians who need protecting. Prominent disasters have resulted. In Bosnia, the UN’s botched response to attacks on civilians contributed to the Srebrenica massacre, as well as to NATO intervention. See also: Rwanda.
3. Peacekeeping tends to reinforce an uncomfortable status quo, where more direct action can bring transformative change. For example, Bosnia is still governed by an EU-appointed “high representative”, some 15 years after the war ended, with prominent fugitives still fleeing the international courts; while Serbia quickly overthrew Milosevic and turned him over to the ICTY shortly after the NATO bombing campaign.
Peacekeeping is useful, but history has more or less shown it to be a specialized tool for particular circumstances, rather than a generalized military strategy.
http://undefined JRMIV
Ironic, isn’t it? Invade another country, send soldiers over without any clear objective and when they get killed, bring them home with great honours. Original plan was to bring them home quietly and bar the press from photographing the caskets, but then Harper and McKay realized that most people just assume it’s for a good cause without questioning anything.