Defence's Think Tanks

This must be one of the creepier things I've seen in a while. Information has become public revealing that the Canadian Ministry of Defence employs/fund military think tanks and pays them according to how often they get themselves in the press.

Er, what?

The Conference of Defence Associations has a half million dollar contract to do exactly that and the concern is that the military is using our tax dollars to fund a pro-war organization.

Cruising the CDA's website, you'll find clever distortions of Afghan history that fail to link the "brave and defiant" "Freedom Fighters" that fought off the Soviets with the "brutally repressive" Taliban and Al Qaeda. (Hint: Osama Bin Laden was both.)

You can look around yourself. You'll find the "Cut and Run" insult and a lot of stuff about the need for continued Canadian presence in Afghanistan passed the "unprecedented deadline" set by Parliament.

Fine. If these think tanks want to exist and promote war in the news media, they are entitled to do so. That's how free speech works.

The problem is that they're doing it with our tax dollars, supplied by the military brass.

That's not a democracy works. In a democracy, the civilians control the military. The civilians give orders via the Parliament.

If the military is using tax dollars to promote its own agenda, or sending soldiers in to war zones without permission, then we no longer have a democracy. We have a tax-funded military dictatorship.

All funding from the Ministry of Defence to any of these think tanks must stop immediately if we are maintain even the vaguest of illusions that the Canadian people control the destiny of this country.

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