Regina 16 Professors Can't Take the Heat...

...And Murray Dobbin thinks they shouldn't have to

If there's anything Canadians should have come to expect out of Rabble.ca's Murray Dobbin, it should be the left-wing lunatic screed. God knows he's offered little else since becoming senior contributing editor at Rabble.

In his most recent screed, Dobbin complains about criticisms of the now-infamous Regina 16 at the University of Regina who recently co-signed a letter to U of R President Vianne Timmons recommending that the institution not participate:

"For their actions in trying to defend the university's reputation from an association with blatant jingoism, the fifteen Profs have been treated to a wave of attacks from assorted bottom-feeders on Canada's right. One of the Profs wrote me that he and the others have been subjected to '..a vilification campaign directed in part by right-wing politicians in the Conservative Party and the Saskatchewan Party [the Saskatchewan equivalent of Harper's Conservatives]. As a result, we have been at the receiving end of a wave of vitriolic hate mails, full of terrible language and demands that we be fired from our university positions.'

This kind of mindless verbal violence is reminiscent of the hate campaigns being fomented by the extreme right of the Republican Party in the US against Obama -- campaigns that do not even bother to hide their racism. It is indicative of how easy it is to undermine and gradually change a political culture rooted in a desire for peace and a suspicion of militarism."

The "political culture" of which Dobbin speaks of is, of course, his political culture, which he so often mistakes for that of all of Canada.

The mentality of Murray Dobbin, Jeffrey Webber and company is the same mentality found at the heart of the far-left loonies who insist that Canada discontinue Remembrance Day as it is allegedly militaristic holiday.

We shouldn't benefit the children of fallen soldiers because that glorifies imperialistic war. We shouldn't devote a day to remember those who died in war because that glorifies imperialistic war.

Another one of the professors has raised the objection that the scholarship would make it more difficult for them to criticize specific wars.

“It conflates heroism with the death of individuals who are in the military service and we think that the death of individuals is always a tragic matter, but we think that heroism is something different,” said co-signatory Joyce Green. “When you attach heroism to the deaths of the military, it makes it very difficult, maybe impossible for us to talk about what’s going on, what the nature of our military engagement is. In other words, it shrinks the space for democratic discussion and criticism of military policy in Canada and in the university.”

But apparently Green has never stopped to think that attaching the label of "imperialism" to wars also shrinks the space for democratic discussion and defence of military policy in Canada.

It seems that kind of shrinkage is A-OK with people like Green, Webber and Dobbin.

Dobbin writes:

"Project Hero is purely political and has nothing to do with looking after 'our troops.' It is a transparent effort to stop people from thinking about the meaning of our occupation of Afghanistan and our ugly collaboration with US imperial interests.

Project Hero cynically exploits the very soldiers it pretends to be supporting -- soldiers who are dying, being wounded and having their lives changed forever in large part because of the lobbying of former general Rick Hillier to take on a combat role that those soldiers were ill-equipped to handle -- both in terms of training and equipment. Over 140 Canadian soldiers dead and hundreds more seriously wounded so Hillier could go out and talk about 'killing scumbags.'"

Of course, what Dobbin overlooks is that rejecting Project Hero out of disdain for what he deems "imperialistic war" accomplishes the same act. In accepting these objections, the university would be effectively granting an air of officiality to the views of these particular professors, and would disrupt any critical thinking about these professors' claims of imperialism.

Then again, one imagines that must be somehow different. In the mind of Murray Dobbin it always is.