A Canadian officer was killed recently in a firefight in Afghanistan. There's a bit in the local paper.

It's customary to eulogise people after they're dead, but that sort of thing makes me think, well, everybody is a lovely person. Nobody deserves to die, not even people who flunked out of high school.

I keep seeing things in the papers that say, in effect, Canadian soldiers (or "troops", as they've decided to call them) are all excited about fighting in Afghanistan, except it never says "fighting", it's always something like "completing their mission" or some pious sentiment like that. Yes, that's right: they're missionaries, bringing the good word to our benighted brothers.

From the same story:

"She was astonished at the level of poverty over there," he said. "She couldn’t comprehend it. It blew her mind at how poor they were and how little they had."

I don't want to say anything unkind about this. I doubt it needs to be said, though.