Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang was killed in Afghanistan along with four other Canadian soldiers on December 30, 2009. She was sent to Afghanistan to help promote the great work and reconstruction efforts that the Canadian soldiers were doing. She was a hired hand to promote war.

Every time someone from Canada dies in Afghanistan it triggers the same automatic emotion and outpouring of grief. Politicians, the media, and citizens fall over themselves in lifting these people up as martyrs and saints. The underlying message is that their death should not be for not and therefore Canada must put even more resources into ensuring more young people die.

Family members who question the war in Afghanistan are quickly muted. Those who give the standard “he (she) was a family man who died valiantly for his (her) country” are given maximum exposure. Unfortunately, this just ensures more young soldiers and reporters will continue to die in the future.

Warmongers get their backs up when people criticize that Canada has been in Afghanistan since 2002 and not much has changed. Reporters like Lang were used as pawns to try to refute these stinging accusations. Unfortunately the warmongers ask for even more money and troops, and have the gall to pretend that just a change in tactics will turn the tide in this unwinnable war.

Critics are muted after a Canadian death in Afghanistan. The freedom and democracy the troops are fighting for is muzzled here at home. This just ensures that even more Canadians will continue to die for nothing in the future, while war contractors here in Canada continue to make billions of dollars selling things designed to kill more people. Instead of killing people this money could be spent lifting Canadians out of poverty and transitioning our economy into a sustainable one.

I know how powerful propaganda is. Growing up playing and watching sports I was inundated with pro war messages. At 18, during a recession, I even considered joining the army for patriotic reasons and of course the need for a paycheque. Brainwashed, I assumed Canada’s reasons for war were always noble and just.

Thankfully I didn’t join the army. Over time I began to understand that war was a money making machine that sacrificed young people on the alter of profits and to satisfy powerful men’s egos. I get ill every time I watch a hockey game and see our ‘join the army’ advertisements, thinking of the many young people, who are too young to understand, watching and being suckered.

When Canadians die in Afghanistan it should be an opportunity to reflect and advocate to bring the troops home and to give them decent paying and secure jobs in the areas of education, health, housing, and renewable energy. Journalists should be hired to promote advancements in these areas.

We should all rise up and say not my lover, not my friend, not my fellow citizen, for they are not for profit, they will not die to momentarily satisfy powerful men’s egos. We should ensure that those who die in Afghanistan are used as an example to save lives, rather than to sacrifice many more. Write Stephen Harper so that Michelle Lang and others don’t die in vain.