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“After a long and painful illness of protracted protest, the whole debate about Canada’s potential role in BMD met an abrupt and fatal end today.

In lieu of flowers, the government kindly requests that all Canadians (especially peace activists) finally let the whole issue rest in peace and just accept its word on faith that Canada is not involved, and will not join, ‘missile defense.’”

Something did die that day, but it wasn’t BMD, it was the public debate and a movement that was gathering momentum.

But even the debate was phoney because it had revolved completely around a misleading question:

We were constantly asked: “Should Canada join ‘missile defense’?”
This hid the fact that for many years Canada had already been a member in very good standing of this exclusive club.

Accepting the phoney terms of this debate was a death knell for the movement. We were set up. Then, many of us rolled over and laid ourselves to rest by actually congratulating the government for uttering its empty “no.”

But perhaps we can still revive ourselves. Although death is pretty fatal, maybe things aren’t as black and white as we are sometimes led to believe.