Posted on 12/31/2005 11:02:13 AM PST by doc30
They'd take Halifax (then we'd kill Kenny)
By SHAWN MCCARTHY Saturday, December 31, 2005 Posted at 10:00 AM EST From Saturday's Globe and Mail
NEW YORK — We called their President a moron, and they called us the "retarded cousin." Their ambassador warned about the repercussions of aggressive rhetoric, and our Prime Minister aggressively asserted we will not be "dictated to."
In another age -- or in a Marx Brothers movie -- the escalation of insults and diplomatic contretemps could lead to only one thing: "Of course you know," Groucho famously intoned, "this means war."
It was one of a series of such contingency plans produced in the late 1920s. Canada, identified as Crimson, would be invaded to prevent the Britons from using it as a staging ground to attack the United States.
But having successfully captured Canada, the military planners had no intention of giving it up. "Blue [the Americans'] intentions are to hold in perpetuity all CRIMSON and RED territory gained," they wrote in an appendix.
The plan was withdrawn in 1939, declassified in 1974 and had gone largely unnoticed in a grey box at the National Archives until The Post, echoing the call-to-arms one hears from the drum-bangers at Fox News and elsewhere, resuscitated it under the headline, "Raiding the icebox."
The Post writer helpfully noted the presence of a potential fifth column in the Americans' midst, and chortled at the prospect of Celine Dion and Mike Myers being carted off to Guantanamo Bay in orange jumpsuits.
Canadian officials, predictably, refused to take seriously the report of a 75-year-old U.S. invasion plan.
"We found it amusing, and we'll just have to make sure that our plans are up to date as well," laughed Jasmine Panthaky, a spokeswoman for the Canadian embassy in Washington.
"From time to time, this thing does come up. I guess it's one of those curiosities in the relationship, given that we've been in the news a fair bit. . . . This is just a question of something that has resonance at a time when Canada is receiving its 15 minutes of fame."
Clearly, there are some U.S. radar screens you'd rather not be on.
Having once promised to repair a strained relationship, Prime Minister Paul Martin has apparently decided that an election campaign is a good time to chide the Bush administration for its failings. The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, responded in kind, urging the Prime Minister to cool the rhetoric or face repercussions -- a message to which Mr. Martin responded like a big-league slugger hitting a batting-practice lob over the fence.
The professional stirrers of strife on U.S. cable channels briefly focused on Canada and didn't like want they saw. MSNBC's Tucker Carlson said that all the intelligent Canadians had long since moved to New York and likened the country to a "retarded cousin." On Fox News, where embattled anger is the abiding emotion, talk show host Neil Cavuto said Canadians had "gotten too big for their britches" and may soon be an enemy of the United States.
Which brings us back to that 1930s-era invasion plan.
It starts with a seaborne assault on Halifax to cut Canada off from its British ally. A later version, approved in 1935, allowed for first-strike use of poison gas and strategic bombing of the city, if necessary.
It also posits that the U.S. invading forces take out Niagara Falls, seize Sudbury's strategic nickel mines, capture Winnipeg as the critical east-west rail juncture and attack Vancouver to deprive the British of a West Coast maritime base.
The 94-page document is rather long on geographic information -- important ports, main industries, transportation links -- and on published assessments of Canadian military strength. But it is rather skimpy on tactical details of a theoretical invasion.
Canada had its own plan, written nine years earlier, to counter a U.S. attack by invading the northern United States.
Likely, few Americans have spent time worrying about a Canadian invasion, other than in comedy clubs.
But the existence of War Plan - Red fed the imaginations of those Canadians who worried about the world's longest undefended border.
They believed that the Americans had always had a covetous view of their resource-rich country, and that the United States was always poised to invade if the opportunity arose.
The chief proponent of the invasion theorists is Floyd Rudmin, a U.S.-born, former Queen's University social psychology professor who has since decamped to the University of Tromso in Norway.
In the early 1990s, Prof. Rudmin wrote several articles -- much amplified in the Toronto Star -- on the U.S. expansion of Fort Drum in northern New York, arguing that the Americans were preparing to intervene if Canada experienced serious instability as a result of a Quebec secessionist movement.
Prof. Rudmin was critical of what he dubbed "the blind eye perspective" that Canadians maintained toward what he saw as obvious U.S. hostility toward its northern neighbour.
But as The Post noted, Canadians can probably relax for the foreseeable future, despite the bluster from the pundits. The U.S. military is otherwise occupied at the moment. Or are they just practising?
Battle plans
U.S. Joint Army and Navy
Basic War Plan -- Red
Key strategies
Capture Halifax to block British reinforcements
Seize key Winnipeg rail junction
Cut power by assault on Niagara Falls
March from Michigan to Sudbury nickel mines
Blockade both coasts
Use secret airbases to control airspace over Ontario
Victory
U.S. annexes captured territory
Canadian Defence
Scheme No. 1
Key strategies
Pre-emptive strikes from sea to sea
On word of U.S. invasion plan, Canadian forces would move to capture Spokane, Great Falls, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Albany and parts of Maine.
In face of U.S. counterattack, Canadian forces would retreat, blowing up bridges and railways, buying time until reinforcements from Britain could arrive.
Victory
Canada keeps Alaska
Perhaps as a public service to their side, The Washington Post yesterday dusted off a 75-year-old U.S. plan to invade Canada, offering it as a contrast to the situation in Iraq, where, it suggested, there was no plan.
First approved in 1930, Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan - Red was drawn up to defend the United States in the event of war with Britain.
We should go south first ... THEN North
Of course we have contingency plans - for every corner of the planet. I assume that our plans for Canada have evolved somewhat since they no longer have a military.
Canada? Is that a country or something?
Send in the clowns
There ought to be clowns
Maybe next year...
Crow: At least so overtly.
Mike: Exactly, right. Must disguise our hate, just a little. (Commercial sign light goes on) Okay, we'll be right back. (To Tom) It's okay, now, Dudley.
Tom (still sobbing): Pardonez moi! Pardonez moi!
Leter Pearson was a traitorous coward too. If his ears had been longer LBJ would have picked him up by his ears.
Initial invasion would be a couple of Marines penetrating Quebec. The French response would be immediate unconditional surrender, splitting Canada in two. Alaskan citizens would be given letters of marque allowing them to keep anything they can take in Canada especially beer. Acting on this information, British Columbia would rise in rebellion and join the U.S. as the 51st state. Idaho would annex the area between as most residents need to expand their compounds. Finally, a temporary ban on North Atlantic fishing would motivate the down East Yankees to pacify Eastern Canada with uncharacteristically dry sarcastic humorless humor. Victory.
The irony is that a few years later, Halifax Harbor and the Bedford Basin just outside it were the assembly points for the great Atlantic convoys of WW II, which aided the very survival of Great Britain. The Royal Navy considered Halifax during the War to be the most important port in the world.So there we were, Halifax loaded with US naval and merchant marine personnel, and we didn't even try to make a move!
"................It is no surprise it comes up now. Canada is in the midst of a general election and the liberals are performing badly. This could be 3-5% to the Liberals (or at least away from the Tories)."
There was uncertainty within the U.S. Navy in the post World War One era whether Great Britain would tolerate losing naval supremacy to the United States. German states and Britain had been long-standing allies against France since the time of the Bourbons and Germany's quest for naval parity had turned that relationship on its head. The possibility of war against the British Empire was therefore not totally out of the question as Britannia still ruled the waves as well as its Empire and the U.S. was seen as the pretentious upstart.
In the 1930's, U.S. contingency plans (named after colors) included the following geographic areas :
RED: British Empire, further subdivided into:
***CRIMSON: Canada
***RUBY: India
***SCARLET: Australia
GREEN: Mexico
BLACK: Germany
ORANGE: Japan
RED/ORANGE: British/Japanese alliance
YELLOW: China
GRAY: Azores
EMERALD: Ireland
INDIGO: Iceland Intervention
LEMON: Portugal
TAN: Cuba
GOLD: France
SILVER: Italy
PURPLE: USSR
CITRON: Brazil
OLIVE: Spain
WHITE: Civil unrest within the U.S. ("U.S. Domestic Contingency")
That is the sort of mindless comment I would expect from the left. Do you really think it is ok to go around invading countries when there is no clear and present danger? I realize that many things on Free Republic are written half in jest but puleeeze.
I don't think we'd need a plan to take out Canada, personally....
Tongue-in-cheek.
ping
Globe and Mail.........
I'm not surprised, except that they might have had more effect if they'd left less time for the laughter to die down.
Whaddaya gonna do?
Why take Halifax? Toronto and Montreal are where 90% of the problems lie...
Obviously, this was long before P.C. came into vogue!
Semper Fi
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