Mission Accomplished

Back here I opined about the reason for the reversion of the names of our air and naval forces to RCAF and RCN. Basically that the Harper Government wanted to distract everyone from something else. A perusal of the progressive blogosphere over the past 24 hours would seem to indicate that the Harper Conservatives were highly successful at this.

The progressive blogosphere is now a flutter with articles condemning, supporting or just plain indifferent to the whole thing, basically pushing the discussion of more immediate and substantive issues right off the table. I would suggest that sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

Personally I find this whole tempest in a teapot fascinating. Until the announcement there has been no mass movement within the progressive blogosphere to remove the word "Royal" from the various Canadian institutions that still use it, such as the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mint, The Royal Tyrrell Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and so on and so on. So not only did the Tories manage to distract us from more pressing matters, they also made much of the progressive blogosphere look silly in that no one was calling for the removal of the royal moniker from the institutions that still have it.

Some things to consider:

1. The commander-in-chief of the Canadian Forces is H.M. The Queen, as represented by her stand in the Governor General.
2. When joining the CF, members and officers swear allegiance to H.M. The Queen
3. Many units of the CF still maintain very strong ties to the crown in their names, Royal Canadian Artillery, King's Own Calgary Regiment, etc.

So this rebranding will be seen by the broader defence community as a "meh" issue. As I used to tell people when I rebadged navy "same job, different clothes".

So my advice to the progressive community at large is:

1. Compared to the other issues facing our nation, this is really not that important and serves only as a distraction from the real issues so move on.
2. If you insist that it is, you should mediately also begin a campaign to remove the "Royal" moniker from every other institution and all references to the queen as well (the leader of H.M. loyal opposition for example).
3. If we keep letting these little distractions take over the discussion, as we have with this one, Harper has already won the war as he can divide us and conquer at will.

That's the way I see it for what it's worth.