Dear Mr McCain

Sir,

I found your recent commentary on David Frum insightful and honest, as usual. However, your closing argument was in effect an ad hominum attack based on Frum's Canadian nationality. As a man of impeccable honour, I am sure you understand completely when I say that I take umbrage.

I remember clearly the horror and rage that swept our communities the day the towers came down. Since that day, army recruiting (previously anemic) has grown to the point that training centres are housing candidates in tents for lack of barracks. This hasnt happened since WW2. In an army with approximately 12k combat troops, we have almost 3k in theatre, another 4k supporting them domestically and another 5k training. Most canadian soldiers, in a ten year contract have hit afghanistan four to six times. our troops, chronically underfunded and underequipped, have held the back gate for you in a land that ate three british armies of a kind that would have ended your revolution, and so frightened Alexander's army that it turned back. Our best have bled and suffered for you, with the same blend of insane courage and indomitable humour that kept our nations bonded in Korea and the fields of Europe. For all the draft dodgers we housed, remember that 30k Canadians volunteered for Vietnam. Visit the Wall in DC again. You will find small Canadian flags planted at its base wherever one of our fallen is listed.

David Frum is a pretentious blowhard, deserving of ridicule and public shaming. He is as much, if not more, of a blight on Right-thinking Canadians as he is on Americans. He has no right to question the fervour of any American's response to 9/11. However, it is his personality that drives his vitriol. Canada is no more responsible for his lunacy than America is for David Brooks.

I remain your humble servant in the Wilderness,

Morgan