There's a little story my uncle likes to tell, about the day he strolled into the unemployment office just after he retired from the military and asked the stunned placement clerk what jobs they might have for a "trained killer." This was before 9/11, so no one called the RCMP or had him scooped up in the middle of the night for a little game of "good cop/bad cop" with the boys at CSIS. But after so many years of "Canada the Peacekeeper" being drummed into her mind, it took a moment for her to realize that he meant what he said.

Last week, the collective conscience of Canada got a firm smack in the face from our Chief of Defence, who came out with the shocking revelation that the military's job is to kill people. Yes, those guns are for real, they have bullets in them (well, actually, because of budget cutbacks, not during training), and while half of their equipment is presently falling apart and waiting for replacement parts, it's not designed for the amusement of air-show patrons or parade ceremonies, but to, in the immortal words of SCTV's Big Jim McBob, make sure things "Blow up real good!"

The million-dollar question is always whether we should have them actually do it, and the answer, at least on the government's part, seems to be a resounding "Yes!"

From Paul Martin to National Defence spokesman Steve Jurgutis, no one seems to have a problem with the top General in the land sounding like George Bush on the warpath, ready to take down the "scumbags" who apparently, if you trust General Rick Hillier, detest our freedoms, our society, and our liberties. The last time someone started frothing at the mouth over a supposed threat that no one could actually find, no matter how hard they tried, it lead to the current chaos in Iraq, where terrorists who never used to exist are now thriving, and apparently too preoccupied with killing their fellow citizens to worry about us at the moment.

Not that we should be expecting Hillier to be offering hugs and warm wishes to the folks at Al-Qaeda. He's a soldier, not a therapist. But he's also not the Foreign Affairs Minister, and it was disheartening in the extreme to see one and all fall in line with such emotional bombast and disingenuous reasoning about the imminent threat we are facing from mountain-bound Taliban fighters who, while truly being a threat to the locals in Kandahar (where we will soon see our military going), are about as threatening to us at the moment as a slippery bathtub.

This is not to say that we do not face a terrorist threat, because we most certainly do. It's going to come sooner or later, Canada, but the question is, to what lengths are we going to go to stop it? Already we are engaging in the questionable practice of holding people indefinitely, without charge, on "security certificates," and turning a blind eye to the torture of Canadian citizens in other lands, both undermining the very freedoms and liberties those "scumbags" apparently detest so much. And after two years, God knows how many millions of pounds of smart bomb explosives, and a body count right out of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, terrorism is not only not in decline, but on the rise.

So are we to just jump in and keep doing what hasn't worked, risking our soldiers' lives in what has so far been a futile effort?

While George Bush and like-minded chicken hawks may want to "win," I'd rather have a solution that works. But no one seems interested in finding one. Even Jack Layton, NDP leader and peacenik, who only seven or so months ago was holding hands and having prayer vigils on the front lawn of Parliament Hill to protest missile defence and the escalation of the arms race that he felt would follow, seems just fine with Canada escalating the terrorist race. Left- and right-leaning newspapers alike were falling over themselves in their praise of the General's comments, perhaps still seeing red after the London bombings.

But let's be clear on something: the war on terror is not working. The London bombers were homegrown, not baggy-pant-wearing Mujahideen. The "venom" that Hillier speaks of has long since left the hills where our forces will be operating and spread to our very backyards, and while I have no idea how we solve this, I do know that throwing more bodies at the problem isn't working.

The military's job may be to kill people, but it's our job, and particularly our government's job, to find ways of avoiding the need for them to have to, a job we don't seem very interested in at the moment.