Chris Blattman

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Should the U.S. send ground troops into Saskatchewan?

Around the time my great-grandmother emigrated from Brooklyn to Montreal, it seems she wasn’t the only Yank with northern ambitions. Robert Higgs in The Beacon describes how he recently

stumbled upon a description of War Plan Red, which pertains to a war between the United States and the British Empire. The U.S. Army developed this plan, along with many other color-coded contingency plans, in the 1920s and kept it warm until the end of the 1930s, when new plans were made in which the United States and Canada would cooperate in military actions against common enemies, such as Germany and Japan.

War Plan Red envisioned primarily U.S. attacks on and occupation of various Canadian cities, including Halifax (to be subjected to a poison-gas first strike), Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Victoria.

Hard to believe? Well, Canadian comic Rick Mercer hosts a popular television segment, “Talking to Americans.” Perhaps not coincidentally, he finds skads of New Yorkers supporting the U.S. military’s recent bombing of Saskatchewan (4m 30s in):

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