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Raiding the Icebox
That summer, however, the Army held what were the biggest war games in American history on the site of what is now Fort Drum, Rudmin said.
Is he worried that the Yanks will invade his country from Fort Drum?
  Any invasion of Canada by U.S. forces shouldn't underestimate the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police. (Patterson Clark -- The Washington Post) |
"Not now ," he said. "Now the U.S. is kind of busy in Iraq. But I wouldn't put it past them."
He's not paranoid, he hastened to add, and he doesn't think the States will simply invade Canada the way Hitler invaded Russia.
But if some kind of crisis -- perhaps something involving the perennially grumpy French Canadians -- destabilized Canada, then . . . well, Fort Drum is just across the river.
"We most certainly are not preparing to invade Canada," said Ben Abel, the official spokesman for Fort Drum.
The fort, he added, is home to the legendary 10th Mountain Division, which is training for its third deployment in Afghanistan. There are also 1,200 Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
"I find it very hard to believe that we'd be planning to invade Canada," Abel said. "We have a lot of Canadian soldiers training here. I bumped into a Canadian officer in the bathroom the other day."
Going North, Heading South
Invading Canada is an old American tradition. Invading Canada successfully is not.
During the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold -- then in his pre-traitor days -- led an invasion of Canada from Maine. It failed.
During the War of 1812, American troops invaded Canada several times. They were driven back.
In 1839, Americans from Maine confronted Canadians in a border dispute known as the Aroostook War.
