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The soldier who was shot and killed by the Ottawa gunman has been named by police as Cpl Nathan Cirillo.
Cirillo, 24 years old, was a soldier reservist serving in Hamilton, Ontario as a corporal in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada regiment.
He had a young son, his friend Marie Michele told CBC News.
“Nathan was a good man. He would give anything to anyone,” she said.
Cirillo had also worked as a fitness instructor at GoodLife Fitness before becoming a reservist and enjoyed country music, the network reported.
He had been in training to work for the Canada Border Services Agency, his aunt told The Globe and Mail.
A Twitter user posted this photo of Cirillo at the memorial on Wednesday.
On Sunday, we asked a very handsome guard for a picture with my friend visiting from Cali – RIP Nathan Cirillo pic.twitter.com/q80EZ6nwmo
— Megan Underwood (@megunder) October 22, 2014
Agencies/Canadajournal
NOT TERRORISM BY ANY STRETCH
(Canadian author here) These events in Ottawa may be violent acts resulting in the very sad and regrettable loss of human life, but this has NOTHING to do with ‘terrorism’ whatsoever. Military personnel and the politicians who send them off to battle ARE TACTICAL TARGETS who participate in acts of war on other nations. We can’t possibly call it justice when Canada acts militarily overseas and then call it terrorism when others hit back at our military infrastructure.
Here’s why the gunman didn’t commit a ‘terrorist’ act by attacking uniformed military personnel and possibly attempting to assassinate their Commander in Chief: His act is either a ‘crime’ if he acted without any state backing, or it’s an ‘act of war’ if he was state-sponsored. Military personnel and their leaders are tactical targets because defeating them creates an (albeit minuscule) comparative advantage for the attacker (i.e. it’s not just about instilling fear in the civilian population). It’s important to distinguish this terrible act from the act of say setting off a bomb in a crowded public market for example, which has no tactical purpose other than invoking fear amongst civilians as a means of coercion (i.e. terror). …Which is where the word came from: Terror–ism. We’re simply being fools if we start yelling ‘terrorism terrorism!’ every time that we’re scared. The Canadian civilian population was not attacked this week; it was our active combat military and its leadership that was attacked. And in case anyone has forgotten, Canada has spent the last 13 years proclaiming itself a nation at war.
In summary, let’s certainly be mournful of these Canadian deaths, but let’s NOT play with words and call it terrorism (because that’s just silly). The military is not civilian by definition and therefore definitely does not qualify, even under the broadest of definitions, to be targets of terrorism. If attacking uniformed military personnel at a moment when they don’t expect it was ‘terrorism’, then all wars would be rife with acts of terrorism. Let’s agree that definition doesn’t make sense.