Nov. 30 - Welcome to Peaktalk readers!

Bumping this up as it is very much the news of the day up here.

No, I'm not in Ottawa wishing the president well and adding my voice to those who genuinely welcome him. He heard my voice when I voted, and I think he is aware of the large number of ex-pats who defied the pundits and turned out to vote for him in large numbers.

As I post this President Bush is landing in Canada, and the malice from those polite Canadians at work - which had been suspended after the election - picked up again but with different results because I wouldn't play. Why should I? These are people who assert that if there was oil in Sudan the USA would have been in there ... they trust CBC and the Toronto Star, and I trust facts. There is no common meeting ground beyond work and I can smile, nod, and know I am looking at people who have failed to acknowledge that the world is beyond that which our mainstream media portrays.

Canadians have Martin and we have Bush. We have as president a man who says what he means and means what he says, and they have a prime minister who's most notably strong move has been to kick Carolyn Parrish out of the Liberal caucus for criticizing him despite CNN's assertion that it was for her anti-American statements and behaviour on TV.

I have total confidence that the president will listen to NDP leader Jack Layton and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe politely and pay little heed to the dial-a-demonstrations; after all, he is President of the USA, not of Canada.

Nevertheless, I really do wish there would be some research into the feasibility of deploying a missile shield that does not cover Canada.

Much of North American is speculating as to whether official relations will or will not be smoothed between the two countries but what has always been at risk are the unofficial relations, i.e., the attitudes of the two populations which are decidedly not affected by official dinners, pomp, and speeches before Parliament.

I warned prior to the election that the rest of the world was gambling far more than they realized with the Bush-hatred, and now that the American electorate has spoken decisively (and the more observant should have drawn the proper conclusions noting how far to the right John Kerry had to bend to get the vote he did get) and as it would appear that much of the world media has chosen to declare that we, the American people, are as dumb as our President, some lines in the sand are irremediably drawn.

So be it. So why are they busy kissing our asses now? It's all about the trade.

I would have said more but Flea beat me to it with comments he made on what is actually a non-related subject but totally apropos:

What surprises me about this latest analysis is the continuing realization that so many people truly believe the United States to be omnipotent. It is not. In this respect I see the street protests as a psychological reaction to an imagined "bad father" who should have protected them on September 11. Continuing troubles in an imperfect world are, in this light, an immoral or irresponsible choice on the part of the bad father rather than an improvisation in the face of the bad hand dealt to us by the jihadists and the better part of a century of accommodation with the ruling family of Arabia. (Bolding added)

10:59: I am watching the CBC, and whathisname actually asked what impact demonstrations in Canada would have on Americans. The response by Allen Gottlieb was that the demonstrations would have less impact than had he been heckled in Parliament.

Perhaps so, but my answer would have been that the Democrats - none of whom live abroad except Chelsea Clinton, and she was dismayed at the degree of anti-Americanism in Oxford immediately after Sept. 11 - would whine about how much our "prestige" has "fallen" in the world, and most Americans would shrug regardless. Since the dismal state of the Canadian military is a pretty widely-known fact, how much respect can Americans have for a people who are unwilling to defend themselves?

11:01: The contribution Canada could make to running the elections in Iraq leaves out the fact that any Canadians there would be targets. Would Canada risk their own to help Iraqis have free and open elections? Right.

11:04: David Frum is more analytical than I in a column published in today's National Post (available here) as well as more conciliatory:

Bush is working on the assumption that many allied governments feel that they have allowed their disagreements with the United States to go too far. In 2002 and 2003, for example, Jean Chretien--like Germany's Gerhard Schroeder and some other leaders as well--seemed to have decided he could earn some easy political points on the left-hand side of the political spectrum by running against George Bush. That decision may have been aided by a calculation that Bush was an accidental president likely to lose in 2004. Now that the President has been returned to office with great political power, those 2002-03 calculations are looking less shrewd. A minority Canadian prime minister does not want to spend the next four years quarrelling with a popular president backed by a congressional majority. (Emphasis added)

Wiser heads may reflect that he is capable of doing so because he has much bigger concerns than personal pique or feelings of self-consequence; they will even recognize that he is indeed a leader because he can consign the slurs and insults to their proper place and keep this young century's chief challenge at the forefront of his agenda.

He is determined to give credit wherever he can, to encourage the efforts - large and small - to the allies in the war on terror, and to continue to build that coalition and urge it forward.

15:00: A Minority of One takes a look from Ottawa and has some well chosen words for Canadians who chose to forget Canada's tradition before peacekeeping:

Hey, you there, you, with the stupid sign. So how should Canada, with its sacred values, have addressed the agression and murderous thuggery of Hitler and Co.? What should we have done in response to the conquest of Hong Cong and the subsequent use of Canadian citizens as slave labour in Japanese coal mines? Curious minds want to know.

16:13: The CBC is estimating that 5,000 demonstrators got to mix it up with police, and something very strange:

Also present were activists in favour of legalized marijuana, same-sex marriages, and a woman's right to choose, as well as students, grandmothers and groups ranging from Lawyers Against the War to Bellydancers Against Bush.

A CBC Online Diary gives a moment-by-moment account of the Bush visit. Read it and judge for yourselves.

17:32 - Toronto Star headline reads Defiant Bush stands by foreign policy. The-title-under-the-headline is Smaller-than-expected protest greet U.S. president. (It must have really hurt to have to print that one.)

The story:

OTTAWA — George W. Bush rode into town today with kind words for Canada but a defiant message for anyone who thinks he’ll back down from his controversial foreign policy.

The U.S. president arrived in Ottawa for a whirlwind two-day visit designed to warm bilateral relations and begin mending international fences in the wake of the Iraq war.

But the Texan was unbowed when asked about a recent poll suggesting most Canadians donÂ’t like his policy direction.

“I’m the kind of fella who does what I think is right,” he told a joint news conference with Prime Minister Paul Martin.

“We just had a poll in our country where people decided the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to stay in place for four more years.”

It was not exactly the message many had been expecting from a second-term president reputed to be eager to win back allies alienated by his decision to invade Iraq.

It also did nothing to soothe the anger of protesters who scuffled with police after being blocked from marching down the main thoroughfare in front of Parliament.

The prevailing attitude in most of the mainstream media seems to be that Bush needs to repair relations with Canada, thus implying that the USA has more to gain from better relations than Canada, yet without missing a beat stories go straight to the numerous trade issues (especially softwood lumber and the beef trade) which are rankling Canadians.

What exactly does the USA gain from better relations from Canada? I have my own reasons which center on increasing US security, but Canada has a great deal to lose should the border be closed in the event of another terrorist attack and should that attack originate in Canada there will be hell to pay.

18:02 - Heh. Lou Dobbs on CNN is reporting that the president found Canadians less than friendly, and John King is also promoting the Myth of Bitter Disputes Over Iraq. (But then CNN is still disconsolate that France didn't join us so their observations may be less than objective.)

As I recall, then PM Chretien announced that Canada wouldn't lend even moral support because he didn't support the notion of regime change, and the bitterness was pretty much limited to those Canadians who felt Canada should support her traditional allies Great Britain and Australia (and the USA,) and those who were far too enlightened to stop a maniacal, genocidal monster who terrorized his own people.

18:30 - The Fox website says that "Bush had a cool relationship with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien (search), but Martin, in office less than a year, has sought to repair the damage." What they imply but don't say is that Martin has had to step carefully because the anti-Americanism which was given full rein under Chretien is harder to put back into the bottle than it was to let out; furthermore, and this is the part that is hard for Americans to understand (as we don't have a Parliamentary system,) is that he is in a coalition government with the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Liberal Party depends on their support to remain in power.

Posted by: Debbye at 02:15 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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