Canadians and Americans

Mar. 8 - Peter Worthington cuts to the heart of the matter amidst the recent uproar over revelations by Abdurahman Khadr that indeed the Khadr family did knowingly and joyfully provide support - including from money provided by the Canadian government and citizens - to al Qaeda, and that he himself rejected Al Qaeda and worked with the CIA to infiltrate and expose al Qaeda in Bosnia.

For a profession that claims to have a monopoly on truth, the media hasn't been very happy with it. Maybe they just fail to understand the truth about truth: for you shall know the truth, and the Truth must set him free:

We should be treating this guy as a patriot -- someone who risked his life to do the right thing. Instead, he's viewed as a traitor or pariah -- certainly by his family.

The point Worthington makes can be extended to the Canadian media as well. Which is the worse sin: collaborating with the CIA to bring al Qaeda down, or being involved with al Qaeda? Dollars to donuts, the thing that sticks in much of the Canadian media craw most is Abdurahman Khadr's association with the CIA because their hatred for the US is so implacable that they can no longer look at and analyze events but merely react with excess emotion and fury.

There was a shift in the Canadian media and politics after Sept. 11. Usually subtle anti-Americanism leapt from media heads fully grown and ready for the kill. There was just one problem: we didn't wallow in wondering why they hate us and that was, for outlets like the CBC and Toronto Star, more damning than the actual state of war we found ourselves in, and our decision to fight back was seen as a bigger outrage than the terrorist attacks themselves.

There was a counter-reaction as well. Some of the media recognized the global threat of terrorism and the threat from within that knee-jerk anti-Americanism enabled, and they along with many Canadians became more vocal in their support of the US-led fight on terrorism.

Has the US polarized world opinion? No, the reactions of the world to what has been set in motion has done the polarizing. Those of us from the 60's who left the 60's behind recognize the make the victim the criminal ploy quite clearly because familiarity makes it easier to discern.

The Canadian government in the person of Jean Chretien responded with - silence. Eventually, many Canadians looked south for leadership and found it in the person of President George W. Bush. That infuriated much of the media, but their anger should have targeted the Canadian government's silence rather than the man who filled the vacuum as a leader who voiced hope and confidence.

The Canadian people were deprived of Canadian leadership, and the fault should not be laid at the feet of GWB but on the feckless Liberal Party which refused to lead.

The Canadian media ignored the 2002 attack in Bali just as much as their counterparts in the US. That indifference was a major red flag for those of us who were already critical of the media because they were ignoring a blatant attack on a Commonwealth country - which should have had resonance in Canada - as well as a firm ally of the US.

Why would they ignore it? It should have been a major story, but was treated with less attention than the DC sniper and later with the Laci Peterson and Martha Stewart cases (as well as the Winona Ryder case, the Robert Blake case, the Michael Jackson case, the Super Bowl half-time Wardrobe Malfunction, and well, you get the idea.)

CNN often leads a story off with the phrase "Most Americans are unaware that . . ." and I yell with frustration because, if indeed most Americans are unaware of something, it's because the news media doesn't inform us! How can it be our fault if those we trust to inform us chose not to do so? The answer is that we no longer trust them, and the joke is that they don't realize it.

Enter the blogs. The number of blogs grows daily, and more and more people are accessing the internet for news across their nations and around the world. One thing all sides agree on is that their distrust of the big news media is absolute.

The quest for truth is as old as curiosity. As Captain John Sheridan said, You can't kill the truth; well, you can, but it always comes back to haunt you. Eason Jordan and CNN killed the truth in Iraq before the war, and nobody has forgotten or forgiven that. And that's the one we know about - what about the others?

Today's Globe and Mail has a column by Lysiane Gagnon that unwittingly exemplifies why Canada is an uncertain ally but Canadians aren't. She says in Canadians relate to Democrats:

I'm sure most Canadians will be rooting for John F. Kerry during the tough fight he will have with George W. Bush. The latter is especially hated for his foolish war in Iraq, but even in a time of peace, Canadians feel more at ease with the Democrats for the obvious reason that in Canada, the political spectrum is much further to the left. (Emphasis added)

The opening assumption in this column is quite wild, and her expressed hope that Canadians will be rooting for Kerry is based on an unstated truth: the recent primary returns marked one of the lowest voter turnouts in recent US primary history. Democrats stayed home rather than vote for any of the candidates, and she has persuaded herself that Canadians are like American Democrats? The uncomfortable and unstated truth in this assertion is that Canadians also have been staying away from the polls, perhaps because Canadians, like Democrats, don't perceive that there has been a positive alternative to the status quo in past elections.

That Gagnon employed emotion-laden terms like hatred and foolish is not evidence of journalism but of unadulterated and vicious propaganda, yet an observer would wonder why she indulges in this so openly. If everyone in Canada agrees with her assessment, why beat it into the ground?

The Liberal government of Canada is staggering under non-stop revelations of mis-spending at best and corruption at worst and what is supposed to be the focus of Canadians? The US presidential elections.

That tactic has a lot of names: red herring, politics by distraction, carpet bagging. This tactic has worked well in recent times, but that was before the recent Auditor-General's report that showed the Adscam crisis was worse than anticipated and that spending by government appointees is so carefree because the Canadian tax-payers who foot this extravagance are helpless to stop it. This tactic also worked better before the accusations against the Khadr family were proven to be correct. What's a poor columnist to do?

When in trouble, attack. It doesn't have to be on any real issues, just write so as to hopefully make Canadians smile and remember how superior they are. But as with many tactics, over-use has its limitations, and this one may finally have met its expiration date.

How Canadians respond to these scandals whenever the much-anticipated election is called will be very telling and establish if Canada is truly a sovereign nation or composed of citizens who can't bear the inadequacies and corruption of their own government but, rather than confront it, flee the reality of the Canadian political landscape to immerse themselves in American politics which is one are in which they full of opinions but have no power. Yet by choosing to escape the horror that is Ottawa, don't they sidestep their own complicity in allowing it to continue unchallenged and unabated? How does that square with sovereignty?

I suspect the anti-American card will be played both subtly and flagrantly in the upcoming election. The Conservative Party will be portrayed as one pandering to American interests and the Liberal and NDP Parties as those bravely and courageously standing against the dreaded Americans and the sub-text will be Hey, so the Liberals are liars and thieves! But they stand between us and being Americanized.

How does that square with choosing the government that will best deal with Canadian issues? It doesn't, of course.

At the same time there will be accusations that the Americans aren't paying attention to the election up here whilst never conceding that, because it's an internal Canadian matter, Americans believe it would be rude to get overly involved in the domestic matters of a friendly sovereign nation.

In my angrier moments up here, I have wished that the American media would take the gloves off and attack things Canadian as viciously as Canadian publications attack the US generally and GWB specifically. I wish that Canadians would be treated to the same appalling, personal attacks on Paul Martin as I suffer when the media attacks my president.

I desist, however, because I've lived here too long to know the Cult of Canadian Victimology. Far too many wouldn't recognize that the same tactics are being turned back on them but would wail and bemoan how Americans Don't Respect Them. The capacity for self-delusion in the Canadian media is a bottomless pit of wallowing in shallow sentiment and perpetual indignation yet never addresses the primary question: why should Americans respect Canada?

The answer to what Canadians believe about their strength and future will be revealed whenever the new Canadian government is chosen. If the Liberals are returned to a majority government, it will be seen in part to be due to the success of fear-mongering and paranoia that somehow a Conservative majority can roll back social gains (which in itself indicates total ignorance of the limits of government) and the successful playing of the anti-American card. If they are turfed, then it will be due to the willingness of Canadians to demand more accountability and respect from their government.

The US and relations with the US shouldn't have any real impact of Canadian elections. No elected government up here is actually going to scrap NAFTA despite the rhetoric, and trade is a far more persuasive diplomatic tool than visits to the Crawford Ranch.

No, the real issues in a Canadian election will be completely Canadian, and the electorate here will be quite right if they manage to keep their candidates on topic.

Eleanor Roosevelt once commented that you can't be made to feel inferior without your cooperation. In the case of Canada, it is not cooperation so much as collusion: the media up here won't let go of the American card and focus on Canada exclusively in Canadian terms, but much of the electorate is tired of that tactic especially when they look at the extent to which government spending has gotten out of control due to the failure to admit that Canadians too are liable to be corrupted when the means present themselves.

The concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office and exclusion of Parliament as the rightful wielder of that power is also a failure to realize that power corrupts and another concern for those who would reform the system. How directly will that issue be confronted?

The hard part is that no matter who or which party is in power, the promise to dismantle the patronage system deprives them of the means to secure power in that they have fewer rewards with which to offer those who support them.

In the Unites States, it took the assassination of a president - McKinley - to finally begin to reform the civil service and reform is still ongoing. What it will take in Canada is anyone's guess, but it is possible that Adscam is the final straw.

In short, if Canadians show some respect for themselves, Americans will reciprocate. If Canadians prefer a government proven to be corrupt, then there won't be a lot of stated and printed ridicule (excluding that from bloggers) but the general consensus south of the border is that Canadians are hopeless - in both senses of that word.

The Canadian media, of course, faces another daunting task when GWB wins: how to reconcile how they can hate the president so viciously without coming out and admitting the truth: they hate America. Of course they hope Kerry wins - that hope is born out of desperation because they have been backing themselves into a corner for 4 years and there is no escape unless the American electorate validates the views of the Canadian media. (Some might think it more relevant that the Canadian electorate validate the Canadian media, but that overlooks that what the media up here desires most is American approval.)

(As for what Canadians think of Bush: I don't care. I don't mean that in disrespectful terms but I am being honest: the future of Canada is in their hands, and the future of the US is in our hands. That's a weighty enough burden for both electorates should they chose to accept that responsibility.)

The reaction up here to the revelations of Abdurahman Khadr which revealed how deeply the Khadr family were involved in al Qaeda have failed to address the most critical flaw in some of the Canadian media: their defense of the Khadr family and the outcries over the "Toronto Teen" - another Khadr family member - imprisoned at Guantanamo were unabashedly set in the context of anti-Americanism, but now they are enraged that they were played for fools: yet whose fault is that? They failed a basic tenet of journalism, which is to pursue the truth rather than an agenda, and that the Khadr family should play on that weakness was predictable to anyone with an ounce of common sense.

So, in another unintentional context, Lysiane Gagnon is right: the one challenge that both Americans and Canadians must face is their capability to judge candidates on the sole basis of the issues.

I see in today's news that Pres. Chavez of Venezuela is also accusing us of being behind his troubles without acknowledging the possibility that they might be self-inflicted. He's playing the oil card too, and although there are probably many relieved to have yet another It's all about the oil issue to sink their teeth into, should events in Venezuela break into open civil war, will the UN asks us to go in and restore order in Venezuela?

The truth that sets us free is usually found within us. We must recognize that our desire to retreat to times and places of seeming comfort and security is delusional because those times and places never existed. We Americans were determined to ignore the truth as was evident in our non-reactions to the first bombing of the WTC, the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the thwarted millennium attacks, and the successful attack on the USS Cole. Those who chose to blame the Clinton administration are overlooking our own complicity because we didn't make it a campaign issue in 2000.

Those who chose to blame the Bush administration for not rallying Old Europe and Canada to our cause in Iraq are also delusional: those nations were opposed to regime change, and ridding Iraq of Saddam could only be accomplished with a coalition that shared that goal. In what possible way were we weakened by not having uncertain allies? If your ally isn't going to watch your back, you are much better off leaving him at home. That's a truth that anyone who plays computer RPGs (role playing games) knows (along with an excellent appreciation for building up one's hit points and having a diversity of weapons for use in different situations and against different enemies) and that means that our kids understand the basics of military strategy better than many of us.

Sometimes we play Risk and sometimes we play Diplomacy, but playing Diplomacy with proven enemies and without the willingness to use the military option usually results long, fruitless talks (unless you can bribe your enemies outright, but any agreement under those circumstances lasts only until the money runs out.)

Yet things change, and usually these changes are not heralded with major announcements but by attention to events. A critical observer would notice that French and American soldiers are co-operating in Haiti and Canadians will soon join them as will Brazilian and Chilean troops.

The French and Canadians outflanked Sen. Kerry and Corinne Brown! Even more: Canada is sending more soldiers to Haiti than she can actually afford! Whatever bought about this remarkable change?

[Note: For some reason I had written Maxine Waters. I don't know why, but I recognized my error while washing the dishes. The mind is a strange place.]

It's all about Iraq. It's all about the realization by the nations of the world that stability isn't necessarily a good thing, and that if they want to participate in the events that will change the world they have to be part of it rather than sniping from the sidelines.

I can't think of a single more impressive validation of the Bush Doctrine other than the disarmament of Libya, and those who would be critical viewers of the changing world we live in need to take a step back and recognize that the map has changed and there are new ideas and strategies that we barely recognize as yet.

Canada's role in this is revealed is another editorial in today's Globe and Mail, this one by David Malone purportedly about Kofi Annan but which takes the usual swipes at the US without more than a token admission of how Canada figured in the outcome:

While successes were registered in Cambodia, Mozambique and El Salvador, the UN's attempts to implement peace-enforcement decisions by the Security Council stumbled badly in Somalia and Bosnia, contributing to the shocking 1995 civilian massacre at Srebrenica, and to reluctance by key member states (mainly the Americans) to reinforce General Romeo Dallaire's beleaguered peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994.

Blame for international inaction at the time of the Rwanda genocide is widely shared, particularly within the Security Council. Ottawa offered the bare minimum of support to Gen. Dallaire; former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who breezily apologized, never appeared alarmed by his own responsibility in failing to prevent the genocide. By contrast, Mr. Annan commissioned an in-depth inquiry into the UN's role (with which the United States failed to co-operate) accepting personal responsibility for the UN's sorry record (although then-U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright's responsibility was surely much greater.)

And what was Canada's responsibility? Gen. Dallaire is a Canadian, and Ottawa ignored him, and that is the fault of the US how? Had the events in Rwanda persuaded the Canadian government that they needed to improve the military and thus peacekeeping capacity of this country I could excuse them, but they didn't and rely upon those like Malone to shield them from their own culpability.

The self-proclaimed "international community" is composed of nations who are too enlightened to get their hands dirty by actually fighting, and from this elevated morality they want us to fight and possibly die? Don't blame us for having contempt for an attitude that is disgusting and contemptible. Old 60's phrases like "cannon-fodder" are being recycled with a twist: the transnationalists of the world still want us to be cannon-fodder but at their beck and call, although they have no claim other than their self-pronounced superiority.

This is the foreign relations policy that Sen. Kerry advocates: the UN does the pontificating, and we do the dying.

Look, how many times do you go out at dawn to boost your neighbour's car before you irritably suggest they ought to purchase a new battery?

We have a saying back home: put your money where your mouth is. Until Canada and other nations invest in their own militaries, the "international community" is a group of talkers who want to decide where American lives will be spent. This is wrong on so many levels that any American who is willing to face that truth should be outraged. They are playing us for fools, and our horror of the events of Sept. 11 and the resultant amnesia that horror produced must not be allowed to destroy our belated recognition of the threats that face us. If we refuse to take the hard but necessary steps to confront terrorism our so-called friends will come to our funeral but will secretly rejoice that we got our comeuppance.

The "international community" is not our friend: it is a parasitic entity that has thrived by ducking responsibility and hiding behind platitudes to make us expend our blood in the hope that it will weaken us and render us more vulnerable to the forces which threaten us.

They believe that once we fall, they will step into the breach. Fools! They are so caught up in their own self-importance and smugness that they won't see that we are all that stands between them and total ruin. Their ambition is no less self-serving than that of any other Evil Overlord and they too have minions who have been brainwashed into adoration and uncritical compliance.

The media in the US and Canada fawn over these elites to such an extent that we are forced to doubt their loyalty and independence, and they are so far behind actual events that we can be excused if we wonder at their intelligence.

Take the French: they have undergone some interesting shifts and are far more aware of the dangers in France from Islamic militants than they let on publicly. I still doubt that banning scarves from schools and public facilities will actually result in the assimilation of the Muslim population, but they have the right to try whatever they think will work and have at least acknowledged that they know they need to deal with the problem. Their greatest difficulty is going to be confronting the fact that racism is much more entrenched than they want to admit, and that unemployment among the Arab youth can only be dealt with if the unions loosen their grip. (The last problem in particular is why I doubt the banning of the scarves solely will achieve the desired result.)

The election of a conservative government in Greece is astonishing and may reveal a reaction in part to the changing landscape of the world post-Sept. 11 and post-Saddam Iraq. Another Socialist-led government has fallen, and the self-image of some Canadians that they are more European than American has suddenly been turned against them with some interesting implications. The political shift in Greece taken in concert with the declining fortunes of Gerhardt Shroeder in Germany may have indirectly proven Gagnon's assertion that Canadians are more like Americans that she may like!

A bit of advice to Gagnon: when you have one foot on one continent and the other foot on another continent, beware of continental drift. You are likely to land in the water.

There is one, main truth that must be stated with urgency and clarity:

Those who would challenge the Bush Doctrine must state alternatives rather than platitudes. Those who are still enmeshed in the blame games and conspiracy theories should, to be blunt, indulge their hobbies off the stage of serious discourse. The conflict in Iraq was a crucible: a new world view is forming right now, and those who can't intelligently and seriously look at the benefits and consequences are little more than distractions and have little to offer.

UPDATE: Looks as though I'm hardly the only one irritated at the external pressure to vote for Kerry. In response to this jaw-dropping announcement Kerry predicts character attacks, foreign support, this from Ranting Profs:

Except how the hell do we even know we're talking about leaders we want a president getting along with, or getting along better with . . . or feeling even slightly beholden to? When did it become even slightly appropriate for foreign leaders to express an opinion on an American election? Why should we believe they aren't evaluating the outcome from within the perspective of their interests -- and without knowing who they are we of course have no way of determining how well their and our interests intersect.

And at what point did it become appropriate for a candidate for office to have contact with foreign leaders? Doesn't Kerry realize the damage that can do? If he leads any foreign leader to believe that he'd be more sympathetic to their arguments and interests -- which clearly he's done -- how isn't that a signal to those countries to hold off any dealings with this administration in the hopes it will soon be sent packing and they'll be able to do better? And if that's the case, then why isn't Kerry now interfering with American foreign policy in a way that could potentially benefit him (by reducing the level of success this administration can chalk up between now and the elections since at least some leaders will be stonewalling hoping for a better deal)? No doubt some of that kind of stonewalling is likely with other governments during any election season -- should Kerry be explicitly encouraging it?(My bolding)

Raymond Chretien, former Canadian Ambassador to the US, publicly expressed his preference for Al Gore in the 2000 election. It wasn't appropriate, but that didn't stop him, and it won't stop those like Mugabe, Castro, Arafat, Kim Jong Il, Assad, and the mullahs in Iran from hoping that a more easily manipulated and pliable president will replace Bush.

Posted by: Debbye at 11:31 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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