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What I find interesting is that many complained about us attacking Iraq with what many see today as no proof for doing so. I always wonder if people ask themselves what if we didn't act first? Do we wait for children to be kidnapped before we  find a way to stop it from happening? Do we wait for drug dealers to sell the drugs before arresting them? Do we wait for a country like Iran to attack with a nuclear weapon before we decide we need to stop them from making more?

But what bothers me the most is when everyone expects the US to do everything only to criticize us for acting like world police or criticizing us for not stopping them before disaster struck. Now Iran has defied not just the US but the whole world and may actually acquire the nuclear weapon everyone said they should not have and what has anyone done about it? I have yet to see or hear any reaction from the rest of the world but all I have seen from Secretary of State Clinton is a lot of talk and threats but no action.

I fear Iran may put itself in a position where we may lost our chance to avoid a bigger situation.

People systematically dismissed proof.

Suddenly the allegedly millions of victims of the sanctions (actually the victims of Saddam's regime since the UN did allow enough food and medicine into Iraq) didn't count any more.

 

1) You should not thank Canada, but rather it's Conservative Party. With that said, this is a party that is ruling a minority government, but acting as if it has a majority. It's also a party which stands a pretty good chance of losing it's minority government at the next election, which will probably happen within the next year (or sooner if we have a no-confidence vote in parliament)

2) When the U.S was going into Iraq, Canada abstained for the specific reason that there was no U.N resolution supporting said invasion. Legally, this was the correct move. Morally, this was the correct move, and in the polls Canadians were against involvement in Iraq. Mr. Harper (at the time the official opposition party) vehemently protested and wanted our troops to fight a needless war of aggression overseas. I'm glad he wasn't the prime minister during this time!

3) Talk is cheap. Canada can't afford more overseas deployments. We've had thousands of troops rotate through Afghanistan since 2001 (we went in there as part of NATO) and in another year or so we'll be leaving Afghanistan for good. After that, the Canadian Forces will need a couple of years to re-organize, re-build and re-train. In short, our Army needs a bit of down time to recover. An Army's strength is actually quite a fragile thing and must be husbanded, a lesson that Rome, Britain, and unfortunately sooner rather than later the U.S may learn.

4) Peter Kent may be sealing his parties fate- much of Canada's population is made up ever increasingly of immigrants from all over the globe who do not share the view of the party. A large number of these people come from the middleast, and do not support any military intervention there (He is trying to secure the Jewish vote with his comments, but in doing so may lose many formerly undecided)

Join NATO. And for good measure stop trying to illegally acquire US technology.

Ok, then thank you Conservative Party of Canada. I am sorry that not more people in Canada are willing to speak up for peace.

Sorry, Arty, I did not intend to thank you for something good that you haven't done.




Your morality is another question.

I don't believe that it was "morally" the "correct move" given that millions of children died under Saddam (because of the sanctions, as any knowledgeable moonbat can tell you) and that Saddam was still planning to finish his genocide in Kurdistan.

I don't agree with your morality because it puts too little value on human lives.




Yet you seem to be unwilling even to talk to protect lives.

Talk is cheap, but talk might also be enough.




I assume it is compatible with your morality to leave Afghanistan at a fixed point in time rather than when the country is stable?

Who cares about Afghanis, right?




You are describing a man of principle. A politican who'd rather lose a majority of voters than abandon people in need is a politician whom I can support.

Obviously for you such a politician is the wrong man, right?

That might be a good idea.

 

If in exchange you will start listening to Mossad warnings about forthcoming attacks against the US we can talk about that.

 

I wonder how much of the "static" between the US and Israel is real and how much is for show?  I do not know, to be honest, but reason dictates that America would be fools for disregarding warnings from Mossad, and the bluster about the spying seems to be more blown out of proportion than with other countries.  This is not to say that both may not be real.  But I would associate such behavior with a couple of adolescent rutting males, not nations interested in security.

I agree.

Maybe people just expect better work from the Mossad.

 

Oh, I am sure there are issues between the countries. But there is industrial espionage (which I am sure Israel is guilty of) and then there is matters of life and death (where I am sure Israel does what it can to protect the US).

 

I was a little surprised to see that, though it's gratifying to see our country take an actually ballsy approach to foreign affairs. Definitly one of the things I like about the Tories these days... willing to stick up for principles instead of always following the path of least resistance... or the most money.

As you can no doubt tell from the preceding paragraph, as a fellow Canadian I'm going to have to disagree with Artysim:

1) I think the chances of them losing their minority are quite low, though barring drastic changes it's unlikely that they'll get a majority in the near term. The Tory's nasty style of politics has shot them in the foot and cost them a lot of goodwill, but I'm pretty sure most Canadians would eat their own shoes before they saw idiots like Ignattief, Layton, or (heaven forbid) Duceppe become PM. Honestly, I might even consider voting Liberal one of these days... with the caveat that they actually have to choose a leader who isn't a gibbering idiot first.

2) Okay, this will sound ALMOST like a partial agreement. Staying out was a good decision. However, I supported the original invasion on the arguments given, and the assumptions that 1) the CIA was providing accurate information and 2) the war planning was being done competently. In hindsight, those two assumptions proved false, but hindsights a bitch, ain't it? Canada still should have stayed out based solely on our existing Afghanistan commitment (and to be fair, we ramped that up so that the US could transfer troops to Iraq, which is something like participating ourselves...).

As for the morality argument, Saddam was a dick and that was one of the original reasons I was willing to support the invasion. However, given the stated motivation for the invasion and the fact hat the supporting arguments proved invalid, I can't help but think that the US should have done something else instead... either bolster the Afghanistan mission so that it wouldn't have become the huge problem that it is now, or hit Iran or North Korea instead. Iran probably would have been more amenable to a liberation and less internally fractured, and North Korea (with the insane leader who used the intervening time to get NUKES) is probably the more dangerous of the three "axis of evil" states.

3) Okay, yes. Absolutely. Canada's military capacity has been utterly stretched to the limit by this mission, especially since the American deployment to Iraq meant that the situation over there got worse even as we were taking on more of the burden. But if you think that would be enough to stop us from following through on this sort of talk, you're mistaken. At worst, it would handicap the scale of the support. However, if one of Israel's neighbours decided to engage in open warfare against them, I don't doubt that we'd be there in a heartbeat, with economic and political support if not military.

Also, I'm pretty certain that any of the previous Liberal governments would do the same, whether or not they'd consider it good politics to state it publicly as the Conservatives have.

4) You always piss off someone in politics. I doubt this is sealing any fates, especially since this has basically been a position of the Tories as far as I can recall. If this was a significant electoral handicap, I'd expect they'd have dropped the position a long time ago. As it stands, it would appear that it either ISN'T such a handicap, or the Tory's political support is robust enough to soldier on past it.

Besides, I doubt they're going to lose their government. Harper is a political chess player, and the other political leaders are decidedly not. He plays the tune, and they dance. I don't know if he qualifies as a "master" political strategist, but in that crowd he might as well be.

Isn't that the mouse in the Krazy Kat Cartoons?

He's some clown that lived in the US in academia for a while badmouthing us, then came on back when he realized he could get the leadership of the Liberal party and a shot at the Prime Minister's position. You know, a real man of principle.

I have no problem with the Canadian Liberal party. In fact Pierre Trudaeu is one of the most favourite politicians ever.

 

There was no point in Canada participating in the invasion. The British helped and that was useful but the Americans were well capable of doing this alone. Sending more troops to Afghanistan to free American troops so they can fight on another front was absolutely the right thing.

And, frankly, the invasion of Iraq needed firepower and expertise the Canadian military doesn't have. Only the Americans and British had the ability to invade safely. (I won't go into detail but can link to several old articles on the blog of a friend of mine if anyone interested feels the need to question this argument which is not vital to the overall point.)

 

North Korea: Definitely not! This is China's problem and while China won't admit it China also won't accept anybody else to mess with it. I am sure the regime in China knows what it's doing and won't allow North Korea to become a real danger to the world.

Iran: Invading Iran is not an option for many reasons. (Again, I could go into detail and might in another post.)

The beauty of hitting Iraq was that it stuck a wedge between the area controlled by the Mullahs and the area controlled by their Arab allies. Both Iran and Syria now have to deal with an Arab and Kurdish Iraq that is unfriendly to both of them.

It is not obvious from how western media report it (who would have thought?) but there is a major rift in the Arab world between Iraq and Egypt on the one side and Syria (and Iran) on the other side. The other Arab countries are trying to reconcile.

 

I have no doubt that a Liberal government would do the same.

The truth is that even liberals (honest Canadian big-L such and American small-l such) know that for all the talk about the evil Israelis and the freedom-fighting non-Antisemitic "Death to the Jews" crowd on the other side still know what will happen if Israel ever loses a war and would not want to be the guys who stood by while Holocaust #2 ("Another Six Million") happened.

I agree with my favourite author, Israeli Ephraim Kishon, that Israel missed her great chance in 1967 when instead of losing and being overrun and killed the Jews won the war and tripled the size of their tiny country. If they had lost and the Arabs had done what they said they would do, everybody in the world, perhaps even the Arabs, would have sided with Israel and all the few thousand remaining Middle-Eastern Jews would have been everybody's heroes.

Thank G-d Israel missed that chance.

 

I just found this interesting image:

You see a propaganda peace showing victory for the "Palestinian Cause". Clearly visible is the non-anti-Semitic attitude of the peaceloving Arab forces towards the Jews they didn't hate and never wanted to "throw into the sea" despite the fact that they kept saying that they would do exactly that. The people in the sea are the Jews.

I am assuming the soldiers are carrying food and water for the poor oppressed "Palestinians".

The most interesting aspect of this is that most liberal "peace activists" can tell you that despite of Arab propaganda material and statements and a total absence of Zionist propaganda material and statements to that effect, it is really the evil Zionists who wanted to throw the Arabs into the sea (or kill them all).

 

 

Shouldn't the Palestinian "soldiers" in that propaganda poster be wearing civilian clothes and have women and children shielding them? What a difference between fantasy and reality.