A rchive Date
[ 30-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/williamson.html
No direction
By LINDA WILLIAMSON -- Toronto Sun
January 30, 2003
There was a time, I admit, when I might have agreed with the smug Canadians who are now sneering at the war talk of U.S. President George Bush. You know, the ones who look down on Americans as proverbially "ugly" and congenitally arrogant.
There was a time - it seems so long ago now - when I bought into the mistaken, naive view that being a proud Canadian meant being anti-American. I was one of the many who laughed at the way Bush was elected in 2000 - hanging chads and all - in direct contrast to the way our own Jean Chretien swept in for his third interminable, virtually unchallenged mandate.
I saw Bush Jr. as a lightweight. But oh, he's so much better than our lightweight.
In what has, post-9/11, become an annual demonstration of not just what the United States of America stands for but what Canada sorely lacks, Bush gave yet another astonishing and stirring State of the Union address Tuesday night. The contrast was glaring and unavoidable. There, on every U.S. network, was Bush, speaking calmly and forcefully about the "duty" of "free people" to fight against "the designs of evil men."
And there, just a click away on the CBC main channel, was our PM, once again shrugging and refusing to say what Canada will do if the U.S. launches war on Iraq.
I shudder to think what Chretien would say if he had to give a State of the Union address. When he does speak, well, we all know his "a proof is a proof" quip by heart. This is not about loving George Bush, or, to use the smarmy accusation now trendy among the Canadian left, hating Canada. Nor is it about Canada being duty-bound to blindly follow America, right or wrong.
No one is suggesting Canada shouldn't take its own position on Iraq as a sovereign nation. The trouble is that we don't have a position, period.
While our leaders throw up excuses about having to wait for the United Nations to decide what to do, Bush makes his stand clearly and simply: "The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others," he said, adding later, "America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, our friends and our allies."
What is preventing Canada from saying the same thing? Is Chretien waiting for the fabled "smoking gun" that will somehow prove Saddam Hussein is bad? Do he and others squeamish about war honestly think UN inspectors, as hamstrung as they've admitted they are by Saddam, are going to stumble on some giant weapons cache he's overlooked?
As chief inspector Hans Blix himself stressed this week, it's not about catching Iraq in the act, it's about Iraq's refusal, for more than a decade, to co-operate.
Bush summed this up aptly, too: "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy," he said. Duh.
For me (as our PM loves to say), it wasn't just about Iraq, either. Even Bush's talk of the need for deep tax cuts, his commitment of billions to treat AIDS in Africa (poor Chretien - he wants Africa to be his legacy), and his caution about the pitfalls of nationalized health care were refreshing. His boast that a family of four earning $40,000 would soon pay no more than about $45 in federal taxes just about made me weep.
They say you get more conservative as you get older. But this isn't about age. It's about fatigue. I'm soooo tired of living under a drifting, listless and, yes, arrogant government that can't articulate a vision - not even on issues of life and death.
"Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves," the U.S. president said. The same can be said of Canada in the post-9/11 period. And the revelation is, sorry to say, ugly.
"We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all," Bush went on.
There was a time - long before my time, alas - when Canada and our leaders knew this instinctively. Indeed, we taught the Americans a thing or two.
Where, oh where, did we go so wrong?
Linda Williamson is the Toronto Sun senior associate editor. She can be reached by e-mail at linda.williamson@tor.sunpub.com.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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