A rchive Date
[ 07-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/steward.html
Who is the real enemy out there?
By HARTLEY STEWARD -- Toronto Sun
March 7, 2003
Of all the bastards in the world available to hate these days, surely Americans are the least intelligent choice. I would go so far as to say that if - like Liberal Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish - you have at the top of your hate list the approximately 280 million people who live in the United States, you have a serious problem.
You should take stock, actually; examine your prejudices, especially those under whose influence you were when you decided the U.S. had earned your undying enmity. Your odium odometer, if you will, is seriously out of whack. Think, in this world gone mad, how many other people have really earned your loathing.
Parrish preceded her recent post-scrum remarks to reporters by concluding the U.S. was not interested in peace. "Damn Americans," she summed up eloquently. "I hate those bastards."
Of course President George Bush and his administration are not interested in peace. Since the massacre of 3,000-plus innocent Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, they have been interested in war. They had better be. Argue as you might about which responsibilities might appropriately belong to a federal government, the protection of the nation and its civilian population is not debatable. That's its job. That's its first and most important job.
A particularly vicious and sizable portion of the world is very interested in war against the U.S. Radical Islamic terrorists have vowed to kill as many innocent Americans as they can in as many sadistic ways as they can. They do not rule out chemical, bacterial or even nuclear attack. They have vowed to make war until the United States is destroyed. Now THERE is an appropriate target for hatred.
Parrish and Francie Ducros - she of the vacuous "Bush is a moron" remark - seem not to understand that the world has changed as far as Americans are concerned. Since 9/11, U.S. citizens have been in real and deadly danger. Practically every able-bodied soldier in the country has been mobilized. They're on high alert - strip searches, suspecting everyone, wondering where the next terrorist attack will come. You can't find a roll of duct tape anywhere. Their country will be at war until the world, according to their lights, is righted.
Before the Twin Towers atrocity, Bush had a much different notion of the direction his presidency would take - tinkering with the economy and long breaks at the ranch in Texas. To think he began planning war the minute the votes were counted is to embrace the Parrish/Ducros paranoia. Bush pursues war now because his country was attacked. I hesitate to put such a juvenile spin on it, but the fact is they started it.
The rampant anti-Americanism in Canada and especially among our Liberal politicians has nothing to do with U.S. post-9/11 activities. Their prejudices were in full bloom long before Bush declared war on terrorism. It is a sickness deep in our Canadian psyche, nourished by much of the press, enthusiastically and gleefully propagated in academia and exploited shamelessly by a scary number of politicians.
The notion that Americans are the "bastards" in this piece is one born of prejudice, jealously and a most unattractive Canadian arrogance. Since 9/11 the Americans have done nothing to deserve the vitriol that has been heaped on them by so much of the rest of the world, including Canada.
In fact, President Bush and his administration, in light of the Twin Towers attack, have shown surprising restraint. They have tried patiently to explain their intent to a world often reluctant to listen. They have painstakingly made their case. It is downright absurd to direct hatred toward the U.S. as if the world's only superpower could not be a victim. Absurd and transparently opportunistic. The new rules of war, the suicide bomber's and the terrorist's rationale that no one is innocent in war, make it entirely possible.
It is so obvious, one is almost embarrassed to point it out: the real object of hatred here is Osama bin Laden and his Islamic extremists. We should save our curses for the madmen who flew airliners into the Trade Center towers, killing innocents who were doing nothing more than putting in a day's work. We should direct our animosity toward rogue states like Iraq who refuse to comply with UN disarmament orders; who thumb their noses at the free world.
We should husband our hatred for the psychotic and brutal dictators who rule by fear and murder and employ poison gas against their own people. We should save our name-calling for those who seek and build weapons of mass destruction to let loose on the world.
It is Saddam Hussein who is the bastard here.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|