This little war of mine, I'm gonna let it shine
May 24, 2007
It's a hard sell, this terrorism stuff. When more people are dying on our side of the world from bathtub mishaps than terror outbreaks, you wonder how long the paranoia can linger.
To his credit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper hasn't tried to benefit by creating a culture of fear here like the Bush/Cheney crowd. In Washington, the effect is to send out a cowering message to the terror cells.
"We, with our $500-billion superiority in military spending, walk in angst."
Mr. Harper has been more sensible. Nonetheless, on the whole question of war and terrorism, he is caught up in dilemma; he is torn between allegiance to his conservative instincts and the past half-century of moderate Canadian tradition.
Where he will come down on this question may well determine his place in the next election and the history books. At the moment, indications are that his harder-line instincts are prevailing. In Afghanistan this week, the Prime Minister, who will not say a word in opposition to the calamity in Iraq, was full of jingoistic clichés very much in sync with Bush/Blair speak. He left the impression
the Afghan mission was a long-term commitment, not a temporary departure - as was the Liberal plan - from our traditional peace-broker role. Though public opinion shows little appetite for it, the whole business of Canada as a permanent warrior nation seems to appeal to him.
Next month, he goes to the G8 in Germany, where global warming will be on the table as well as war. Indications are he will break with the majority of countries who want a Kyoto-oriented solution and side with America and Australia on a watered-down approach.
David McGuinty, the Liberal MP, recently summed up the situation rather bluntly: "It's the death of multilateralism and the beginning of an isolationist approach by Canada."
While that rhetoric is excessive, the sight of Mr. Harper cozying up to the coalition of the willing, when it is so discredited, might strike some as running rather counter to the Canadian essence.
On Afghanistan, for example, Mr. Harper seems hardly inclined toward diplomacy. Many in the government in Kabul say the route of negotiations is the way to go. Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, this week told this newspaper the same thing. One would think our PM might be more interested.
In the spring of 2009, Canada will have fulfilled its commitment in Kandahar and it will be the turn of other NATO countries to pick up the slack. Instead of adhering to the deadline, as most Canadians want him to do, he hesitates. He's seemingly bent on a macho, no-compromise approach to show how tough he is.
Mr. Harper's patriot hyperbole knew no bounds this week. Our troops are "the finest men and women in uniform in the world," he said. He had the ever-pliant President Hamid Karzai at his side. The Afghan President is dependent on the NATO forces for his survival. He will say anything they want him to say, and so, on the question of torture of detainees in his country, he was denying any such thing.
The NDP's Dawn Black counted up the Afghan numbers this week and they showed that Canada is spending only a tiny fraction on aid, compared to combat expenditures - one dollar to every 10. One wiseacre columnist pointed out that Ottawa is spending more in sending over a stream of ministers for media-flattering photo ops than on aid to the chosen Kabul school where they stand for those ops.
It's not that the mission isn't valid. In many respects, it is. It isn't that the troops aren't doing good work. They are. But it may be that Mr. Harper is becoming too enamoured of this little war for his own good.
"He is tying his fortunes to the military and to law and order," said historian Michael Behiels. "There's no way he's going to identify himself with the tradition of Pearsonian diplomacy."
But if he presses the hard line, it's a huge political risk. The neo-con experiment, as undertaken by his ideological soulmates, has proved a failure. The world, whether our PM likes it or not, is tilting not in their direction but, on the issues of warming and war, in the direction of Al Gore.
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