Posted on 02/19/2009 7:02:18 AM PST by Loyalist
OTTAWA—Twice in less than a decade we have all been Americans. Once was on 9/11, the other is today.
There's more to our conversion than Canadian rapture over a new U.S. president. Barack Obama's visit is a second transformational moment steeped in crisis. By endorsing shared solutions to common threats, he is recreating the opportunity George W. Bush missed.
Eight years ago in September, Al Qaeda made a sympathetic victim of the superpower much of the world demonizes. In downing the twin symbols of global financial dominance, Osama bin Laden handed Bush moral authority and plausible justification for the muscular export of U.S. values and interests.
Current reality measures how horribly that went wrong. Toppling the Taliban morphed into overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The War on Terror became an assault on fundamental rights that framed American independence. Fear thickened our famously unguarded border. Finally, greed and blind faith in unfettered markets did to the world economic order what Al Qaeda couldn't.
Obama has chosen Canada as a fitting place to press the reset button. This country remains a global model – multicultural, internationally collegial, fiscally prudent, politically stable.
So this close, comfortable corner of the international stage is a safe and sound choice for an initial foreign trip a mere month after an historic inauguration.
What better place than Canada to publicly consider the communal effort required to rescue symbiotic economies, the linkages between energy security and climate change or a renewed NATO response to the deteriorating Afghanistan mission? Who better to talk to first than Canadians who feel U.S. pain personally, who have been made Americans by America's financial collapse?
Whether or not the world overhears, conversations are always important when they're between neighbours who share a continent, a $600 billion annual trading partnership and a troubled military mission.
But it's essential to remember that what's changing is the U.S. approach to Canada, the appealing tone and familiar thinking, not the relationship. Our capillary cross-border connections are still configured by what America wants – energy now, water later and always security – and what Canada needs – sustaining economic access and a little sovereign respect.
As it was with Bush, it will be with Obama. Washington pursues its hegemony with admirably relentless vigour; Ottawa reacts to the best of its limited ability.
That dynamic is reinforced by the urgency and complexity of the U.S. predicament. How this federal government copes with that pressure is the subtext of this fly-by summit.
Obama isn't just more popular here than the Prime Minister; he's also more focused than any recent president. In 10 informed, graceful pre-visit minutes with the CBC, Obama presented an agenda with profound Canadian implications. Protectionist conditions attached to the $800 billion U.S. stimulus are subject to the same trade rules that made softwood lumber a losing Canadian battle. Alberta's dirty oil can be accommodated in a continental energy and environment policy that includes dirty American coal. Afghanistan is a work in progress that creates time for Parliament to reconsider its 2011 end-combat deadline.
For better or for worse, willingly or by necessity, all of that makes Americans of us all. Obama's ambiguous gift is making the metamorphosis seem so innocuous, so sensibly obvious, so, well, Canadian.
James Travers' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
They love a strong America when some other bully is kicking the stuffing out of them and we come in to save them.
Talk about cutting their own throats! Besides the oil, half the north western USA depends on all the natural gas coming out of Alberta as well. That eed won't change and go away. As for the oil, there is no shortage of markets for it. It will just flow east instead.
Obama would also have to "carbon cap" his pal from south America, whose tar is even thicker than Alberta oil sands tar. I'm sure Chavez would just LOVE Obama to slap carbon taxes on his already worthless oil, trading below $36 a barrel, which for Chavez, is below cost of recovery, plus he has a lot of it refined in the USA.
If the price gets any lower, it will reach the non-profit zone in Canada as well, and the oil companies will just shut down operations. I think it's somewhere around $15-$20 a barrel.
Obama's carbon tax has a huge potential to cause severe gas shortages in the USA, by cutting off our supplies.
(side note, Canadian news is on showing Obama's "fans" cheering "O- ba- ma" in Canada. just a bunch of brainwashed kids, 50 or so, hard to tell with those tight camera shots, bussed in by force from schools, and a few muzzies. Woopie. Canadian media really blew this 'event' ) -20c doesn't help either.
This columist is a fool.
My oil change place, and some grocery stores, give away copies of the Star, NO COST
When has that ever happened? In fact the Canadians have always done a good job of kicking the crap out of other bullies during WW1 &WW2, years before we even showed up. Canadians can take care of themselves if they have to. In fact it wasn't until ww2 that the size of our military became bigger than theirs. Despite the years afterwards of liberal neglect and downsizing of Canada's military, what's left are still top notch soldiers, airmen and navy.
Toronto “Red” Star barf-a-roni alert!
Guess that means that we’re now a bunch of socialist sheep - like Canada & Europe
It's the enemedia.
You need to relay warnings before posting this drivel
I was speaking more in general terms. While the United States has never had to rescue Canada, per se, it’s come to the rescue of other countries that Canada couldn’t rescue on it’s own but wanted rescued.
“Obama makes Americans of us all.”
- - oh, and would that we all could only return the favor.
I lost my appetite.
Me too, and it’s lunch time.
Ugh. You should see the freak show going on up here, it’s embarrassing.
That's exactly what he's doing, and he's enlisted the aid of the opposition party's leader, that pimp Michael Ignatieff. Man, I wish Obama would go the f**k home already.
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