"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Posted on 03/17/2003 2:11:14 PM PST by quidnunc
Ottawa – America is becoming unhinged and it is impossible to imagine that Canada will be not affected.
This was not the case after 9/11. The attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., were sad and tragic but they built a unity that took the form of a new patriotism inside the United States — and a new international solidarity with America outside the country. It isn't true that this new-found patriotism and solidarity had no depth. Sure, some of it was as disposable as the feelings that emerge from a night at the Oscars. But at its heart was a genuine sympathy for the lost lives of ordinary people and a steely willingness to rally behind any sensible idea or cause that might prevent a reoccurrence of 9/11.
Most of that goodwill has been squandered now. The Bush administration has managed to drive a wedge between the American people and between America and the rest of the world. It is the kind of division that has not existed since the Vietnam War. America erupted in those days and Canada rolled with the tremours. On the one hand, Canadian industry actively supplied the U.S. military; on the other, Pierre Trudeau's Canada offered sanctuary to thousands of young American war objectors along with regular though mild criticism of U.S. policy. It did Canada little harm. But the American empire was younger, more secure in those days. In the three decades since Vietnam, America has aged centuries.
America, following the loss of the Vietnam War, was chastened. It wasn't something that a politician could brag about but it was largely wholesome: like a reformed alcoholic making a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself or herself, as the 12-step program would put it.
The Jimmy Carter administration provided the right setting for this process and was starting to get around to making amends to those who were harmed by the country's addiction to violence when the process came to a halt. Politically, a national amnesia set in. When the Soviet empire crumbled under its own weight with an admirable — and nonviolent — shove from Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II and Mikhail Gorbachev, Washington erroneously took the credit for it. That misconception set the stage for the kind of policy that rules today.
A penitent America was a hopeful thing but it didn't last long in Washington, D.C.
By the time the World Trade Centre Towers were destroyed, all the lessons hard-learned in South East Asia were forgotten. Following an initial response of conservative-style moral clarity and decisiveness, the Bush White House increasingly grew to emphasize a heightened sense of imperial destiny. It expressed itself in a disdain for the encumbrance of multinational organizations, a reluctance for, if not an outright avoidance of treaties, a new emphasis on militarism, a discomfit with refugee and immigration responsibilities and a rising tendency to sacrifice cherished constitutional freedoms to national security.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at thehilltimes.ca ...
Times like these bring out the worst and best in us. When it comes time to be counted, I hope Canada will stand up beside Jimmy Carter, Bishop Tutu, Pope John Paul II and the majority of the world's decent people who believe rogue governments like Iraq's can be disarmed with wise diplomacy and strong international consensus and not by a hawkish imperialism. Canada hasn't asked for this, but this may well be a time to show true Canadian grit.
Time for Canada 'to show true Canadian grit'?
And do what, pray tell?
One doesn't know whether to laugh or curse.
Canadian to English translation - "We liked you better when you were weak and were taking casualties 3000 at a time."
Without this historical revisionism the entire sanctimonious sermon falls apart. What Vietnam did was to give this sort of fool his firm hold on moral superiority and the notion that the truth consisted merely of however he wanted to present things. The U.S. victory in the Cold War should have served as a dash of cold water to this sort of heated imagination, which is why it is consistently and vigorously denied. The ironic part is that as long as we have our military he will enjoy the luxury of denying it to be necessary.
It was OK to sit in a circle with our so-called international "friends," hold hands, and sing kum-ba-ya.
But as soon as we decide to kill the SOB's and their abettors who murdered our citizens, then we're crazy.
Crazy...my friends...is letting them kill you and NOT responding.
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Or do they eat moose droppings instead of cheese?
The only true Canadian grit that we'll see in the future will be in the crease, the corners, and along the boards of the upcoming NHL Playoffs beginning in April. Other than that and a couple of pretty nasty muskie guides at Lake of The Woods, I don't think there's any grit left in Canada.
Hat-Trick
I don't do that.
Firstly, it's juvenile and secondly it wastes space which can be used to construct a more eye-catching headline.
We're adults here — well, most of us anyway — and we can deal with leftist idiocy without going wobbly.
Not a mention of the man who actually defeated the Soviets, one Ronald Wilson Reagan.
These ungrateful Canucks are really starting to piss me off!
Yup. Lech and Gorby did it all by themselves. That's the ticket. Seems like the national socialist aparatchiks in our northern economic dependencies are no longer trying to disguise their schizoid hatred of their moral, spiritual and economic superiors. Of course, not very surprising when one considers that their initial gene pool consisted mainly of Froggie trappers and Tory quislings who had to get out of town after their side lost the Revolution. They hate us because we always have been and always will be their betters in all respects. And such gutless cowards they are. We do Antietam and they do Meech Lake about says it all.
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