I find myself at odds with the Liberal party of Canada. On the one hand, I see that their web site posts a rather vague statement about Afghanistan. They talk about ending a combat role. But that really means that they intend to keep soldiers in Afghanistan playing some kind of “training” role. It is not a peace keeping role. They intend to have soldiers in Afghanistan training soldiers how to kill people. Is that how Canadians want our society to be viewed on the international stage?
I thought Canada stood as a country that created the first model for modern day peace keeping. That was something to be proud of and Canadian’s embraced the idea. It set us apart. It was Canadian.
It seems we have slowly crumbled to American pressures. Certainly Lloyd Axworthy was one of the first Canadians to start this process. He was doing such a wonderful job with the land mine issue. Everyone was behind him and proud of that idea. But then he participated and supported the brutal sanctions on Iraq after the first Gulf war. Horrific numbers of children’s deaths due to these sanctions started to emerge from groups who were studying the issue on the ground in Iraq and it was very clear that something terrible and catastrophic was happening as a direct result of these sanctions that Axworthy and the government of the time fiercely supported. (A 2002 UNICEF report said that several hundred thousand children died as a direct result of the sanctions).
Calls to Axworthy’s office by groups who had been in Iraq at the time were ignored and the government refused to even meet with our group. (One of the very few who made it into Iraq at that time.)
I always find it interesting that our government leaders often chair human rights organizations…. such as the Advisory Committee for the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, or are endorser of the Genocide Intervention Network, but then they implement policies that clearly have horrific effects on children such as those in Iraq.
I find it staggering and beyond belief actually. What they say and what they actually do are diametrically opposed ideas.
I am writing this now because I have trouble supporting the Liberal Party of Canada. Michael Ignatieff just does not understand that Canadians do not want to support any kind of military role in Afghanistan. Even if it is under the pretense of a purely “training” mission. We don’t want blood on our hands.This is not Canada.
I also hear that Ignatieff wants Canada to play a bigger role in the UN. Mostly for some form of international prestige I would guess.
The UN is heavily structured to favor bullying by stronger nations. The open vote on issues means that when countries vote…. their vote might decide whether or not they will continue to receive financial aid from certain countries. So it is flawed by nature from the start and Ignatieff (Liberals) might want to rethink their policy of embracing it in the belief that the UN is a noble institution as that portrayed in a Disney cartoon.
Ignatieff supported the war on Iraq. He later recanted this support. But one has to wonder about his judgment. For example: Wikipedia writes “Ignatieff has argued that Western democracies may have to resort to “lesser evils” like indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, assassinations, and pre-emptive wars in order to combat the greater evil of terrorism.”
What happened to international law Mr. Ignatieff? Many international law experts have stated that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. It is against international law to knock off leaders. There is good reason for this because we would have total chaos with leaders being popped off right, left and center just because some countries didn’t like the policies of the other country. How would we like it if people thought the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths caused by the sanctions justified their attack on our government.
International law is everything and we must adhere to it even when it doesn’t suit us. There are criminal courts that take leaders to court for breaking the law.
Not that that ever happens though. It is my belief that our government leaders seems to prefer anarchy.
These thinkers want to run our country.
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