Wednesday, April 28, 2004
A reply to Gatehouse
"Like the know-it-all neighbour who never misses a chance to bend your ear over the back fence or critique your yardwork, Canada has become the block bore. The "special" status that we once took for granted, able to withstand even the frankest disagreements, seems in doubt. Things between our countries are apparently getting worse all the time. And, the evidence suggests, the attitude problem is almost entirely our own." http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/canada/article.jsp?content=20040503_79671_79671
Only a former National Post reporter could be so arrogant, ideological and out of touch as to place the blame for worsening ties with Washington solely at the feet of Canadians.
One of the many failings of Gatehouse’s piece is that he fails to place Canada’s declining opinion of the US into any sort of context. Indeed, he never mentions what other countries think of Bush and company; even though, outside of the US, Bush is one of the least liked US Presidents in history and it is hard to think of a country, save Israel, that has a higher opinion of the US today than prior to George Bush taking office. Several current heads of state have road Anti-Bush sentiment to power, most notably President South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun in 2002 and German’s Schroeder that the same year. It is not just populations of many of the world’s countries that disapprove of Bush it is also their governments. When John Kerry claimed that he had the backing of several European heads of state, even those on the right recognized (e.g., American Specter) that the right question to ask was not who is on this list but who, if anyone, is not. US journalist Fareed Zakaria, who is hardly a leftist, put the matter succinctly. Bush’s policies have “alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it.”
Another of failing of Gatehouse’s piece is that he makes it out to seem that Canada along with the rest of the world has no real reason to gripe about Mr. Bush. Now, a Bush apologist like Gatehouse might think that the reason British Columbians loath Bush like no other group of Canadians is because we are a bunch of tree hugging granolas and, well, Bush is not. However, the fact that it is no longer viable to cut down nearly so many trees since Bush slapped down a soft wood lumber tariff, which is in clear contravention of the NAFTA agreement, has a lot more to do with our dislike of the man than his environmental policies, which are about as environmentally sound as those of China.
Vancouverites also have reason to gripe about Bush setting the US drug Czar on us. Shortly after giving the mayor of Vancouver an unprecedented mandate to set up safe injection sites, Walters told a board of trade audience, in what amounted to a thinly disguised threat not to take things too far, that we were only making matters worse. Just to make sure his message was not misconstrued as the view of a dissenting friend, he repeated the US mantra, which is so out of touch with any sort of scholarly research that it has for some thirty years now served as a pop culture symbol of government imperviousness to reality, viz., that marijuana is as dangerous as any drug out there including heroin and coke. In one foul swoop, Walters had tired to undermine the mandate given Mayor Campbell, challenge the findings of Canadian Senate report declaring marijuana to be less dangerous than alcohol and to derail a plan by Parliament to decriminalize marijuana.
Paul Cellucci, another of Bush’s henchmen, was equally disrespectful of Canadian democracy. Despite the fact that it was becoming obvious that it would be politically impossible to for the government to back the US adventure in Iraq without a UN mandate, Paul Cellucci continued to brow beat the Liberals into becoming one of the coalition of the willing. In deed, Cellucci went so far as to politically damage the government by pointing out that Canada was aiding US efforts on the sly in Iraq and the help they we were giving was in many respects greater than what many in the collation of the willing were providing. “The Canadian naval vessels will provide more support to this war in Iraq than most of the 46 countries that are fully supporting our effort there.” Now, that is gratitude.
"Like the know-it-all neighbour who never misses a chance to bend your ear over the back fence or critique your yardwork, Canada has become the block bore. The "special" status that we once took for granted, able to withstand even the frankest disagreements, seems in doubt. Things between our countries are apparently getting worse all the time. And, the evidence suggests, the attitude problem is almost entirely our own." http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/canada/article.jsp?content=20040503_79671_79671
Only a former National Post reporter could be so arrogant, ideological and out of touch as to place the blame for worsening ties with Washington solely at the feet of Canadians.
One of the many failings of Gatehouse’s piece is that he fails to place Canada’s declining opinion of the US into any sort of context. Indeed, he never mentions what other countries think of Bush and company; even though, outside of the US, Bush is one of the least liked US Presidents in history and it is hard to think of a country, save Israel, that has a higher opinion of the US today than prior to George Bush taking office. Several current heads of state have road Anti-Bush sentiment to power, most notably President South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun in 2002 and German’s Schroeder that the same year. It is not just populations of many of the world’s countries that disapprove of Bush it is also their governments. When John Kerry claimed that he had the backing of several European heads of state, even those on the right recognized (e.g., American Specter) that the right question to ask was not who is on this list but who, if anyone, is not. US journalist Fareed Zakaria, who is hardly a leftist, put the matter succinctly. Bush’s policies have “alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it.”
Another of failing of Gatehouse’s piece is that he makes it out to seem that Canada along with the rest of the world has no real reason to gripe about Mr. Bush. Now, a Bush apologist like Gatehouse might think that the reason British Columbians loath Bush like no other group of Canadians is because we are a bunch of tree hugging granolas and, well, Bush is not. However, the fact that it is no longer viable to cut down nearly so many trees since Bush slapped down a soft wood lumber tariff, which is in clear contravention of the NAFTA agreement, has a lot more to do with our dislike of the man than his environmental policies, which are about as environmentally sound as those of China.
Vancouverites also have reason to gripe about Bush setting the US drug Czar on us. Shortly after giving the mayor of Vancouver an unprecedented mandate to set up safe injection sites, Walters told a board of trade audience, in what amounted to a thinly disguised threat not to take things too far, that we were only making matters worse. Just to make sure his message was not misconstrued as the view of a dissenting friend, he repeated the US mantra, which is so out of touch with any sort of scholarly research that it has for some thirty years now served as a pop culture symbol of government imperviousness to reality, viz., that marijuana is as dangerous as any drug out there including heroin and coke. In one foul swoop, Walters had tired to undermine the mandate given Mayor Campbell, challenge the findings of Canadian Senate report declaring marijuana to be less dangerous than alcohol and to derail a plan by Parliament to decriminalize marijuana.
Paul Cellucci, another of Bush’s henchmen, was equally disrespectful of Canadian democracy. Despite the fact that it was becoming obvious that it would be politically impossible to for the government to back the US adventure in Iraq without a UN mandate, Paul Cellucci continued to brow beat the Liberals into becoming one of the coalition of the willing. In deed, Cellucci went so far as to politically damage the government by pointing out that Canada was aiding US efforts on the sly in Iraq and the help they we were giving was in many respects greater than what many in the collation of the willing were providing. “The Canadian naval vessels will provide more support to this war in Iraq than most of the 46 countries that are fully supporting our effort there.” Now, that is gratitude.
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