In an earlier post, Cheryl said that Canadians aren't anti-American but anti-Bush. That got me thinking...because historically, Canadians are anti-American. Heck, we're the original anti-Americans. We were the first to tell the Americans, "Back off!" when we repelled a U.S. invasion during the Revolutionary War. My own ancestors were United Empire Loyalists (i.e. loyal British subjects who left the Thirteen Colonies after the war rather than become Americans). Ever since, Canadians have tended to have a passive-aggressive snootiness toward the United States. (Historian J. Bartlett Brebner once said, "Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well-informed about the U.S.")
But oddly enough, Bush has improved the situation by becoming a lightning-rod for all our habitual antipathy. Canadians no longer have a vaguely universal disdain; we have a specific target. Anti-Bush sentiment has reduced our general anti-Americanism. (He really is a uniter, not a divider!)
A couple of notes on Canadian politics:
Our parliament has a strong tradition of heckling, booing, etc.—a tradition that's increased since parliamentary sessions began being televised and everyone started playing to the cameras. Newspaper editorials frequently denounce MPs for acting like kindergarten kids in a sandbox, but there's no likelihood the catcalls will end anytime soon.
On the other hand, every party leader promised that if Bush addressed parliament, their members would behave. It would have been an interesting test of party discipline to see what actually happened.
It's worth nothing that Canada currently has a minority government. This means that the Liberal party has more members than any other single party in the house, but that the other parties, taken as a whole, outnumber the Liberals.
In this situation, the opposition parties can topple the government any time they feel like it. However, voters won't be happy if someone forces an election frivolously. Therefore, the opposition can't go off half-cocked. At the same time, the Liberals must govern cautiously, never giving sufficient cause for the opposition to pull the plug. (The public always loves minority government situations; it means the party in power only makes "safe" moves, and can't act too full of itself.)
All of this means that Bush can talk all he wants, but the government can't afford to give him real concessions. If, for example, the Liberals agreed to send Canadian troops to Iraq, it would be enormously unpopular with the public. The opposition parties would dance with glee and bring down the Liberals by nightfall. In the ensuing election campaign (roughly six weeks long), the opposition parties would compete to see who could denounce Bush the loudest...and whichever party did so would probably win the election.
Bottom line: Canada will do nothing significant to help Bush. He's far too despised for the Liberals to risk anything more than token gestures...and the tokens can't even look too good, for fear of giving the opposition parties the excuse they're looking for.
Chris Crawford suggested Bush might pull out of Iraq. Bush is certainly the type to cut and run...but leaving means chaos, and chaos means not getting the oil.
I'm prepared to believe the war wasn't entirely about oil, but let's not be silly. Bush can't withdraw troops until the oil is safe...and that means the oil in Iran and Saudi Arabia as well as Iraq.
In Vietnam, there was nothing at stake except pride. Now that Iraq is in play, potentially destabilizing all Middle-Eastern oil producers, the U.S. can't possibly go home till there's honest-to-goodness stability.
Sigh.
On the other hand, I just had a thought. With Bush still around, there's a chance of finally impeaching the bastard. Good and hard.
One has bouts of numbness.
One has bouts of anger.
One has bouts of Schadenfreude. ("I can't wait till everything falls down around their ears. Let me live long enough to see them realize they've been dealing with the devil.")
One has bouts of gallows humor. ("Hey, so this is how we get all those science fiction futures where the U.S. has broken into a dozen grotty banana republics!")
One has bouts of sympathy for those who, one way or another, will be destroyed by this.
One has more bouts of numbness.
But let me say, as a Canadian and (perhaps) a representative of the non-U.S. world, we still know that Bush isn't America's whole story. We know the U.S. isn't entirely mad, or stupid, or blind, or any of the other easy accusations that sometimes spring to mind. It just had a stroke in one hemisphere of its brain; the other hemisphere (the strong logical hemisphere) is still working and will someday learn to compensate for the stroke's damage.
At the risk of being glib, maybe the lesson is that hope shouldn't be "Tomorrow will fix everything." Hope can only be "Today we'll fix a little."
But some todays are harder than others.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
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| 2004 | 5 |
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