Harper v. Ignatieff

I don't like either. Let me say that at the outset.

Harper is a frightening bully even when he has a minority. I can't imagine what he would do to this country if he had a majority. How many wars do you want to fight attached to the dying embers of the bankrupt American Empire? How much debt do you want to find this country in while he shovels money not to medicine but to wealthy corporations and party contributors? How much torture will our nation condone?

I want none of it.

Ignatieff, meanwhile, has his own concerns. He strikes me somewhat as an American style Democrat. His platform will be slightly smaller tax cuts for the wealthy, slightly more money for healthcare. It won't be great, but you'll have to say to yourself, "Well, it's better than that other guy and at least his party won't try to make church attendance mandatory".

Ignatieff, like Harper, supported the war in Iraq. If either had been Prime Minister at the time of the U.S. invasion, Canadians might still be dying in that country. It's bad enough they're dying in Afghanistan. One hundred have given their lives for a battle we will eventually have to decide we can't win. But with Harper or Ignatieff in command, they'd be dying in Iraq too.

There is, however, one major difference between the two featured here in an article about the recent fiscal update in which Harper tried to defund his opponents. No, it's not the "reaching out" bit. That's a scam and we all know it. It's this bit:

But Mr. Harper refused to accept any blame for causing the recent political crisis, or admit that controversial measures in his fiscal update were a mistake.

Instead, he said there was a conspiracy by opposition leaders to bring down his government regardless of what was in update.

That's right. The Prime Minister saw weakness and attempted to obliterate the other parties by bankrupting them, knowing his own wealthy donors would keep his boat floating as long as he keeps the tax cuts coming. When that triggered a revolt in Parliament, he took the measures away and yet took no responsibility for the galvanizing effect his cruelty had caused.

Compare and contrast, as my English teacher used to say. This is from an article Ignatieff wrote in the New York Times regarding his support for the invasion of Iraq.

"The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president, but it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion."

Unfortunately you'll find, if you read his apology in depth, that he feels the mistake he made was in underestimating the cost of the invasion, not in the fact that there was no legitimate reason for any kind of invasion in the first place. This makes him no better or worse than Harper in that respect.

And yet, at the same time, therein lies the difference.

Ignatieff can admit that he made a mistake. Harper can not.

If I have to choose between two ivory tower, American Empire supporting jackasses, I'll take the one who has shown at least a tendency toward teachability.

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"Casualties" Down in Iraq

We're being told now that Casualties are Dropping in Iraq.

Rest assured, first of all, that we're only talking about American and coalition forces. (Is there anyone left in that coalition?) No need to discuss all of the Iraqis fleeing, starving and dying. We didn't talk about them when Clinton and Blair were starving them with sanctions, sewage and dirty water so we definitely don't need to talk about them now.

But there they have a graph which purports to show that Americans are dying less and less each month in Iraq and, we are to assume, therefore things are getting better. We're winning. Yay!

Not quite. Let's take a moment and pretend that someone had handed this to us as a study, something entitled, "Trends in Violence in Iraq Indicate Success", or some such thing. Then we'd have to examine the methodology of the whole thing.

1. Is it true that we're actually on a downward trend? It certainly looks like it from the way the G&M has snipped out the last year of data. But suppose we look at the data from October 2004 to September 2005. Would we not see the same apparent "trend" only to watch it disappear in noise a month later? Human eyes and brains are terrible for seeing patterns where none exist. The same phenomenon leads millions of people to believe in psychics and mediums the world over.

2. Is it true that reducing the casualties on the invading side of the war actually means that life is getting better for the occupied people? I don't see how this is true. Maybe the Americans finally started buying good armour for their soldiers and their vehicles. A better graph might depict how many Iraqis are being killed by occupying soldiers.

3. Are there other, artificial factors which might lead to this occurrence? For instance, there's an American presidential election coming up. Is it possible that, just as past presidents have opened up the strategic oil reserve in order to lower gas prices and win reelection, the president might also order reduced patrolling in order to lower the casualty rate and provide his successor with better debating ground? I don't see any evidence of this, but I know that Bush and McCain aren't above this sort of thing and I'd hardly expect any evidence.

No, this is a flawed, feel-good piece of nonsense that fails to analyze properly all of the factors that might have contributed to whatever effect it is that is actually seen.

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McLellan on the Bandwagon

Honestly, I'm not even going to read the man's book. It's nice that people who leave the Bush Administration are telling us what a bunch of dogmatically driven pack of liars they are, but it's a bit late, Scott.

The time we needed you to call them out was sometime in 2003, when you were helping them lie. You're no hero. You're too late. You're too late by 4000 American dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and hundreds of billions of American dollars spent.

Good luck with the book, though.

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Canadians Fighting in Iraq

Canadians are flying "training missions" in Iraq.

Remember when George Bush and his fellow liars misled their own country in to a immoral, illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq? Remember when they lied about nuclear weapons? Remember when they lied about Al Qaeda being in Iraq? Remember when they lied about Iraq having anything to do with 9/11?

Remember how Canada, Canadians and their Parliament said "No" to participation in the invasion of Iraq?

Apparently, our military feels that the civilian leadership made a mistake, because the military has decided that Canadians can participate in the disaster the Americans have created in Iraq.

"Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of Canada's defence staff, wrote to Gordon O'Connor, then minister of national defence, in May 2007 that in the summer and fall of that year, Canadian military aircrew would fly into Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That decision was taken without informing Parliament."

Enough is enough. That's a war they are having over there. We didn't declare war on Iraq. We want no part of the war in Iraq and yet our military, without any approval at all, has involved us in a war.

General Hillier's only defence is:

"The overall risk associated with allowing CF aircrew to operate on USAF C-17 missions to Iraq is low."

Oh, that's reassuring. You've gone off and illegally ordered the involvement of our soldiers in a war we morally oppose but it's okay because - drum roll - they didn't get hurt doing it. This is a dirty, stupid trick the military has used to appease the American brass - an "apology", if you will, for our failure to charge full-bore in to the insane mess they've created.

Our military is no longer under our control. It's bad enough that our previous Minister of Defense was a defense industry lobbyist. It's bad enough that there's a tangled web of former military personnel, former and present government officials and defense industry spokesmen who blast us through the media with their pro-war rhetoric. Now these people, even when they completely fail to "educate" the population on the "value" of going to war, go to war anyway. And they tell us about it a year later.

This is not democracy. This is not freedom. Our soldiers are our responsibility, not just in terms of the injuries they sustain, but in terms of the moral consequences of the missions on which we send them.

If we don't know what they're doing, how can we make sure they are being used for moral purposes?

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