CIVITATENSIS

When Jimmy Carter won the election and became the 39th US president in 1976, he did so on a platform to change the world with a revolution of human rights. He was such a nice man, people voted for him. It did not take long before America’s enemies set out to test his resolve, in Iran, Afghanistan, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

For the last 30 years, five administrations have been dealing with the fall out in those countries. It is still the case today. We know of Afghanistan and Iran because we hear it about them in the news often enough. In Central America the two guerrilla movements who increased their power under the tutelage of Jimmy Carter in those countries at the time, eventually turned to political parties and are both now in power.  It’s been, did I mention, 30 years?

Now, America’s enemies are on the march again, no doubt trying to test the resolve of the man who would be prophet and transform the world with hope. North Korea does not seem to like hope or has decided that Obama does not offer them enough of it. In Iran, things are not so well with nukes either. In the meantime, the new government of El Salvador will probably join ALBA, the so-called Bolivarian movement piloted by Hugo Chavez.

Together with their Russian and Iranian allies, ALBA too will test the resolve of President Hope sometime soon. When a president stands on a campaign record saying that he is more likely to hug the thugs than carpet bomb them, the likelihood is that a few will want to earn a hug or two.

How’s hope working for him in North Korea so far?

I was raking the leafs in the backyard today as my eight-year old boy pranced around in military fatigues, his toy AK-47 in hand (he also has a toy M-16) and also sporting a balaclava. When I suggested that he looked like a terrorist, he shrugged me off.

After he finished helping me pick up some of the debris on the ground, I said: “Thank you, al-Qaeda boy.” “I am not al-Qaeda,” he said. “I’m from Alberta.” Thinking that he didn’t understand the reference, I pointed out that al-Qaeda sympathizers have been known to live in Canada. “I know,” he said, with an annoyed tone. “That’s exactly why I said I’m from Alberta.”

That shut me up!

Good for David Emerson for pointing the obvious to our myopic Democrat neighbors!

If Obama and Clinton want to reopen NAFTA, Canada (as well as Mexico) would eagerly welcome opening talks about energy exports to the US, without a doubt. That may not be the most desirable thing for Americans. Buying oil from next door is safer. Having to buy more and more from overseas increases security concerns. The Democrats want to instill uncertainty about energy supply for the US economy in the middle of a recessionary slide?

Ultimately, surrendering the stability of the American energy supply to the likes of Hugo Chavez is not a step forward the country. We can always sell more to India and China. How dumb are these Democrats anyway?

On February 10th., at the Montana border, American authorities caught a US Marine deserter hiding out in Alberta.  Leon Soup was trying to cross into the US at the Montana border at the time.  The report says nothing about where or how long Soup had been living in Alberta. No word about which Marine outfit he ran away from either.

I am pleased to see one less draft dodger in Canada.

Is citoyen Stephane Dion saying that NATO will have to intervene in Pakistan? Is this not also the same fellow who wants our troops to pull out of Afghanistan?

The only way for Dion to make this blunder even greater would be to suggest that Indian troops should enter Pakistan on behalf of NATO.

ST has the scoop here.

The Globe reports that Citoyen Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, and his current sidekick, Michael Ignatieff, are in Afghanistan. They are there to consider pulling the Canadian presence out of combat roles in the near future and stay exclusively to help with organisation and development projects.

Liberals say that the present mission is unbalanced. If it is, that’s an acknowledgment that they sent Canadian soldiers to a lopsided mission when the were in government and accepted to move our soldiers from Kabul to Kandahar. But no matter, the Liberal change of heart would have Canadians build schools and clinics and then wait for the Taliban to come destroy them, placing more people at risk, including more Canadians. Better to have Canadians killed while they hold no weapons in their hands!

"We must be realistic about our ability to continue such a mission. The [Canadian Forces ] simply cannot continue to engage in an extremely dangerous combat campaign of this scale for an indefinite period of time."

Instead of a counterinsurgency combat role, Liberals suggest Canada could re-focus on development work, diplomatic efforts, building a justice system, and alleviating water shortages in Afghanistan.

By this rationale, we should send social workers and boy scouts instead of soldiers to deal with the suicidal islamists who want to kill  little girls to stop them from being educated.  By the same rationale, we should have never sacrificed our soldiers on the beaches and fields of Europe last century. We should have just sent social workers to deal with the Nazi killing camps.

The Grits are in dire need of picking a leader who can talk to his dog and to his dead mother these days.  In the past, such Grit leaders have had more sense in international affairs than the whole lot of latte-sipping central Canadians they  presented to themselves in the last leadership contest.

Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and - in an ominous turn - shot at officers. A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.

Read the rest here.

I caught the tail end of an interview with former Supreme Louise Arbour the other day on CBC radio. She was commenting about the (mis)treatment of non combattants. She mentioned that the in the eyes of international law, soldiers and non state agents are to be treated equally. But that in the eyes of public opinion, non state agents deserve more consideration than soldiers.

I have no clue where Arbour gets her supposed facts. The first question that comes to mind is what kind of public opinion Justice Arbour is listening to or reading. Since she speaks of international law, I am going to guess that she means international public opinion. But no matter.

The law and its application, she often maintained,  is not tied to public opinion. Human rights are not tied to public opinion.  Assuming that it is true, and to some extent it is, one has to wonder why the former justice would bother ending her commentary on the supposed opinions of a non-existing public, the world. It is doubly troublesome that this is a former Supreme Court judge speaking such things, of course.

Closing with her opinion on public opinion is a deliberate act. But it’s not a legal act since the former judge is clearly aware that public opinion does not drive the law.  The mention of public opinion is patently a political act on the part of the former  judge. She inserted her opinion in the hope of influencing the opinions of others on the matter of treating non combattants.

Generally speaking, such things are called spinning, ands they have a direct political purpose.  Perhaps next time, CBC might ask Arbour to do a show on the role of former and sitting judges as politicians and spinners.

Prime Minister Harper had this to say to our troops in Afghanistan:

Each of you stands among the greatest of your generation. You’re Canada’s sons and daughters and your country, as much as this country, owes you a debt of gratitude and its unwavering support.

As Canadians, we have tremendous pride in our great country and its values. But we truly show our belief in our values only when we put them on the line - only when we are prepared to share them with those less fortunate than ourselves.

Every day, you personify these values and virtues here, in Afghanistan. You are the diligent neighbours and the compassionate workers. You are the courageous warriors and the loyal friends. You’re the very best our country has to offer.

I am proud of you. Canadians are proud of you. And I’m here to tell you that we are behind you. Your government will continue steadfastly supporting the men and women of the Canadian Forces as the most professional, disciplined and effective soldiers in the world.

Citoyen Dion, Bob Rae, Jack Layton and the NDP social workers wouldn’t agree, of course, but so what?

A necessary reminder of the conditions that led to the Six-Day War in 1967.

The world will soon be awash with 40th-anniversary retrospectives of the war — and exegeses on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only to return to lines of June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that June 4 and of that unbearable May when, with Israel in possession of no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel’s imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.

The rest of the piece is here.

Alberta Hutterites have won the right to be issued driver’s licenses without pictures after the province’s Court of Appeal agreed with their arguments that requiring them to be photographed violates their religious rights.

“The mandatory photo requirement forces the Hutterian Brethren to either breach a sincerely held religious belief against being photographed or cease driving,” said Judge Carole Conrad, writing for the majority of the three-member court.

I may soon start a religion that objects to my car being photographed on public roads.

…wear it.

When I was in student government, Kenneth Deer of the Mohawk Warrior Society in Kanawake approached us, after having learned that the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN was coming to Montreal.  Deer wanted to see if we, the students, would arrange for a meeting with the Palestinian visitor.

It’s pretty safe to say that Deer was not just looking for a Palestinian pen pal at the time.

The Palestinian Ambassador gave a public press conference at the university and Deer came by. He did not ask any questions during the meeting, but in a parking lot right in front of the SGW Hall Building (the library was not there yet) Deer approached the diplomat, who became somewhat excited upon being introduced to a member of the Warrior Society.

With an embarrased face and a dismissive tone, the Palestinian official said: “Not here, if you want to talk to me, please come to New York.”

Should the Mohawk Warrior Society be on a government watch list? They already are. Why the scandal about them being mentioned in a manual?

Radical natives are listed in the Canadian army’s counterinsurgency manual as a potential military opponent, lumping aboriginals in with the Tamil Tigers, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad.

[...]

"The rise of radical Native American organizations, such as the Mohawk Warrior Society, can be viewed as insurgencies with specific and limited aims," the manual states. "Although they do not seek complete control of the federal government, they do seek particular political concessions in their relationship with national governments and control (either overt or covert) of political affairs at a local/reserve ("First Nation’) level, through the threat of, or use of, violence," the manual states.

The Mohawk Warrior Society was involved in the 1990 Oka crisis in Quebec, which spawned a 78-day confrontation with police and the military that left a police officer dead. The society normally describes more militant natives from the traditional Mohawk territory, covering parts of Quebec, Ontario, Vermont and New York State.

The UN security Council may be closer to finding common ground on a new resolution aimed at imposing sanctions on  Iran.

The draft resolution is expected to be presented to the Security Council for discussion on Thursday.

The sanctions may include a ban on the export of arms from Iran, and a freeze on the assets of key Iranian officials.

Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful, but Western governments suspect Iran of wanting a nuclear bomb.

Ambassadors from Britain, France, the United States, China and Russia - the five permanent members of the Security Council - and Germany agreed the draft resolution in principle.

The governments must now approve the text before it is presented to the full Security Council, likely on Thursday.

Does it even matter?

The head of Canada’s armed forces [General Rick Hillier] was accused of playing partisan politics today after he told a meeting of defence experts that the military was coming out of the “decade of darkness” that began with the Liberal government in 1994.

I think the spirit of what the General is saying is correct but he is somewhat wrong. The Canadian military has been under attack from the federal government and in an age of darkness since the 1960s. That’s not a partisan statement because Brian Mulroney was no friend of the troops either.

Perhaps what General Hillier means to say is that the last decade was the darkest in the last four.

Jihadis threaten the oil patch.

No one is quaking in their cowboy boots.

They may be around, but there’s not likely to be a critical mass, and the most they might do is basic low-level sabotage like sticking a hole in a pipeline

Australian Prime Minister John Howard slammed Barack Obama yesterday for his foolish plans to withdraw from Iraq.

"I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory," Mr. Howard said on Nine Network television.

"If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."

[...]

"You either rat on the ally or you stay with the ally," he said. "If it’s all right for us to go, it’s all right for the Americans and the British to go, and if everybody goes, Iraq will descend into total civil war and there’ll be a lot of bloodshed."

Finally, after several embarrassing moments in situations like this, the Canadian Forces are going to get some reasonable lift capability. Canada will no longer have to blame the victims.

In 1999, in one of his usual feigned-indignation fits, Fidel Castro declared Canada an enemy of the Cuban people. The declaration did not come out of the blue. Castro was upset that Canada accepted defecting athletes from the Cuban team at the Panamerican games held in Winnipeg. The thuggery in the dictator’s attitude was pretty clear.

Hamas now threatens to place Canada on its growing list of enemies.

Canada risks making itself an enemy of the Palestinian people and of the broader Islamist movement by boycotting Hamas and openly siding with Israel, Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar said Sunday after he was shunned by visiting Foreign Minister Peter MacKay.

Zahar made his point in language that is more indicative of thuggery that it is of statesmanship; it’s the language of hatred.

"Canadians have to change their extremist government, or else they’re going to lose their credibility as a neutral state," he warned. "You cannot create a new enemy without a price."

The irony of an Islamist terrorist organisation accusing Canada of extremism is priceless. Canadians and their government have no beef against decent Palestinians, but Gritzbullah is no longer in power. Canadians are not neutral to bomb-strapped terrorists, and that’s the way it should be.

As for the threats, suffice it to say that Castro still accepts the Canadian dollars that the curious and the naive Canadian tourists bring to his island fiefdom. We would be a less respectable people if we were to quiver over such weak threats from thugs like Zahar (though I am sure that let’s-meet-the-terrorists-half-way Layton will disagree). I suspect that Zahar is not going to be turning supposed inimical Canadian tourists and charity workers away either.

French troops are retreating in Afghanistan. But there is no need for the French to be ashamed. The French politicians are calling it a reorganisation of forces.

Mais oui! Vichy was just a slight reorganisation of the French state aussi.

“For the past six years, I have had the opportunity and, I would say the privilege, to serve with the greatest military on the face of the Earth,” Rumsfeld, 74, said in a speech on Saturday to more than 1,200 soldiers and Marines stationed al-Assad, an air base in Anbar Province, the large area of western Iraq that is an insurgent stronghold.

“I leave understanding that the true strength of the United States military is not in Washington, it’s not in the Pentagon, it’s not in the weapons. It’s in the hearts of the men and women who serve. It’s your patriotism, it’s your professionalism and indeed your determination,” he was quoted by the US Department of Defense as saying.

“We feel great urgency to protect the American people from another 9/11 or a 9/11 times two or three. At the same time, we need to have the patience to see this task through to success. The consequences of failure are unaccepta-ble,” Rumsfeld said. “The enemy must be defeated.”

The Glob is scandalised because US Coast Guards are scaring the fish in the great lakes by conducting live ammunition drills.

These folks are appalled at gun fire practice by the agents of a neighbouring, friendly state.They are likely the same folks who want nothing done about the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are burning schools and firing on school teachers and children. Go figure!

As most Canadians, I am tired of the lame NDP line “support our troops, bring them home.” Am I the only one to find their opportunistic “support” offensive?

I’d like to think that conservatives and genuine supporters of our troops’ efforts in Afghanistan should come up with a similar line, but mean it. In the spirit of innovation, I am throwing out a couple of suggestions:

Support our troops, gag Jack Layton!

I will confess that my own proposal offends my libertarian soul a little –until I hear Jack speak again. Layton is also concerned with our sovereignty so here’s another one:

Support our Sovereignty, send Jack to Alert!

Maybe a hybrid:

Support our troops, ship Jack to Alert!

I trust that most of you can come up with something clever (no pressures). That’s what the comment box is for…

In addition to the attacks to churches in Palestine, an Iraqi jihadi group has issued death threats (in Spanish from El Pais) against the life of Benedict XVI, the Catholic pope, for pointing out that Islamic ‘holy war’ is contrary to the nature of G-d. That outside the jihadi radicals, most thinking Muslims would agree does not matter.

But it’s not really about the substance of the statement made by the pope but about how it has been spun. The jihadis who hate the west because it is “Christian” are simply unable to enter into a discussion on the finer theological points of their own religion, let alone their justifications for wanting to exterminate all infidels. They fear ideas and discourse because all they have beyond ignorance is force, threat and terror.

To people whose notion of heavenly bliss is an eternal orgy among young virgins dedicated to each killer, the idea of a benevolent and loving G-d who is incompatible with violence is incomprehensible. And to the nihilist western press, the idea that jihadis can produce such violence in the name of a divinity that the secular press cannot grasp is a puzzle without solution. But in their respective ignorance, they are mates of sorts.

In the western culture of victimhood and liberal intolerance for traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs, the press sides with the killers because they are ‘victims.’ The jihadis and the secular west are partners in their demands for a papal apology, they are partners in their deconstruction of western virtue.

The pope has issued apologies, but they are doing little to placate the lust for hatred (en francais). The personal papal regrets to be offered tomorrow at the Angelus from Castelgandolfo will probably not find ears among islamists.

I lived in Montreal when Marc Lépine walked into the Ecole Polytechnique and murdered 14 female students. I worked just three blocs from the scene, and many people running from the gruesome chaos ended up taking refuge in the establishment where I worked. Je me souviens.

Obviously, the killing spree at Dawson College yesterday reminds me of what I personally experienced after the assault at the Polytechnique. The shock I experienced then reminds me of the present one, though I am far away from the epicentre now. Still, I feel for the victims and their families as much as I did then. But I don’t want to write about my personal consternations.

My concern is the political reaction that will follow the present tragedy. In 1989, a march was organised days after the shooting to express solidarity with the victims. But it turned out to be an expression of base tyrannical sentiments. No men were allowed to participate in the march. The assumption was clear: Lépine was regarded as one who had acted on behalf of all males. In the long run, the exclusivist, radical feminism achieved nothing, changed nothing. It made the feminist separatists feel better in the attempt to advance their cause, but that was all.

Later, the so-called Montreal Massacre was used as a launching pad for one of the most wasteful programmes the federal government has undertaken, the gun registry. To say nothing of restrictions on personal freedoms and the federal encroachment upon the exclusive provincial area around property. Allan Rock repeatedly said that his regulations would ensure that actions like those of Marc Lépine would never happen again. And yet, they have. None of us wished it but many of us knew that they would. We knew that no amount of legislation could guarantee the erasing of evil. And evil is what Dawson students confronted yesterday.

One could take comfort in that Rock was a Liberal. But in light of this, I worry that similar knee-jerk reactions today might lead to more ill-conceived legislation and policies. Will the country once again be subjected to wasteful and meaningless policies for the sake of a central government concerned with future electoral gains in Quebec? Will more personal liberty be curtailed and more provincial power grabbed as a result?

Part of Stephen Harper’s reaction takes account of the reality of the human condition.

“How ever terrible images or messages that are being sent to people, or people may see, how ever bad they may be they do not absolve any of us from our moral responsibility as individuals to act in ways that treat our fellow human beings with decency. Whether there's something we can do to control it, I can't tell you that, but I can tell you that nothing excuses what the killer did yesterday.”

But in the same report, he was also quoted as saying:

“We can obviously just observe that laws we have didn't prevent this tragedy which is why our government will be in the future, because of this incident and many others, looking to make our laws more effective,” Harper told reporters.

If this is simply Harper’s idea of expressing sympathy for the victims and the public of a shell-shocked city, it is a bit misplaced. And if this is truly an idea to deal with the problem, it is misguided.

Interestingly, Quebec (to say nothing of Montreal) is one of the most militantly anti-firearms parts of the country. Yet, yesterday's rampage was the fourth of its kind in that province in a little over two decades: in 1984 Denis Lortie made an assault on the National Assembly building in Quebec City killing three and wounding many, Marc Lépine killed 14 in 1989, Valery Fabrikant killed four of his colleagues in the Hall Building of Concordia University in 1992, and now Kimveer Gill's dark deeds at Dawson College await a final count. Greater and greater restrictions of weapons have clearly not done much to stop what governments are impotent to ban, evil.

Government rules cannot transform the human capacity for evil anymore than they can transform their capacity for good. And any new attempt to do so will be another political illusion. I hope that the Prime Minister does resist pressures for more legislation.

This is no mere ethics quiz: I invite my reader to ask himself what he would do in the situation those Fox journalists found themselves in [Converting to Islam at gun point]. Not what I would do — I am just the messenger — but what you would do. And before you give any quick or clever answer, recall that our whole civilization stands or falls on what you decide. Do you, do we, have the courage to hold our spiritual fortress? Or will we, in the time of trouble, give everything away? (my emphasis)

As much as it seems to hurt feelings among many, David Warren is dead on the mark with the question.  The marxoid tyrannies taught us how some will give up their freedom for a piece of a bread . In the west, we have been doing just that with social policies for decades. The will has weakened and resolve has left but a few, it seems. But it is much worse when some give up life standing upright and chose instead to live by prostrating themselves before others, before our enemies. I’ll say it again, there are worse things than being dead.

According to Liberal leadership hopeful Stephane Dion, Canada needs to give the world more warm fuzzies about the northern environment in order to protect our sovereignty.

To Dion, if we create a boreal environmental paradise and we invite smart scientists and tourists to visit, as opposed to the simplistic Conservative alternative to buying “weapons,” people will like us (more), see that we are nice to the seals and the polar bears and will be more likely to have us look after the seals and the bears.

“The Conservative government simplistically thinks that by investing in weapons we’ll able to impose our sovereignty on a territory that is as huge, almost, as Europe. You will never have this capacity,” he said.

He said the way to make sovereignty known is to set up national parks and marine protection areas, and invite scientists from around the world to study the effects of climate change and to find solutions.

By doing so, “it will be recognized that we are taking care of the north, and many countries will then say it’s better for Canada to be the sovereign power in the North.”

I expected that the Liberal leadership race would generate interesting ideas, but Dion has surpassed expectations with this. If he keeps it up, he might be inducted into the Adscam-funded Comedy Museum in Montreal.

A wider application of Dion’s ideas to our foreign policy could save many lives. Canadians in Afghanistan should tell the Taliban about how nice we plan to be to the seals and the bears.

Hamas and Hezbollah may want to team up to negotiate with Israel, at least, over the return of Israel’s soldiers, the JP reports. Both terrorist groups continue to insist on a prisoner swap, an idea that Israel resists.

Mohammad Nazal, member of Hamas’ political bureau in Damascus, also raised the possibility of teaming up with the Shi’ite terrorist group Hizbullah to negotiate terms that would lead to the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel in exchange for the three soldiers - two held by Hezbollah and one by Hamas.

Hamas and Hezbollah are already teamed up. The question is whether they want to appear as such before the Israelis and the world.  Given how the soldiers were captured, particularly those held by Hezbollah who are said to have bribed UN peacekeepers in order to get into Israel, Israel cannot accept a prisoner exchange. To do so would be encourage future terrorist incursions into its territory for the purposes of harvesting Israeli citizens.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and many in this country, including candidates in the race for Liberal chieftain, have stated what ought to be obvious to anyone with sense: Israel has the right to defend itself. Even lefty icons like Billary Clinton has said the same. But in the minds of lesser creatures in the media and on the left, the statement supposedly means that Canada has shifted its foreign policy and is now allied with Israel.

If it came to choosing between being allied with Israel or with the radical jihadist Party of God, there is no contest. Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, made very much that point in a portion of an interview that I caught this morning on BBC news.

From Aznar’s view, the combat against Hezbollah is part and parcel of the war against the jihadis. This is a point that not many leaders beside those in Israel have had the courage to make in public. It’s an issue from which the media has also turned away. Further still, Aznar made it clear that the fundamentals of western life are embodied in Israel, and that if Israel were ever defeated by its enemies, the cause of Western civilisation would suffer. Israel, he is suggesting, is a gate-keeper against islamofascists. Aznar also suggested to the increasingly pale-faced BBC interviewer that Israel should be included into NATO.

Making the factually-correct statement under international law that a state, any state, has the right to defend itself, is akin to saying that the sun raises in the East. One should normally be as uncontroversial as the other. Advocating Israel’s entry into NATO, on the other hand, is to embrace the meaning of a formal alliance with Israel, for as Aznar pointed out, it would require NATO members to come to the defense of Israel when it is attacked. It’s a basic distinction that even the Glob should understand.

Many Lebanese-Canadian Muslims are upset by what they perceive to be Canada taking side with Israel. Their proof are the PM’s words: Israel has the right to defend itself, which does not mean in any way that Lebanon doesn’t. It so happens that the paper government of Lebanon has not defended itself, it has been a puppet of the Syrians and a hostage of the home-grown, Iranian-sponsored Party of God (Hezbollah). The Lebanese state has refused to empower itself even after the endorsement of Security Council in the September 2004 Resolution 1559.

If Canada took sides against Lebanon, there would be Canadian soldiers fighting alongside the IDF, and there are none. Canada’s government, like Israel, has no beef with Lebanon or its peaceful people but simply condemns the jihadist terrorists in the Party of God. That’s not new; it has been policy for a while.

As part of their discontent with Harper’s words, many Muslims have been very critical of the evacuation effort to the point of blatant ingratitude, aided and abetted by a media all-too happy to dump on Harper. As soon as she stepped off the prime minister’s plane, one female evacuee claimed on camera to have challenged Harper over his “political” reasons for helping them out of Cyprus. How very wonderfully tacky. She’s the type to complain about the Humus when invited to others people’s houses. Beggars are indeed choosers. But if what I read in the letters to editors of newspapers and heard on TV this morning is any indication, the savage public attacks over the lack of Gravol and air conditioning seems to be backfiring.

There seems to be a swelling of opinion in support of the government’s efforts to evacuate Canadians from Lebanon, even among CBC viewers, and that same opinion is very, very critical of the outrageous ingratitude that we have witnessed in the media. The public’s attention is shifting to the visible ingratitude, sense of entitlement and the residential status of many of the evacuees. For all the damage that the media and the entitled ones have tried to cause the government, they are producing a significant deal of sympathy toward the government: Unintended consequences.

It never pays to behave boorishly in someone else’s living room.

When Bill Graham, interim Liberal chieftain and leader of the Official Opposition, and the NDP’s Jack Layton called for Canada to adopt a more neutral position in the conflict between Israel and the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organisations, they would like Canada to remain an “honest broker.”

Canada has placed both these organisations on its list of terrorist groups. It would be honest to recognise it. One should not work out deals with terrorists, which is what these parliamentarians are prescribing. In addition, Graham and Layton’s renewed attemtp to cuddle up to Hezbollah –we don’t forget that they both resisted placing Hezbollah on our terrorist list, is a square violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 (pdf). The most relevant portions of the resolution read:

Reiterating its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and
political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders,

Noting the determination of Lebanon to ensure the withdrawal of all non-
Lebanese forces from Lebanon,

Gravely concerned at the continued presence of armed militias in Lebanon,
which prevent the Lebanese Government from exercising its full sovereignty over all Lebanese territory,

Reaffirming the importance of the extension of the control of the Government
of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory,

Mindful of the upcoming Lebanese presidential elections and underlining the
importance of free and fair elections according to Lebanese constitutional rules
devised without foreign interference or influence,

1. Reaffirms its call for the strict respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity, and political independence of Lebanon under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon throughout Lebanon;
2. Calls upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon;
3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non- Lebanese militias;
4. Supports the the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory;

Issued in September 2004, the Council’s resolution calls for the withdrawal of foreign armies (essentially meaning Syria since Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000), and the disarmament of all Lebanese militia so that the central government would duly exercise sovereignty unhindered. It would be honest for these parliamentarians to recognise that they are encouraging a group in violation of UN directives, who have prevented the properly constituted government of Lebanon from affirming its “sole and exclusive authority.” It would also be honest for Graham and Layton to remember that both these terrorist organisations and their Iranian sponsor have called for the extermination of Jews and the final liquidation of the State of Israel.

Ignorantly or hypocritically, the very same United Nations whom Graham and Layton would now like to orchestrate a ceasefire in Lebanon, is the same organization whose resolution they have blatantly snubbed. If Canadian parliamentary leaders show no respect for Security Council resolutions, why would the terrorists?

The honest thing (as some of the NP readers have pointed out in their letters today) is to recognise terrorists as terrorists, and to treat them accordingly. To pretend otherwise, as Graham and Layton do, would infuse dishonesty into Canadian foreign policy.