Annoyance

[rfmcdonald]

This thread at the prominent warblog Little Green Footballs is the kind of thing that makes me fear for the future of Canadian-American relations.

I wrote a letter to the Charlottetown Guardian on this topic:

Editor:

In Ivan Bulger's letter "For Our Spineless Behaviour We Will Pay the Price" which appeared in The Guardian earlier this week, he argued that if it is morally right to remove Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party from power in Iraq that it should be done. Arriving at a rough global consensus through global institutions (like the UN) that this should be done is irrelevant.

Mr. Bulger neglects to realize, I fear, that ends do not automatically justify the means. Invading Iraq is difficult in itself, trying to make Iraq (which will just have emerged from a generation-long Stalinist dictatorship that superbly atomized society) anything close to be a liberal democracy will be next to impossible. Doing both (or, as I fear, only the first) without any firm consensus among the United States' allies, associates, and strategic adversaries that doing so now in this way is legitimate will
succeed only in making a bad situation even more unstable.

Canadians remain friends with Americans, and Canada remains an ally of America. On neither count should we be expected to alter our fundamental policy goals in the face of generally hostile public opinion. To expect us to do such would be to expect us to become a vassal state, and despite his manifest flaws, I'm happy that Jean Chrétien resisted the temptation to make Canada just that.

Sincerely,
Randy McDonald

I'm just annoyed. And no, I'm not making any war posts.