Here are the top 5 issues being hotly debated south of the border that are thankfully not really on the radar screen in our election:

1. The war in Iraq. Because, well, we’re not actually fighting in it. The war in Afghanistan is, of course, an issue here, but it’s not nearly as divisive as Iraq is for Americans.
2. Terrorism and national security. Canadians are just plain less worried about this issue than Americans are, no matter what side of it they are on. Whether it’s because we’re more rational or more naive, the fact is that most Canadians don’t really believe that there is an imminent threat of terrorism, and the issue really isn’t showing up in our election discourse.
3. Gay marriage. It’s been legal nationwide since 2005. Since then, thousands of same-sex couples have tied the knot in Canada, our wedding industry has benefited from an influx of marriage “tourists” from the US, and everyone else basically yawned and went on with their lives. Even Stephen Harper isn’t bothering to rehash the issue in this campaign, recognizing the futility of beating a dead horse.
4. Abortion. Yeah, there have been a few rumbles, which have mostly consisted of scare-tactics by the Duceppe camp against Harper – who has stated that he has no plans to re-open the issue. As explosive as the issue is in the US election, here, it’s basically a non-issue, just as it has been in virtually every Canadian election campaign since the 1970s.
5. What our candidates look like. While Americans choose between their first-ever African-American president and their first-ever female VP, us Canadians have an election that’s about the candidates’ politics and not about their skin colour or background. Of course, that’s because they’re all a bunch of white guys (except for Elizabeth May). But I suspect that even if our PM candidates were a bit more representative of the country, we’d still manage to talk less about their skin colour or gender than the Americans do. Besides, Kim Campbell won’t exactly go down in history as a great Canadian leader, but I’d still rather have her than Sarah Palin any day.

The economy is, without a doubt, the #1 voting issue for both Americans and Canadians. As it should be. Polls have shown that the other top election issues for Canadians are healthcare, the environment and poverty. We can hopefully expect these issues to dominate tonight’s debate, and the above issues to hardly rate a mention.

Sometimes, it’s good to be Canadian.

I’m sure that the US administration expected this to be a pivotal moment and a resounding victory. Instead, Saddam’s execution will probably pass as a mere footnote to the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Still, there cannot be a punishment quite bad enough to befit the crimes that Saddam Hussein inflicted in the course of his dictatorship, and there really couldn’t be any other verdict but a death sentence. So, barring an unlikely appeal victory, Saddam Hussein will probably hang by next month, and one less horrible dictator will be alive in the world.

It won’t solve Iraq’s problems. Far from it. But now, that seems almost besides the point.

• Sadaam’s judge doesn’t think he was a dictator. So what was he, then? A democratically-elected leader? A royal monarch? The winner of the first season of Iraqi Idol?
• The new Palestinian “unity” government appears likely to get its funding back from Europe, though the U.S. isn’t on board.
• Amnesty said Hezbollah committed war crimes, in what Charles Johnson over at LGF dubbed a flying pig moment. I’m shocked too. Amnesty gets so much more money and support when it’s directing its wrath at Israel.
• In a big sign of normalcy returning to the country, Israel’s getting its international soccer games back.
• Germany ordained its first rabbis since 1942. See that big middle finger in the air, you neo-Nazi assholes?
• Speaking of Jews and Europe, Pajamas Media is all over this under-reported story about the defamation trial that just begun in France against three Jewish citizens who questioned the French Channel 2 network for its coverage of the Mohammed Al-Dura affair.
• The Pope has pissed off Muslims, it seems, by making some statements that, regardless of their intent, will surely be taken way out of context. This could be a thing.
• Bibi said that Ahmadinejad is “more dangerous than Hitler”. You’d think such a normally-competent debater would’ve heard of Godwin’s Law, no?
• And in other news, Stephen Colbert’s bridge in Hungary looks like it isn’t going to happen, despite his large margin of victory in the online naming poll, due to the tiny problem of his failing to meet one of the qualifications – being dead. Whoops! (By the way, Budapest rocks!)

Okay, I think that about does it for the ten-second catch-up. Or, as the BUZZ puts it, some “temporary relief from ignorance”.

The explosion, some 50-100 metres from the gold-domed Shi’ite shrine of Kufa, tore through the van shortly after it had pulled out of the busy market with a group of labourers.

“A man driving a Kia van with an Iraqi accent came and said: ‘I need labourers’. After the labourers got on and packed the vehicle he exploded the car,” said witness Nasir Faisal.

Pretty horrific way to jump up and down and scream “hey, look at me!”.

We can’t be naive and assume that the mere fact that today’s election took place means that democracy will take firm root in Iraq. But it’s a beginning. Baby steps.

Gunmen killed a second defense lawyer acting in Saddam Hussein’s trial on Tuesday, renewing questions over whether the former president can get a fair trial amid Iraq’s daily violence.

Another defense lawyer was slightly wounded in the attack on their car in Baghdad, police and defense team sources said.

The shooting followed the murder of another defense lawyer who was shot the day after the televised start of proceedings on October 19.

Meanwhile in Germany, it turns out that Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel’s lawyer was disbarred and jailed for – what else? – inciting racial hatred:

Judge Ulrich Meinerzhagen ruled that Horst Mahler, a disbarred lawyer associated with the violent far-left Red Army Faction in the 1970s who has since become a supporter of far-right and anti-Semitic ideas, could not be part of the defense team.

He also dismissed Zuendel’s publicly appointed defender Sylvia Stolz on the grounds that Mahler’s ideas were reflected in her written submissions to the court.

Mahler, whose license to practice as a lawyer was withdrawn last year, was sentenced to nine months in prison in January for inciting racial hatred.

One of the cornerstones of a free and fair justice system is the right of everyone – including the most despicable excuses for human beings – to a fair trial and to a competent defense.

Now, Zundel made the decision himself to hire an incompetent defense lawyer, and his trial will surely continue once he has secured new representation. Germany’s legal system has provisions for this, and Zundel will be tried – and likely convicted and punished appropriately.

But Iraq is not Germany, and the notion of an impartial judiciary there is extremely shaky. Saddam’s trial was never going to be anything other than a political circus – but it was also supposed to have important symbolism to the people of Iraq that a judicial system can work. Unfortunately, that’s not working out so well.

Iraqis vote on their constitution tomorrow, as they struggle to implement democracy despite increasing attacks and sabotage.

And, with rookie Yann Danis in nets for the first time, the Habs shut out Carolina on Wednesday. Next, they’ll take on the Leafs at home… and I’ll be happily cheering them on from the reds!

Have a good weekend, everyone.

A suicide car bomber blew himself up outside a Shi’ite mosque north of Baghdad on Friday, killing 11 and wounding 24, the latest attack in a three-day surge of violence that has killed more than 200 people.

The blast came two days after Iraq’s al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared an all-out war on the country’s Shi’ite Muslim majority.

Iraqi police Captain Saed Ahmed said the bomb went off outside the Great Prophet mosque in Tuz Khurmatu, a mixed Sunni and Shi’ite town 160 km (100 miles) north of the capital, as worshippers were emerging from prayers on the Muslim holy day.

He said a Saudi wearing an explosives-laden belt, who was apparently working with the bomber, was arrested soon after.

Militants have frequently attacked Shi’ite mosques over the past 18 months in an apparent attempt to goad Iraq’s Shi’ite majority into retaliation and spark a sectarian civil war with the Sunni Arab minority, once dominant under Saddam Hussein.

The mass hysteria caused at the mere suggestion that a Jewish person dares to even set foot near a Muslim holy spot is enough to cause war. And yet, the terrorists frequently stockpile weapons in mosques, attack mosques of their enemies, and destory holy places belonging to pretty much every religion. Why is it that nobody even blinked at the torching of synagogues in former Gaza settlements by Palestinians… and yet could you even fathom the world’s outcry if a Jewish person so much as dropped a speck of dirt in a mosque?

An Iraqi bomb attack killed 98 people. We barely even blink anymore with the news of terrorist attacks in Iraq – maybe because they’re so commonplace, maybe because people assume it’s a country at war so for some reason these things are expected, maybe because some people even tacitly support them in their intense hatred for Bush and the Americans. I don’t know about any of that, but I do know that the 98 lives that were lost are just as tragic as 98 lives lost anyplace else, and that we need to stop taking terror for granted in Iraq.

In “what truce?”, part one zillion, five Israelis were wounded – 2 seriously – in mortar attacks on Neveh Dekalim, and the weekend saw over 10 Qassam rockets fired on Sderot. It is unclear which of the Palestinian factions is behind the attacks, though Hamas appears to be involved in the former. You know, the same Hamas that the Guardian thinks ain’t so bad despite its mandate to seek Israel’s destruction.

And the new Harry Potter book was released yesterday, to the delight of fans everywhere. I’ll wait to borrow someone’s copy, and hopefully nobody will spoil it for me before then.

Foreign ministers of Muslim countries on Thursday pledged cooperation with Iraqi authorities to help end a bloody insurgency waged there by Iraqis and foreign Arabs.

Ministers of member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Yemen agreed to help “rebuild Iraq and enabling the Iraqi government to maintain security and stability,” Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told reporters.

I don’t know, maybe because of this?

Strategy Page tracks about sixteen wars in the world today. Guess how many involve Muslim states?

We track sixteen as active (Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Sudan, Colombia, Kashmir, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Congo, Somalia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Chechnya, Burundi and Thailand.), plus about a dozen that are really low level, just ended (and still liable to restart) or just dormant for the moment.

Yep, the Muslim states are clearly the experts on ending war and restoring calm.

Amnesty singles out the United States for shirking its responsibility to set a better global example for human rights protection.

“The U.S.A., as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide,” said Secretary General Irene Khan in the foreword to Amnesty’s annual report.

The report calls the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay — which holds some 540 prisoners from about 40 countries — “the gulag of our times.” Detainees were being held there, some for more than three years, without access to legal representation.

Pictures of abuse of Iraqi detainees at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison are also cited in the report. Amnesty says the photos were never adequately investigated.

“When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity,” said Khan.

The report talks about violations by the worst offenders, including North Korea, Zimbabwe and China. But these are mentioned in the same breath as free, democratic countries like the United States and Australia… and of course, Israel.

Amnesty claims that human rights should be universal, and the same standards ought to apply to everyone. Its mission states clearly that:

AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

Sure, equal and consistent standards, right? Except when they’re countries they dislike, such as the U.S. and Israel. Then, the standards are different.

Anyone who can call Guantanamo Bay the “gulag of our times” with a straight face, while essentially ignoring the true gulags of our times in places like North Korea, has squandered all credibility. Amnesty International lost theirs a long time ago.

Update: As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lynn has more on Amnesty’s seemingly incurable obsession with targeting Israel.

Twin suicide car bombs killed at least 15 people during the morning rush hour in central Baghdad on Thursday, cutting short what had appeared to be a lull in violence since elections in January.

[ . . . ]

The blasts came a day after a series of explosions around the country that killed 15 people. Together they constitute one of the deadliest spates of guerrilla activity in six weeks.

The attacks would appear to mark a new surge in the violence that has been so common over the past two years in Iraq but which seemed to have subsided since the elections.

Democracy takes enormous effort, time and patience to build – and sadly, precious little effort to destroy. But I still believe that most of the people in Iraq want feedom. They showed up at the polls en masse in January to prove that, and now they will have to face down adversity to continue proving it every single day.

An immigration board ruled that Jeremy Hinzman had not convinced its members he would face persecution or cruel and unusual punishment if returned to the United States.

Seven other American military personnel have applied for refugee status, and Hinzman’s lawyer estimated dozens of others are in hiding in Canada waiting to see how the government ruled.

I can understand fleeing a draft when you don’t support a war. But if you volunteer for the army, then that’s a whole different ball game.

I don’t bear Hinzman any ill will. If he goes to Iraq, I hope no harm befalls him or any other American soldier. If he chooses to object, he can serve his sentence for desertion. But the US army isn’t just an education finance program, and Hinzman should have understood that and known the risks when he signed up. And it’s refreshing to see Canada recognize this instead of revert to our typical “Bush is wrong and America sucks” attitude.

But stories about children still have the capacity to jolt even the most cynical among us. And today, 34 children are dead, because extremists are so opposed to progress, that they will pay any price to stop it:

Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children, and wounding scores.

In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a U.S. checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a U.S. soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq (news – web sites) town of Tal Afar.

The Baghdad blasts coincided with crowds gathering to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. It was not clear if the event or a U.S. convoy passing nearby was the target.

The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to the aid of the initial victims.

All these tactics – the follow-up bombing targeting the people rushing to help, the use of children as political weapons – have all been practiced and fine-tuned for years by the Palestinians in their ultimate testing ground, Israel. Israelis reading this today probably see it as nothing new. After all, they’ve been dealing with attacks like these for years, against the “Little Satan”. Now that the terror tactics have been perfected, the “Great Satan” is of course the new target.

The terrorists (I refuse to whitewash them as “insurgents”) in Iraq are not legitimate protestors of an occupation that is arguably very wrong. They are not innocent victims. They are opponents of freedom. They sense a power vaccum with Saddam’s Baathist regime gone, and they aim to fill it with their brand of extremist fundamentalism. To do that, they have to be able to point to a massive American failure in Iraq. And to point to a failure, they must create the failure… through bombings, kidnappings, and the like. It wasn’t an accident that today’s attack was carried out at the celebration of a new sewage system. It was a strong message that even the tiniest baby steps towards rebuilding and progress will be attacked.

The mistake that the US made in Iraq was not in pegging the Baathists as “bad guys”. No, it’s the mistake that the US has made in countless other situations: viewing the world in terms of “good guys” against “bad guys”. Not recognizing that, all too often, the reality is “bad guys” against “other bad guys”… sometimes briefly teaming up against a third or fourth set of “bad guys” but rarely uniting, except in hatred against Israel and America.

In the meantime, more innocent civilians continue to die, because the terrorists would prefer to see them all dead than free.

Just another typical day.

As the link requires registration, I’ll post the beginning. But you owe it to yourselves to read the rest.

More than 100 schoolchildren in southern Russia are seized at gunpoint on the first day back from summer holidays. Teachers and parents die trying to protect them.

Eleven Nepalese workers in Iraq are lined up and shot in cold blood. A 12th is beheaded, purely for show.

Sixteen bus passengers in southern Israel are blasted to death by suicide bombers. Explosions at a Moscow subway station kill 10 workers. Another 90 lives are lost when terrorists force two Russian passenger jets from the skies.

In almost any other time in modern history, a week of atrocities such as this would have stunned the world.

Yet, today, as the third anniversary of September 11 approaches, it is no longer a shock to see Islamist extremists carrying out these depraved assaults. Many thousands of innocent civilians have already died. Sadly, there will probably be many thousands more.

But maybe, just maybe, the excruciating horror of watching seven-year-olds monstered by fanatics with bombs strapped to their bodies will prompt more people in free societies to grapple with the true awfulness of this phenomenon – and to confront the reality that muddling through with the old verities of international diplomacy is no answer to the threat.

There weren’t terrorists in Iraq under Saddam, but there are now under the American occupation.

No terrorists in Iraq under Saddam? Really now? What would you call Saddam’s sons? Saddam himself? Or perhaps systematically gassing his entire Kurdish population doesn’t count as terrorism.

Well, I guess Macdonald is just being a typical Canadian in his dislike for Bush, and is letting that dislike affect his thinking.

South Korea will go ahead with its plan to send 3,000 troops to help rebuild Iraq despite a threat from Iraqi militants to behead a South Korean hostage, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

[ . . . ]

The group holding [33-year-old businessman Kim Sun-il] said South Korea had 24 hours from Sunday night to withdraw its decision or they would behead him, Arabic television station Al Jazeera reported.

“I am telling you that there will be no change to our government’s basic spirit and position — our plan to send troops to Iraq is for the support and reconstruction of Iraq,” Choi said.

[ . . . ]

“If we accept the terrorists’ demand this time, the terrorists will continue threatening the world,” he said.

South Korea knows a thing or two about tyrannies. Their next-door neighbour has taught them well. Still, who woulda thought that the country that has shown so little spine lately in dealing with their Northern counterparts would stand so firm on their Iraq commitment?

Visiting the scene of the blast, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi vowed his people would prevail in the face of mounting violence before the June 30 political handover from the United States.

“This is an escalation that we have been expecting,” Allawi said. “The government of Iraq is determined to confront the enemies.”

By the day, the world is losing confidence that this will happen. And as June 30th gets closer, things are only likely to get worse instead of better.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is refusing to negotiate with Al Qua’eda for the release of kidnapped American engineer Paul Marshal Johnson:

Al Qaeda has given the government until Friday to release jailed militants or it will execute engineer Paul Marshal Johnson, who was kidnapped last week. Saudi official sources have said the kingdom would not give in to al Qaeda’s demands.

[ . . . ]

De facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, showing no sign of compromise, has said the kingdom would deploy more forces and strike soon against Saudi-born Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

Washington said it would use every appropriate resource to gain Johnson’s release but would make no concessions to his captors.

For terrorism to succeed, governments must negotiate with it. The Saudi government knows better – not because it is a bastion of democracy or enlightenment, but because it knows that giving into even a small demand would only ensure more attacks. Contrast this reaction to how the Canadian government dealt with the kidnapping of our citizens, notably Fadi Fadel.

Iran is not fully cooperating with U.N. inspectors and must come clean about the full extent of its nuclear program within months, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday.

Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran’s cooperation has been “less than satisfactory” and warned that the process of clarifying unresolved issues — particularly over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities — could not be allowed to drag on for ever.

I’m sure I’m not the only one hit with a sense of deja vu. Though if I were the type to gamble, I’d bet that the situation in Iran will never come to what has transpired in Iraq. The two are vastly different, and while Bush had grouped them under his “Axis of Evil” umbrella, it’s still like comparing apples to oranges.

However, ElBaradei would also do well to remember that his weapons inspections teams lost all credibility when they failed in Iraq. Countries like Iran might feel more comfortable flouting them now, knowing that the U.N. will not do anything beyond shaking a fist at a country’s failure to cooperate.

And of course, the worst-case scenario is that Iran is far ahead of anyone’s expectations in terms of development of nuclear weaponry. That would truly be catastrophic, because if the U.N. allows this lack of cooperation to drag for months, then a militant Islamist regime would have acquired nuclear capability, and does anyone have any doubts as to who the first victims would be?

Far more likely, of course, is that Iran is simply flouting the process to prove a point. In any case, the U.N. and most of the world demonstrated pretty clearly that they won’t do anything to countries who flout the inspections. That leaves us in a dangerous place. Iraq’s WMDs were nowhere to be found, so the United States ended up looking foolish. But remember the story of the boy who cried wolf: what happens when there really is a threat?

The angles are many. The fact that Berg was Jewish and the fact that the mainstream media is burying that. The media’s fascination with gore and the almost exclusive focus on one man’s death while major horror stories are ignored. The reaction in the street and press of the Arab world, and the reaction in our own press and street. But I think the most significant part of this story was how Berg’s family rushed to blame Bush for his death, and how the wingnuts like Indymedia immediately jumped on the story:

The Chomsky types, perhaps feeling a nagging sense of latent guilt, could not wait to make it clear to everyone how horrified they were by the whole scene. However, their hatred is not motivated by a disgust of the hideous practice, nor the brutality of our Islamist enemy; it stems from the fact that the terrorists’ action makes it harder for the Left to place the blame for Berg’s death “where it belongs”: on the United States of America.

It can’t be too difficult to understand why a grieving family might lash out. For them I have little else other than sympathy. But for the conspiracy theorists who tried to make it seem as though the American administration, and not sadistic terrorists, were responsible for this gory act, my sympathy doesn’t extend quite that far. I have a very different reaction to them… one more characterized by contempt than by sympathy of any kind. It’s not such a stretch to see why the whole world thinks that “Bush is worse than Saddam”, with this kind of moral-equivalency nonsense floating around.

Update: As usual, Damian Penny put my thoughts into much better words than I could.

I’m hearing all sorts of disturbing things. That there are “two sides”. That it wasn’t an official American government policy, while torturing innocent civilians was an official Iraqi government policy. That most of the countries condemning the United States do far worse in their own prisons, and are just using this as another propaganda tool. Etcetera.

All of that may be true. But it doesn’t mitigate or excuse what happened, nor should it.

Excuses are unacceptable when they’re offered up by the enemy. We refuse to accept the Palestinian finger-pointing at the IDF every time there’s a terrorist attack, or the world’s babbling about “root causes” for suicide bombings in Iraq or Al Qa’eda terrorist attacks. We want sincere apologies without excuses. And even though we won’t get them, we keep demanding them.

So when the United States screws up, I don’t want to hear any nonsense like “yes, but…”. No buts. No excuses. Just outrage, apologies, and steps to fix it.

We have to hold ourselves to higher standards. Our “side” of the War on Terror must practice the ideals we preach. Otherwise, what the hell are we even doing?

“They just blew up innocent Iraqis,” Bush told reporters in Washington after the almost simultaneous car bombs hit three police stations in Basra and two more struck a police academy in Zubair, a mainly Sunni town 15 miles further south.

No excuses about occupation can justify the murder of innocent children. This is disgusting.

Also today, another suspected Al Qa’eda attack – this one in Riyadh:

A suspected al Qaeda suicide car bomber destroyed a security forces building in the Saudi capital Wednesday, killing four people and wounding 148 in the first major attack on a government target.

The attacks are happening because Al Qa’eda is fighting a war that the world seems determined to deny exists. You can’t negotiate with a group whose only acceptable endgame is having you and your entire way of life eradicated. They’re not attacking the “occupation” of Iraq or the U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia; they’re attacking the potential for democracy in the Middle East. They’re scared as hell that democracy might take root or even become a success someplace in the Arab world. And they’re determined to do everything and anything to stop it.

Israel’s security fence is doing a good interim job of cutting down on attacks within its borders. But we can’t build a wall around the entire world. No, sooner or later this war will need to be fought and won.

Thirty-three-year-old Fadi Fadel was kidnapped 10 days ago, leaving his Montreal-based family fearing for his life. A Reuters report earlier Friday said that he had been assaulted but Arab television footage showed him ecstatic and displaying no visible injuries.

The Syrian-born Canadian citizen was not released as quickly as some of the other kidnapped aid workers, probably because his captors “accused” him of being Jewish, Israeli, or even an Israeli Mossad agent. (Apparently to the Islamists, they’re all equivalent accusations).

Fadal’s parents, family, and the Canadian government spent a lot of time denying these “accusations”. And precious little time saying anything about the fact that “Jew” and “Israeli” aren’t dirty words. Perhaps that’s understandable, as their goal was to secure Fadal’s release. But it leaves an icky feeling in the taste of my mouth. Perhaps the Canadian government didn’t directly negotiate with the terrorists… but they sure played their game. If we spend a lot of time saying “release him, he’s not Jewish”, then isn’t that almost like saying that it’s okay to kidnap Jews?

A case of mistaken identity might be delaying the release of Fadi Fadel, a Canadian aid worker held hostage in Iraq, his brother said Monday.

Ghayas Fadel said Arab television is reporting the aid worker is an Israeli agent, which would make him a valuable target for insurgents. “(The tape) shows him giving a different name and saying he’s Israeli and this is what we’ve been trying to correct,” Fadel said in an interview from the family home near Montreal.

“He has never been to Israel and has never had any contact with any Israeli organization.”

It has not been established why Fadi Fadel would have said such a thing.

Ghayas Fadel said the Canadian ambassador in Jordan will help to confirm his brother’s real identity at a news conference in Amman on Tuesday.

Fadi Fadel, a Syrian-born Canadian, was kidnapped by local militia in southern Iraq last Wednesday while working for the New York City-based International Rescue Committee.

The real story isn’t why the Iraqis would force Fadel to claim to be an Israeli agent. That one’s obvious, and a pretty standard tactic in the Middle East, where a simple suggestion that someone is Jewish or in some way connected to Israel is enough to make them out to be the devil incarnate. It’s a convenient way of erasing any sympathy that the public in the Mideast might have had for Fadel.

No, the real story is the Canadian reaction… and how eager Canadian authorities are to state over and over again that Fadel has nothing to do with Israel, that this is false. It’s almost as though they’re validating the Iraqi rebel group’s demonization of Israel.

As Canada negotiates for Fadal’s release, I of course hope he makes it safely and unharmed. No humanitarian worker deserves this fate.

But at the same time, I almost wish that Canada was reacting more like the USA or Japan for their policies: “We will not negotiate with terrorists”.

Kidnapping of aid workers is a form of terrorism. Allowing it to succeed means ensuring it will repeat.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard such moral clarity from Canada.

Having borne the brunt of anti-American sentiment during their last visit to Canada, a peewee hockey team from Massachusetts is back again. And this time, they are being welcomed with open arms.

When the Brockton Boxers were in Quebec for a hockey tournament last March, fans upset by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq let them know how they felt.

As they took to the ice in Montreal one day after U.S. troops rolled into Iraq, the 12- and 13-year-olds were lambasted with anti-American jeering.

The Brockton Boxers’ Jon Spano remembers the events well.

“There were protesters and everything… and we had to get escorted off the bus… because there was so many of them,” he told CTV Atlantic affiliate, ATV News.

“Then they burnt our flag and they booed the national anthem and all that stuff.”

Nice. Real nice.

At least the New Brunswick hosts seem to have caught on that these are kids, not international terrorists:

When their bus arrived, a welcoming committee of local pewee players was on hand, banging their sticks in welcome.

What a shame that the Montreal hosts couldn’t figure that out last year.

A U.S.-born teenager carrying a U.S. flag in a multiculturalism parade was booed off stage and reduced to tears by fellow students at Wagar High School on Thursday, in an apparent protest against the Iraq war.

[ . . . ]

A parade of flags representing every nationality at the school – 39, this year – is an annual event at Wagar, the most ethnically diverse high school in the English Montreal School Board.

“During the parade, when the American flag (was) walked by, quite a large number of students booed, which was very upsetting to the student carrying the flag,” said Juanita Meikle, a parent who is chairperson of Wagar’s governing board.

The girl, a Grade 9 student, “was very upset. She was crying,” Meikle said.

No other flag was jeered.

Knee-jerk anti-Americanism is something that’s about as much a part of being a Canadian as street hockey. Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning educators encourage it. And lately, most of them haven’t been all that “well-meaning”.

With teachers ranting in classrooms about the evil American government and policies, the infringement of American culture on our own “wonderful” CBC, the exploitation of the rest of the world by America… small wonder students are booing the Stars and Stripes.

People don’t just come to believe something on their own. They need to be taught. I really hope that the teachers and administrators at Wager don’t just criticize the students, but take a long hard look at themselves. If we’re going to stamp out intolerance, that includes all forms of intolerance… including anti-Americanism.

Coincidence?

The terrorists got what they wanted. They won.

And now the U.S. will have one less ally. One less country to count on the war against terrorism. They’ll pull out of Iraq and it won’t be long before they pull out of fighting the terrorists all together. Appeasement is the new black.

Welcome to the new age of al-Qaid and radical Islam on the whole, built on the deaths of 200 people. They’ve been emboldened by the Spanish left. They’ve been told that terrorism works, terrorism gets results.

Iraq’s foreign minister accused the United Nations on Tuesday of failing his country by leaving Saddam Hussein in power for decades and appealed to the world body to assume a leading role in Baghdad immediately.

[ . . . ]

Zebari said the United Nations had failed to help rescue Iraq from “a murderous tyranny” that lasted more than 35 years and “today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.”

“The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again,” Zebari said.

[ . . . ]

Zebari accused the 15-member Security Council of being divided “between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable” and said they should overcome the deep divisions over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

[ . . . ]

Appealing for unity in the council, Zebari said “settling scores with the United States should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people.”

Annan said Saddam’s downfall was “an opportunity for a new beginning in the vital task of helping Iraqis to take control of their destiny — of helping them to create a secure, stable and independent Iraq.”

Of course, anti-Americans will dismiss everything Zebari says on the grounds that he’s part of a US-installed government and therefore his opinion shouldn’t count. But then, the anti-Americans have a long history of ignoring the actual thoughts and opinions of people who live in a country, in favour of what they believe is in their best interest. That kind of supremicist “they don’t know what’s good for them, we do” attitude is something I was under the impression was against liberal beliefs… but then, tell that to the guy chanting the anti-Bush slogan and trying to pretend that Iraqis would be better off still under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.

Thus, according to the Goodists, the great global challenges are poverty, hunger, disease and war. This may be true in the most general sense. But it sidesteps the hard fact that the real culprits are the foolish and sometimes ill-intentioned leaders whose policies lead to such things. Goodists would also contend that the real goal for nations at war is moral victory — if necessary, by means of surrender — rather than victory itself.

This is why the Goodists make a fetish of the concept of legitimacy. To liberate Iraq or not to liberate Iraq? About the only thing interesting about that debate was that so many “good” people actually believed that securing Security Council approval was morally a worthier goal than liberating 23 million people from the boot of a merciless tyrant. Or take the matter of Israel’s security fence: Here again, it is left to Right-wingers to fret about militarily defensible borders, whereas to Goodists what matters is whether that fence meets with the approval of The Hague.

There’s lots more.

For many ordinary Palestinians, the TV footage of a disheveled Saddam obediently submitting to a medical exam by his U.S. captors was painful to watch: it sealed the defeat of the one Arab leader they felt always stood by them.

Saddam should have put up a fight or committed suicide, they said, and his surrender is a stain on Arab honor. “It is a big defeat for all Arabs and Muslims,” said Raji Hassan, 29, watching TV with friends in a Gaza City coffee shop.

It’s tempting to write this off as the reaction of a people opposed to freedom in any form. But if the Bush administration is smart, they won’t ignore the reaction of the Palestinians… because an awful lot of the Arab world has the same kind of mixed feelings: they hate Saddam but they hate “outsiders” and particularly the US a lot more.

They got Saddam. They won the war. Now the peace must be won, and it’s a long hard road ahead.

US military forces caught the Ace of Spades yesterday, hiding in a foxhole under a farmhouse, “like a rat in a hole”.

“The former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions,” President Bush said in a short televised address from the White House. “For the Baathist holdouts responsible for the violence, there will be no return to the corrupt power and privilege they once held.

“This afternoon I have a message for the Iraqi people: This is further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever. You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again.”

Iraqis are celebrating in the streets. The German and French leadership is “congratulating” US forces for Saddam’s capture. There’s a spirit of optimism in the air that hasn’t been seen since April 9th, 2003.

Of course, everyone – including Bush – knows that this optimism is temporary. They’ve got Saddam, they’ll put him on trial and bring him to “justice”… but Iraq isn’t going to emerge as a free, peaceful democracy overnight.

What this does present is a window of opportunity for the US to internationalize the rebuilding efforts. (And it also gives Bush’s election campaign a big boost… but that’s another story.) So we’ll have to wait and see what the Bush administration chooses to do with this.

So even though tons has happened this week, I have no intention of recapping all of it – heck, I probably don’t even know about most of it. So please refrain from the irate comments about my failure to mention such-and-such, k? Thanks a bunch.

I did catch a few interesting headlines, this week, though, and made somewhat fuzzy mental notes to blog them later. Israel marked Rosh Hashanah with the senseless murders of two people, including a 7-month old baby, by Islamic Jihad terrorists. The Palestinians have assembled a new Arafat puppet cabinet that is sure to make zero progress towards eradication of terrorism. Nigerian Amina Lawal, who faced death by stoning on charges of adultery and became an international symbol of oppression of women, was cleared.

Bush and Blair came out singing No Regrets about the war on Iraq, (though I don’t think to the same tune as Tom Cochrane). Speaking of musical legends, singer Robert Palmer passed away of a heart attack.

Closer to home, a local private French high school put in its bid for a stupid discriminatory act of the week award by expelling a Muslim girl for wearing a hijab. The Alouettes clinched first place in the East. And the Hell’s Angels mega-trial ended with a bunch of guilty pleas.

Onto next week.

“This incident today once again underlines that Iraq remains a war zone and a high risk environment, particularly for those working to improve the lives of the Iraqi people,” Kevin Kennedy, the senior U.N. official in Baghdad, said in a statement read out by Paradela at the scene.

Paradela said U.N. staff did not know why they were being targeted. “It’s not really for lack of security that this happens,” she said. “If people are willing to kill themselves there’s not a lot we can do.”

After the last attack, the general consensus was that the UN was targeted because it was a “softer” target than the American military bases. But now, the bombings almost seem calculated to deter the UN from getting drawn into an expanded role in Iraq, as the US has been encouraging it to do. Even if that wasn’t the intention, it may very well be the result.

A massive car bomb exploded at the Imam Ali mosque during Friday prayers in this holy city, killing 75 people, including one of Iraq’s most important Shiite clerics.

Dozens were injured in the blast, which dug a crater more than one metre deep in the street in front of the mosque and destroyed nearby shops, where people pulled the dead and injured from the rubble.

Among the dead was Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who had just delivered a sermon calling for Iraqi unity at the shrine, the holiest in Iraq.

And besides al-Hakim, how many of the victims of the bombing will ever be named by an international media more concerned with analyzing the political implications than with the fact that there are 75 people dead?

These captures are far more than symbolic. To the Iraqi population, each is reassurance that the Ba’ath regime won’t be coming back . . . and hopefully each arrest of one of the “most wanted” people will help them have more confidence in their future.

Logic would dictate that the Saddam-loyalist factions still active in Iraq would want to direct their anger at the Americans, not at the United Nations. So this, of course, begs the question of who was responsible for today’s attack? And why? After all, the U.N.’s role in Iraq has been humanitarian, not military.

Was the HQ attacked because it was a “soft target”? Because it was a way to attack foreigners? Was the attack by a group angry with the U.N.’s resistance to Iraqi intervention? (That last seems highly unlikely). Was it all a big mistake?

Details may emerge in the coming days that clarify it . . . but don’t count on it. Iraq is in a state of mess right now, and it will probably take some time to get all the threads sorted out.

Tensions between Iraq and Jordan have been high since Jordan’s support for the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Brahimi said some Iraqi newspapers had been critical of Jordan but the precise motives for the attack were unclear.

Jordan is a major entry point into Iraq and remains a large trading partner. But some Iraqis are resentful that Jordan dropped its support for Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, and allowed U.S. troops to use its soil as a base during the latest war.

Jordan, for its part, has been desperately trying to balance itself on its fence-sitting act: gain credibility in the West by creating a lasting peace with Israel and supporting the U.S., while at the same time hold credibility in the middle east by paying lip service to Saddam, offering asylum to his relatives, and channeling the frustrations of its population (including a large Palestinian minority) through riots and rallies in support of suicide bombings and Saddam’s old regime.

Is this another morally-corrupt “root cause” argument that I’m drawing here? Probably. Jordan has always been juggling too many balls in the air, and so far has managed not to drop too many. And I don’t think that Jordan deserved to have its embassy bombed. Likely, the bombing was the work of an extremist rebel group in a still largely-lawless Iraq.

As for the situation in Iraq, I have a hunch it’s going better than the daily dose of woe dished up by the media might lead us to believe. According to the media, Iraq is Vietnam, with an all-out guerrilla war, a hostile local population, anarchy in the streets, and American troops who are ready to frag the brass.

But hey, the media’s job is to report what went wrong yesterday. Bad news is good, and good news isn’t news. Anything that shows imperialist America screwing up is good. Anything that vindicates imperialist America isn’t newsworthy.

[ . . . ]

Don’t get me wrong. Iraq will be a three-Excedrin headache for a long time to come. Maybe it will all blow up. But please allow me a tiny scrap of optimism. It could be going a whole lot worse. And it’s probably going a whole lot better than you’d think if you watched the news.

“What I felt was disappointing about a lot of Canadian opposition to the war was that very few people seemed to give a damn about the human-rights situation,” Ignatieff says. “Very few seemed to care that peace had the consequence of leaving 26 million people inside a really odious tyranny.”

Ignatieff also has some choice words about the UN, the organization to which his father was Canada’s ambassador:

“Touring Canada, what bothered me was that the only legitimacy that mattered to most of the audiences was the legal legitimacy of the UN,” he says. “Well, the UN screwed up in Rwanda, it screwed up in Bosnia — it screws up most of the time.” In a seminar for Kennedy School staff on his Iraq position, Ignatieff was even more blunt: “The United Nations is a messy, wasteful, log-rolling organization.”

An interesting read.

The game of “what if” can be endless and pointless but it can also be fun. So I was thinking about what might have happened if the outcome of the 2000 election was different. What if the whole Florida ballot scandal never happened and Al Gore was voted into office in 2000?

In light of the events of the past few years, a lot of people might think that this would have been the worst possible thing for the US. But I’m not so sure. Because September 11th, 2001 would have happened no matter who was in the White House. Clearly, the US government had to strike back. Republican or Democrat, no US president could have reacted otherwise to an attack on American soil. The speeches might have been worded differently, but ultimately the reaction against Al Qua’eda and against the Taliban would have been military, just as it was – swift and decisive.

Where the difference might have come in is in events since. Oh sure, you could argue that a Democratic government might not have attacked Iraq. There’s no way to really know but I somehow doubt that’s the case. Faced with the same situation, the same set of facts, and the same military procedures, I have a feeling any government would have come to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein needed toppling. The world is a different place than it was in 2000.

So then what? Right now we have a polarized US – indeed, a polarized world. Bush is, to all but his supporters, only about a step worse than the devil incarnate. The decisions of his government are easily attacked and dismissed as hawkish, right-wing, gun-slinging Texas cowboy acts, when in truth Bush is merely acting on the advice of the experts 99% of the time. But as a Republican, he’s an easy target.

But a Democrat making those kinds of decisions? Well, he’d be a bit tougher to attack, wouldn’t he? For one thing, there would probably be a lot of money directed to CYA reports on politically-correct issues to try to appease the naysayers. For another thing, where would the Left go, after abandoning Gore? To the Republicans?

Ironically, it would probably have been a lot easier for Gore to get United Nations support and backing than it was for Bush. And as a result, the anti-American sentiment that is so heightened right now in Europe and around the world might not be nearly as prominent. It’s one of the paradoxes of politics, that a dovish leader has an easier time making war, just as a hawkish leader has an easier time making peace.

Is this what would have happened if a few hundred ballots in Florida were counted differently in 2000? Short of inventing a time machine and changing the past, we obviously can’t know. There are too many variables. But with the next election coming up in a little over a year, it makes interesting food for thought.

When I, a proud American of Arab decent and Muslim faith, took a stand on behalf of the liberation of my oppressed Iraqi brethren, the ASU Muslim Students’ Association personally attacked me for not being a real Muslim and announced to the ASU student body in editorials in the student paper that I Oubai Mohammad Shahbandar was a hater of Arabs and Muslims. There was no press conference by the president of this university or anyone else in his administration in behalf of this Muslim victim of Islamist hate.

We didn’t land on terror, terror landed on us. But our professors tell us America is to blame, our universities sponsor “educational” programs designed to install in the American student a sense of shame for being American, and yet here we are on the cusp of a great struggle in human history between the forces of decency and democracy and tyranny and terror. Yet we are told America is to blame for terror.

[ . . . ]

This August I will be heading to Israel to study counter terrorism under a program hosted by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy. I, a Muslim Arab was able to attend this program largely due to the gracious sponsorship of David Horowitz, a Jew. No multicultural sensitivity class made that possible. I will not stand idly by as our professors and our universities pave the road for terror’s long march into humanity’s last sanctuary of freedom.

What contribution will you make to the cause of liberty, to our nation’s security?

I am a Muslim American Arab and I am willing to fight for my country. How about you?

Yes, go read the rest.

Uncooperative prisoners are being exposed for prolonged periods to tracks by rock group Metallica and music from children’s TV programmes Sesame Street and Barney in the hope of making them talk.

[ . . . ]

“They can’t take it. If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken. That’s when we come in and talk to them.”

Well I grew up on Sesame Street and don’t see any lasting effects – er – wait a second . . .

Barney, however, is definately torture. No question.

Brent Dobson, a 19-year-old Army private who was reunited with his loved ones on May 8 after a harrowing two-week ordeal as a prisoner of war in Iraq, is already “sick to death” of his family, Dobson reported Monday.

“As I paced that 6×9 cell, with nothing but crumbs to eat, contaminated water to drink, and a broken piece of crockery to piss in, the thing that kept me going was thoughts of my family back home,” said Dobson, pacing his 10×11 bedroom in his parents’ home. “Well, after four days in this place, Iraq isn’t looking quite so bad.”

Added Dobson: “God, is my mom annoying.”

A U.S. officer at the scene, Lt. Col. Eric Nantz, said the bloodshed occurred after people in the crowd fired into the air, making it hard to tell if his men were under threat.

“There was a lot of celebratory firing … last night,” Nantz said, noting Monday was Saddam’s 66th birthday.

“There were a lot of people who were armed and who were throwing rocks. How is a U.S. soldier to tell the difference between a rock and a grenade?”

But when Israel is faced with real violence, in the form of actual shooting, any effort to defend itself is considered disproportionate use of force, right?

“We welcome the statement of President Bush and hope that this statement marks the beginning of a serious and constructive dialogue,” Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said on Monday. “We in Syria do not like argument … we are for dialogue.”

On Sunday, Bush said Damascus was “getting the message” that it should deny sanctuary to fleeing members of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s government, one of the issues that fueled tensions between Syria and the United States in recent weeks.

LGF had a very fitting cartoon by Cox & Forkum the other day on the subject. Now that the US has proven it is willing to back up words with actions, other countries are sitting up and taking notice.

U.S. Marines may have found weapons-grade plutonium in a massive underground facility discovered beneath Iraq’s Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex, an embedded reporter told Fox News Thursday.

[ . . . ]

So far, Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have found 14 buildings that have high levels of radiation, Prine reported Thursday.

His report noted that some of the tests have found nuclear residue too deadly for human contact.

The Marine radiation detectors go “off the charts” a few hundred meters outside the nuclear compound, where locals say “missile water” is stored in enormous caverns, reported Prine, who is embedded with the U.S. 1st Marine Division.

If this does turn out to be a nuclear weapons facility, then the situation was even worse than most people imagined. It was assumed that Saddam had an abundance of biological and chemical weapons, but nobody thought he was actually nearing nuclear capability (though not for lack of trying), since the Israelis destroyed the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Was this strike to outst Saddam just in time? (Via LGF).

“This is a sad day for all the Arabs and Muslims, particularly the Palestinians,” Nael al-Am, a Ramallah grocer who keeps a poster of Saddam Hussein in his shop, told the Jerusalem Post.

“I invested a lot of money in buying a satellite dish and a new TV set because I wanted to watch the day the battle for Baghdad begins. I was sure this was going to be one of the great battles of the century, where an Arab army would inflict heavy losses on the invading crusaders. I feel as if a dagger has been stuck in my heart when I see American soldiers strolling in the heart of Baghdad.”

This was hardly the jubilant scenes that were filmed yesterday in Baghdad. And no wonder. The Palestinians haven’t had to live under Saddam’s brutal rule. Instead, the Iraqi regime has been funding Palestinian terror against Israel. To most Palestinians, Saddam Hussein was a symbol of Muslim resistance against Americans. And watching him fall – especially after swallowing the big talk and lies from their local media telling them that Saddam’s victory was assured – was a brutal disappointment.

Anyone who thinks that something good is bound to come of this within Palestinian society is, unfortunately, delusional. To the Palestinians, this is yet one latest in a long string of letdowns from lofty promises that they believed from various leaders. Many saw Arafat as their path to peace, glory, and a Palestinian state on all of Israel’s territory. When that didn’t materialize, many turned to other leaders – such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad – all promising spoils. And these same people were cruelly misled by Saddam Hussein’s big talk of being able to defend Iraq and simultaneously help the Palestinian people fight Israel.

It’s a shame, because the Palestinian people deserve better. They deserve leaders who will tell them the truth, not lie to them while using them as pawns on a chessboard.

But [Chirac] said in a statement released by the Elysee Palace Thursday: “France, like every democracy, is rejoicing over the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and hopes for a quick and effective end to the battle.”

His foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, added: “With the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, a dark page has been turned.”

The French daily newspaper La Liberation focused on the causes of the war, saying: “The successful military campaign in Iraq can only reassure the powerful U.S. that its vision of the world must be the right one.

Everyone loves to hop on the bandwagon of a winner. The war ain’t over yet, but France certainly seems to be changing its tune.

I can’t help thinking of Churchill’s famous words in 1942 though: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” U.S. forces are warning us that the war isn’t over. And even after the guns and bombs stop, the toughest challenges still lie ahead.

Today was a good day, though, all in all.

“It is irrelevant whether Saddam is dead or not. His memory will live on to inspire many Arabs to stand up against all the injustices committed by the U.S. and its friends in Israel,” Belqees Hamood, a university student, said.

“Saddam was not an angel to his own people but he will be missed since many Arabs see him as a leader who was not afraid to challenge the American and Israeli aggressions over Palestinians,” said Juma Backer, a businessman.

[ . . . ]

“Saddam is a terrorist but he’s not alone. Bush too is a terrorist but Saddam is weak and Bush is strong. That’s why he has won, because no one opposes a strong person,” said the 33-year-old Saudi government employee.

“How wonderful the world would be without Saddam and without Bush!”

This moral equivalence between Bush and Saddam is nothing new. The anti-war crowd loves to shout similar slogans during their protests even here in North America.

But the disbelief and shock with which most of the Arab world is watching the destruction of Saddam’s regime is another story. It brings to mind Germany’s shock and disbelief at losing World War I in 1918. Both disappointments were the result of controlled media and highly-successful government propaganda. Until this week, I have no doubt that most of the Arab states – especially those without a free press – were convinced that Saddam could and would win!

This is perhaps the largest tragedy of all. Because it has much broader implications. People don’t form their opinions in a vacuum. They listen to the news and the information that they obtain, and all of that serves to influence the opinion of the “street”. It is a lot easier to understand why so much of the Arab world hates America and Israel when we realize that they’re being fed propaganda and false information every single day.

According to a poll in today’s National Post, 72% of Canadians think that we should at least have offered “verbal” support to the U.S.’s initiative in Iraq, and 31% think that we should be helping militarily too. Either way, these people think Canada’s name should be on the list of the Coalition of the Willing.

A large majority of Canadians — 72% — believe Canada should have supported the U.S. at the start of the war against Iraq, according to an exclusive National Post/Global News poll.

The COMPAS survey shows 41% of people believe Canada should have given verbal support to the United States two weeks ago while 31% said the backing should have come in the form of both words and troops.

Still, only a slim majority, 56%, agreed with the U.S. decision to launch an invasion to bring down Saddam Hussein, while 34% opposed the attack.

The ambiguity between these numbers can be explained by the fact that the status quo changed – there’s a difference between people who agree with the war, and people who think that we should support our allies anyway. Besides, 56% is still a significant majority over the 34% opposed. If this was 1995 and those were referendum results, the PQ would have long declared sovereignty, that’s how strong a majority that is.

Politicians have been quick to spin this, saying Canadians are reacting with fear that our largest trading partner will be angry. But that excuse hasn’t been supported by the poll results:

Asked to choose a reason for joining the war effort, 42% of people said it would be because Saddam and his allies are a threat to the West.

Toppling Saddam to stop Islamist terrorists was chosen as a reason by 15%, with 14% choosing “Americans are our friends.”

Only 13% cited the U.S.’s position as Canada’s biggest trading partner as the reason to support the war.

[ . . . ]

Opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq centred around a “pacifist inclination,” according to Conrad Winn, chief executive of COMPAS Inc.

The statement “all war is bad” was supported by 31% of the people who answered a question about reasons to oppose the war, while 40% said better diplomacy would have solved the problem.

The poll, not surprisingly, also showed a major difference between anglophone and francophone Canadians. 49% of anglos wanted Canada to show more support for the U.S., but only 14% of francophones felt that way.

“While we are disappointed that Canada did not join us and the other coalition members in liberating Iraq, now we must move forward and align ourselves once again in shared, creative efforts that serve the Iraqi people,” he said in a speech to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, host of the two-day summit.

I can’t imagine why Canada would turn down this eminently reasonable request. My questions are more about why the United States would offer it in the first place.

“We are of course agreed… that there will be a vital role for the United Nations in the reconstruction of Iraq,” Blair said after holding talks with Bush.

Bush used the same words, before spelling out their vision for the two remaining stages after U.S and British forces take administrative control in the immediate aftermath of war.

Analysts are saying that these promises are likely to anger many U.N. countries, especially in Europe, since Bush and Blair only see their role in a humanitarian capacity, as opposed to promising them the wider powers of administration and interim rule.

But shouldn’t they be happy about this? I mean, this lets them off the hook, doesn’t it? All that whining about “imperialism” and “colonialism” – surely they wouldn’t want to take part in what they find so distasteful. Most of Europe gladly let the U.S. and Britain do their dirty work for them so they could keep their hands clean. (Canada has been, too, but that’s besides the point). So why wouldn’t they want to stick to humanitarian aid, while letting the U.S. and Britain sort out the post-war politics and security? That way, U.S. could continue to be the convenient scapegoat it has been all along through this crisis.

Simply put, countries such as France and Belgium feel left out of the party. Before the war started they were absolutely opposed, but now that Chirac’s buddy Saddam shows absolutely no sign of being able to survive this thing, they’ve changed their colours. This isn’t exactly a surprise – everyone predicted it. And Bush and Blair are likely to go along with it at least somewhat in order to gain “legitimacy” in the eyes of the world, and to try to begin to heal the giant rift that has erupted within the United Nations.

“The danger which threatens the world is terrorism; nuclear terrorism, chemical and biological terrorism,” Elie Wiesel said at a news conference in which he acknowledged his views on the Iraqi conflict are paradoxical.

“I believe war is a blasphemy, but I’m not a pacifist. A pacifist is someone who would never bear arms. I would have fought against Hitler. That was a just war.

”The last just war probably was against Hitler. Since then we have had necessary wars, not just wars,” he said during the IMAGINE International Young Leadership Conference organized by ProMontreal and the United Israel Appeal Federations Canada.

Wiesel said he supports the current military intervention in Iraq because he believes the “reliable sources” in Washington and Israel who contend weapons of mass destruction are concealed in the ravaged country.

“If not for that, I wouldn’t support the coalition for intervention. I support the coalition. I am not for war,” said Wiesel whose efforts to avoid deadly conflict in the world’s hot spots have earned him wide recognition.

Wiesel, the celebrated author of books such as “Night”, “Dawn”, and “A Begger in Jerusalem”, Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who remembers all too well the effect that appeasement had on Europe during World War II. He also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He claims to hate war – all war – but concedes that it is sometimes necessary. And this, he says, is one of those times:

The United Nations tried to disarm Hussein but didn’t – or couldn’t – succeed, he said.

“I believe that if certain European countries had applied as much pressure to Saddam Hussein as to (U.S. President George) W. Bush, there wouldn’t have been a war,” he said.

This was a powerful message, coming from a highly respected man. And it is a message that is gaining recongnition in many circles.

”Canadians, friends of America – that is who we as Canadians are,” Eves told the crowd.

”Our American neighbours, our friends, our colleagues, our Allies have always supported us, they’ve protected us, they’ve helped us and they’ve stood by us and now we should be standing by them.”

Harper thanked the crowd for ”opening your hearts” and ‘’saying to our friends in the United States of America, you are our ally, our neighbour, and our best friend in the whole wide world.

”And when your brave men and women give their lives for freedom and democracy we are not neutral,” Harper said.

”We do not stand on the sidelines; we’re for the disarmament of Saddam and the liberation of the people of Iraq.”

Of course, the counter-protesters and hecklers showed up. And the crowd was likely smaller than anticipated due to a freezing-rain storm, and Toronto’s preoccupation with the outbreak of SARS.

Still, one can hope that this pro-US movement will gain some momentum. We’ll know it’s a true success when there’s a pro-US rally in Montreal (hah!).

Update: The Toronto Star has more, including a photo. And Friends of America, the organizer of the rally, has a link on its website to an online petition that Canadians can sign to show their support for the U.S.

Second update: See lots more pictures at InstaPundit.

Theresa Leblanc was appalled to learn that her daughter spent her time in art class on Monday at École secondaire Des Sources making anti-war posters while students were ridiculing U.S. President George W. Bush.

Then when she heard the posters were for an anti-war march that would take place during school hours, she hit the roof.

“I’m just up in arms,” said Leblanc, who has a nephew in the U.S. marines, fighting in Iraq.

“This is such a lack of respect. You can have a debate but it’s another thing to have a demonstration like this during school time. It’s appalling.”

Another parent, who didn’t want to be named, said she was also furious when one of her two daughters said she had been forced to make posters.

She, too, was unhappy about a demonstration during school time. “My girls missed physics and French – that’s more important than a march.”

It’s not as though it’s a big sacrifice for most high school students to miss class time. We used to invent any reason we could think of, from play practices to charity walkathons, all in effort to spend as few hours as possible behind a desk.

But this crosses the line, since it is essentially pressuring the students into all thinking the same way. While the Gazette reports that “students who didn’t want to participate in the march had the option of attending a debate on the Iraqi situation”, I bet I know exactly what form that so-called “debate” took.

I’m sure there were students who wanted to demonstrate because they read up on the issues and formed educated political opinions. But I’m also sure that there were equally as many who did not. Consider the following quote by one of the organizers:

“I’m against killing innocent people,” said Grade 11 student Ruba Al Karan. “Saddam (Hussein) did a lot of stupid things but Bush is no better.”

Other students spoke of U.S.-bashing going on while the students used their time in art class to draw up posters.

High school can be a difficult time for students with dissenting opinions. There’s an incredible amount of pressure to follow the crowd. Not to mention, about half the students at the school had probably never taken a history course in their lives. Students are entitled to their opinions, but this was incredibly inappropriate.

The leaders of American Jewish organizations are increasingly concerned the United States’ “debt” to its allies in Europe will be repaid at Israel’s expense, sooner than Jerusalem would even like to think about.

[ . . . ]

In other countries, this same rule results in the opposite outcome, and by this, Harris obviously means France and Belgium, where hostility to Israel is in direct proportion to hostility to the U.S. These countries are working against Israel in the pan-European arena. Harris feels that Britain and Spain are working to harden the American positions toward the government of Israel, primarily as they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leaders of the Jewish organizations in the United States – Harris included – place sole responsibility for President Bush’s March 16 “road map speech” on this group.

“The question that nagged at them after Bush’s speech was ‘Why now?’” says Harris. “Why, at the height of a war in Iraq, does the road map have to be put on the table? Does it mean Washington is caving in to pressure from our European allies? Does it mean that Washington, even if unintentionally, consents to allow the impression to be made that there is a connection between the situation in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian issue? Personally, based on my acquaintance with the president, the vice president and the national security adviser, I do not believe they see it that way.”

It’s tempting to write this off a a typical leftist tactic of looking solely at the consequences to evaluate the ethics of a situation. In other words, if the argument is that ousting Saddam is good for Israel, then pro-Israel people should support the war, and if the argument is that it’s bad for Israel, then the opposite should be true.

That, however, negates the existence of a right and wrong. And that’s a dangerous trap – one that Harris, it should be noted, has avoided falling into. He’s not taking a position on the war in Iraq; he’s making a statement, an observation if you will, about the potential dangers of its outcome. And I think it would be blind of us not to examine these things, within the context that states that it shouldn’t affect current policy in Iraq, of course.

The US has pissed off much of Europe with this war in Iraq. That’s a given. A lot of Europe may be looking for some sort of reconciliation, and it’s a very realistic possibility that Israel will once again get the short end of the stick. The minute the United States moves in and starts forcing reforms and agreements down the throats of two parties clearly not ready or able to accept them, the situation’s bound to worsen. Start forcing Israel to make security concessions, and a lot less of those suicide attacks will be prevented. Start forcing the Palestinians to play nice, and more will be attracted to the terror groups who offer them an outlet for their true feelings.

But I’m not convinced that it will play out like that. Bush did take office determined not to repeat Clinton’s mistakes, after all. Harris makes some valid points about the new geopolitical stage, but I think that it’s far from a foregone conclusion that Israel will lose out here.

In the lengthy, self-serving drivel, Moore claims that his “mistake” (yeah, right!) was caused because he went to church the morning before the Oscars, causing him to want to cleanse his soul by saying what he truly believes, about how wrong the war truly is because people die in war, yadda yadda yadda. He went on to exhaustively try to explain why he chose to come out with his anti-American rantings at the Oscar ceremony.

We already know why he said it! I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Moore craves attention possibly more than anyone I know. This doesn’t exactly make him unique in Hollywood, but it’s fairly clear that his book and movie sales and popularity are at an all-time high thanks to the media attention he got with his speech. And he’s not exactly humble about it either:

My book “Stupid White Men” still sits at No. 1 on the bestseller list (it’s been on that list now for 53 weeks and is the largest-selling nonfiction book of the year). “Bowling for Columbine” has broken all box-office records for a documentary. My Web site is now getting up to 20 million hits a day (more than the White House’s site).

The trouble with people like Moore is that they crave fame so much that they’ll say or do just about anything to get in the spotlight. Moore isn’t following the dictates of his conscience, he’s following the dictates of the media who are looking for a juicy story. If he’d thought that making a pro-war speech at the Oscars would have made him more famous, he’d have done that, too.

My favourite part was this:

We are continually bombarded with one fictitious story after another from the Bush White House. And that is why it is important that filmmakers make nonfiction, so that all the little lies can be exposed and the public informed. An uninformed public in a democracy is a sure-fire way to end up with little or no democracy at all.

Yeah, I guess that’s why your films are so “factual”, right Mikey?

(Peter) Goldring said the fact that people were marching in favor of the United States on Saturday showed that a “silent majority” actually supported the war.

“We do have a new world reality following Sept. 11, and the new world reality says that we must go to root out terrorism,” he said.

More rallies are scheduled for next week, including a massive one in downtown Toronto on Friday. It’s about time that we Canadians spoke out in support of our friend and ally south of the border, who keeps doing our dirty work for us time and time again while we keep our noses clean and then criticize them.

The original report claimed the banned songs included Give Peace A Chance by John Lennon, Soldier Boy by The Shirelles (a love song), Revolution by The Beatles and One Tin Soldier by The Original Caste.

“No songs have been banned on 1050 CHUM — none,” Brad Jones, the station’s program director, said yesterday. The station yesterday even played at least two of the purported banned songs, including Give Peace A Chance.

Rob Farina, program director of 104.5 CHUM-FM, said his station also has not banned any war- or peace-themed songs.

Jones said pulse24.com’s story was the result of a breakdown in communication during an interview between a pulse24.com reporter and CHUM-FM music director Barry Stewart. The reporter asked Stewart which war-themed songs were being pulled. Stewart thought the reporter meant pulled off the shelf for broadcast, whereas the reporter meant pulled from the playlist.

I’m certainly glad that the rumours turned out to be false. But the fact that the media was so willing to believe and publish the story in the first place raises an interesting question: where does the line get crossed? Being sensitive to controversy is one thing, but I could never condone all-out censorship, and neither could most people.

But while this report was false, reports that MTV Europe is practicing censorship unfortunately seem to be true:

MTV has banned music videos with war-related titles, lyrics or images, including Paul Hardcastle’s 19 and Outkast’s Bombs over Baghdad, for the duration of the conflict in Iraq.

The leading music channel will not show pop promos that feature “war, soldiers, war planes, bombs, missiles, riots and social unrest, executions and other obviously sensitive material”, according to an internal memo seen by MediaGuardian.co.uk.

[ . . . ]

“MTV, like many other broadcasters, feels content should reflect audience sensitivities at this time of war,” an MTV spokeswoman said.

“Any changes to playlists are only a temporary measure,” she added.

I sincerely hope that this policy is reconsidered. After all, isn’t freedom of expression one of the things we’re fighting for?

Iraq hailed a suicide bomber who killed four American soldiers on Saturday and promised more such “blessed” attacks as the United States kept up withering air strikes on Baghdad.

[ . . . ]

“This is the blessed beginning on the road of sacrifice and martyrdom to inflict on them what they did not expect,” the television announcer said.

It appears at least someone has been heeding the call from Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas to export suicide bombings to other countries.

Holy indeed. All this means is that suicide bombing is gaining popularity outside Israel, due to its perceived effectiveness as a tactic. And that’s disturbing news for the rest of the world, because how to stop terrorism once it becomes widespread? Granted, there’s a difference between attacking military troups and attacking innocent civilians, but let us be very clear here: suicide bombings are used as tactics of terrorism, not military offense.

So if people want to talk about containing [Saddam Hussein] and don’t want to go in forcefully and remove him, how do they propose doing something about the horrors he is inflicting on his people who live in such fear of him?”

I did not cite “weapons of mass destruction.” Nor do I believe Saddam Hussein is a direct threat to this country, any more than the creators of the mass graves in the Balkans were, or the Taliban. And as has been evident for a long time, I am no admirer of George W. Bush.

The United Nations? Did the inspectors go into the prisons and the torture chambers? Would they have, if given more time? Did they interview the Mukhabarat, Saddam’s dreaded secret police?

An Iraqi in Detroit wanted to send a message to the anti-war protesters: “If you want to protest that it’s not OK to send your kids to fight, that’s OK. But please don’t claim to speak for the Iraqis.”

And on the other side, I was watching Bill Maher on HBO earlier, and guest Michael Graham said during discussion that (and forgive me for paraphrasing) for him it has nothing to do with the Iraqi people, it’s about protecting the interests of Americans and defending the US against the terrorism that Saddam supports. (To which Janeane Garofalo made some typical comment about our “world view” being wrong because how dare we tell Saddam that he has no right to torture his people anyway? But I digress.)

The point is, from a political standpoint every country does tend to act in self-interest. But I think the moral case for ousting Saddam Hussein is very strong, and it hasn’t been made clearly enough.

On the surface, I’d tend to agree with Graham more. There are many people in the world living in deplorable conditions. And while it’s altruistic to want to “liberate” them, I can understand a dose of skepticism about war based on those grounds. In general, countries go to war to defend themselves against a threat to their security.

Critics argue that the case has not been made that Saddam Hussein poses a threat to the security of the United States – or other UN members, for that matter.

That is just plain false. Every UN resolution that he ignored was a threat, because it weakened the power of the UN to take action against a rogue state. Every cheque provided to the family of a Palestinian suicide bomber was a threat, because it funded and encouraged terrorism which, left unchecked, can only spread. Every time Saddam Hussein juggled Western countries like little balls in the air, driving wedges between them, only served to up the threat.

Nobody in the world – not even France or Russia – actually believed Saddam when he claimed to have disarmed. They all know he has weapons of mass destruction, and they all know he’ll use them. The only people who are Saddam’s cheerleaders are the anti-war protester crowd, and even some of them are beginning to wise up.

Bush knows a war for altruistic purposes is easier to sell, so he dresses it up as being about the freedom of the Iraqi people. And I certainly won’t downplay their oppression. The horrors they have faced in the 33 years of Saddam’s regime are very real.

But if that in itself isn’t a prima facie case for war, self-defense can no longer be denied as an imminent one. So that’s why I say to the Americans, the British, and their allies: go kick butt! And to the Canadian government, shame on us for not being there with them.

According to the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, the favorite name for Palestinian families in the city these days is Saddam. The paper said male infants born in local hospitals in the last few days have been named Saddam in honor of the Iraqi president.

“Many Palestinians are proud of this name,” the paper’s correspondent, Ala Badarneh, reports from Nablus. “Many families are also keen on keeping posters of Saddam Hussein in their homes. Usually you would find pictures of Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat together at previous meetings between the two. Many people are buying these pictures in the market and keeping them at home.”

Nearly as disturbing was the big picture in today’s Gazette (sorry, no link) of a Palestinian mom holding her newborn daughter, named “Rachel Corrie”. I guess her mom has great hopes for her future, that she’ll run in front of a bulldozer like her namesake.

Cellucci told an audience of business executives in Toronto that had Canada found itself under threat, Washington would have come to its aid immediately.

“There is no security threat to Canada that the United States would not be ready, willing and able to help with. There would be no debate, there would be no hesitation. We would be there for Canada — part of our family,” he thundered.

“And that is why so many in the United States are so disappointed and upset that Canada is not fully supporting us now,” he said. In the speech, and in comments to reporters afterward, he mentioned U.S. disappointment 12 times.

How long before they start pouring Molson down the drain like French wine?

“He didn’t just torture us when we lost,” Haydar said when we met last Wednesday in a London coffee shop. “Even when we won. He started by shaving hair — I know in Britain it’s a fashion now but in Iraq it’s a big embarrassment. After that he started to put players in prison. He used to come to watch us, sometimes we won three or four-nil but still he (ordered his guards to) take three or four players, put them in prison and torture them because he didn’t like their form. Then he started to beat the coach, referees . . . ”

Food for thought the next time a high school basketball coach gets chewed out for making his team run laps.

“We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president,” Moore said. “We live in a time where we have a man who’s sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it’s the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts.

Applause gave way to some boos, as the orchestra began playing to cue the filmmaker to leave the stage.

“We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you,” Moore shouted.

At least some had the courage to boo. I wonder about those who applauded and gave Moore a standing ovation, though. “Fictitious” code orange? “Fictitious” duct tape? I wonder if he thinks September 11th was fictitious too. I wonder what the families and friends of those who died on September 11th would think about that?

The huge 100-acre complex, which is surrounded by a electrical fence, is perhaps the first illegal chemical plant to be uncovered by US troops in their current mission in Iraq. The surrounding barracks resemble an abandoned slum.

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly which chemicals were being produced here, but clearly the Iraqis tried to camouflage the facility so it could not be photographed aerially, by swathing it in sand-cast walls to make it look like the surrounding desert.

Prediction: this is just the first of the long list of weapons that Saddam claims not to have that the Allies will discover.

“He is the most dangerous creature God ever created,” an Iraqi woman living in exile shivered to an interviewer recently. For decades, Saddam has brutalized rivals, friends, mentors, Iran, Kuwait, Israel, the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs, the poison-gas victims of Halabja, millions of ordinary Iraqis and the very environment of the Gulf.

The most chilling film clip you will ever see is the one where Saddam announces to an auditorium that he has discovered a plot and has the names of the plotters, including close acquaintances, read out. As they are named, they stand and are led away, never to be seen again.

[ . . . ]

In sum, this is a truly wicked man, deeply evil, as deadly and disgusting as his role model, Stalin. He just hasn’t had as broad a canvas to work on.

He has tried to remedy that defect, relentlessly pursuing the weapons that would make him a destroyer of worlds. He was almost there when the Israelis took out a reactor near Baghdad in 1981, and again 10 years later, when the first Gulf War interrupted a nuclear arms program that was only months from fruition – not to mention biological and chemical horrors.

The scary thing is that much of the world actually believes that Bush is more dangerous than Saddam. I suggest they try spending a week living near either one of them. Let them try voicing a dissenting opinion to both of them. Let’s see what they have to say after that.

“At this point I think there is no use debating the reasons why some people think war is necessary and some people think it is not. We should not say anything that would comfort Saddam Hussein,” he told reporters.

Hmmm. Do you think Chretien is reacting to this:

Sometimes a picture does indeed say a thousand words.

There has not been, despite what some critics charge, an unseemly rush to war on the part of the United States and the United Kingdom. Six months have passed since George W. Bush first went to the United Nations, five months since he acquired the political authority from Congress to deal with Iraq and well over four months since the UN Security Council backed Resolution 1441 and provided Saddam Hussein with his final, final chance.

[ . . . ]

Now that British forces have been committed, the country should and almost certainly will rally around them. The Prime Minister deserves the support of all political parties. The peace may prove harder to win than the war, but war will still be a difficult endeavour. It rarely proceeds precisely as planned. Ulysses Grant, the general who took charge of the Union army after its rout at Fredricksburg, eventually received Lee’s and the South’s final surrender at Appomattox with the words: “The war is over — the rebels are our countrymen again.” His respectful tone was such that it prevented his men from cheering the defeat of their opponents. Mr Bush and Mr Blair must welcome the people of Iraq back into the civilised world in exactly the same spirit.

Worth reading.

85-year-old Nassima Karush [ . . . ] relates how Saddam’s mother, Subha, had watched her first-born son die of what doctors said was cancer. Depressed from the death, she didn’t want to live and tried several times to kill herself and her unborn child, Saddam.

Karush, who immigrated from Iraq to Israel in 1951, said Wednesday she remembers her sister-in-law’s husband, Sallim Zirha, convincing Saddam’s mother not to commit suicide.

Man, the antisemitic conspiracy theorists must be frothing at the mouth on this one!

Well, at least we can start calling it something (even though a good many people are sure to use the name in an ironic or sarcastic sense).

As the countdown to war continues, Iraqis have been trying to get out of the country.

But since midday on Tuesday, they have been unable to cross the border into Syria.

There were conflicting explanations about why this was the case, but from speaking with Iraqis waiting to be let in and officials on both sides it appears that Syria decided to close its border after an influx of Iraqis earlier in the morning.

The Iraqi side then decided not to process any more passports for travelling Iraqis.

An Iraqi custom official expressed his anger at the Syrian decision, saying it was turning back families with women and children at a time when their lives were at risk because of an impending war.

Note that Syria not only sits on the UN Security Council, but has been adamently opposed to the prospect of war supposedly out of concern for the civilian population. Some concern.

Here’s hoping and praying that this conflict is short, that casualties are as few as possible, that civilians remain unharmed, and that military personnel return home safely to their families as soon as possible.

Iraq is unlikely to use chemical or biological weapons to defend itself from a U.S.-led invasion because world opinion would turn against it, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Wednesday. “Saddam Hussein has certainly figured himself to be a sort of emperor of Mesopotamia, and the leader of the Arab world,” Blix said. “So I think he very likely cares very much about his reputation.”

Wait a sec . . . I thought Blix assured us that Saddam didn’t have any of those chemical or biological weapons.

“We’re sending a message out to students who want to do the same thing,” said Michael Cohen, spokesperson for the English Montreal School Board.

“We have nothing against the idea of them protesting the war. If they would have done this after school hours, it would have been fine.”

[ . . . ]

Frat, who has two kids at Lester B. Pearson, said the “demonstrators” were probably more intent on enjoying the balmy weather than denouncing George W. Bush.

They could have added a couple of points: firstly, most of these kids probably have no idea why they oppose the war, since it appears they don’t spend too much time in classrooms reading their history textbooks. They probably are protesting because their friends are, and they think it’s cool. Secondly, anything high school students do as an excuse to skip class isn’t exactly a protest, it’s just an excuse to get out of class. Maybe it’s a little more creative than the ones we used to use, but come on, we’re talking about high school here!

Note that if this had happened at Concordia, the CSU would be suing the administration as we speak.

It’s not so much that she chose to express her opinion (which pretty much consists of the standard leftist line on how the US was going to war for “no reason” and how it’s such a tragedy because innocent people are going to die so Bush can get oil, etc.). It was the fact that she allowed the rest of the class to use her opening as an opportunity to bash the United States. And of course, the inevitable non-sequiteur tie-in to Israel, as Rachel Corrie’s name was bandied about within seconds.

And I just sat there, fuming.

Of course, I could have said something. I could have said a lot of things. I’ve never had a particular problem of being in the minority — as I clearly was in this case. In fact, I think I was the only one who doesn’t consider it a badge of honour to have been out at the anti-Bush (er, anti-war) protest on Saturday. But I’ve never been one to shy away from debate before.

The point is, I felt it was inappropriate. It wasn’t the time or the place to get into a political debate. We were all there to learn about possessive pronouns, not possession of weapons of mass destruction. I thought it was horribly inappropriate for the teacher to start the conversation, and I didn’t want to compound it by turning the anti-American free-for-all into a full-fledged debate. In French, no less — and I must admit that being somewhat inarticulate in French was a factor that motivated me to keep my mouth shut. So I just sat with my arms folded and did my best to give the teacher a dirty look.

In the second half of the class, however, I decided I needed to say something — quietly. I told the teacher I felt uncomfortable with what had happened, and while I didn’t think it was appropriate to say anything at the time, I don’t share her political views and I’d appreciate if she kept differing opinions in mind. I talked about how I could have explained my position but I didn’t want to turn French class into world politics class.

Her reaction was interesting. She was very polite, and said it was never her intention to be insulting — and indeed, she never was. But she continued to hold that “it’s an issue that touches all of us” and claimed that she was very upset and needed to share her thoughts. She also seemed unable to comprehend that there were people out there who weren’t opposed to war in Iraq on principle. She took it as a given, and seemed genuinely surprised to hear that other viewpoints exist.

Still hoping to avoid a political debate, I ended the conversation right then and there. But I learned a few valuable lessons.

First and foremost, it’s all too easy to understand why an overwhelming majority of university students hold the same antiwar views. Quite simply, they want to fit in. They want to feel like they belong. And everyone else thinks it, and most of them don’t have enough background information to form a strong counter-position. So they just get swept along with the tide.

I also learned why even innocent offhand comments by a professor in a classroom are so dangerous. Freedom of expression, yes. Freedom of speech. But with the role of teacher comes the responsibility not to abuse that position. My French teacher is a very nice person, and she had absolutely no malicious intent. The problem is that not all professors are so innocent. Just check out Campus Watch for a few examples.

Certainly I don’t expect everyone to conform to my views. But there’s a time and place for debate, and that wasn’t it.

At any rate, there’s no shortage of blogs with regular updates on the situation. I recommend checking out some of the ones listed on the lefthand side of this site, for starters.

Not that we would have had much to contribute . . . but by making this statement, Chretien is saying that he doesn’t support the US and its allies over the UN. And that is likely to have consequences. The world will remember that when the courageous took action, Canada remained silent.

“The co-sponsors of the resolution have agreed they will not pursue a vote on the draft resolution,” British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said. “The co-sponsors reserve the right to take their own steps to secure the disarmament of Iraq.”

Meanwhile, the White House said U.S. President George W. Bush would address his nation at 8 p.m. ET Monday (0100 GMT Tuesday).

This is the final countdown. We’re in it now, folks.

A senior U.S. official said the United States had positive responses from three African members of the Security Council — Angola, Cameroon and Guinea — which had previously been uncommitted. “We’re assured by what we heard from them,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

Of course, France and possibly Russia or China may still veto such a resolution. And even without that, the U.S. is still two votes shy of the nine that it would need. Still uncommitted are Mexico, Pakistan, and Chile. If the U.S. wants to be able to claim that a resolution would have passed aside from a veto, it needs to get two out of the three onside.

Update: The U.S. now claims to have Pakistan’s support. That would put them only a single vote away from a majority. Pakistan, however, is not confirming this claim.

A war against Iraq over banned weapons is not necessary because the U.S. has already won, Prime Minister Jean Chretien told ABC Television in an interview broadcast Sunday.

He said credit should go to President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for putting pressure on the Iraqi regime by moving 250,000 troops into the Gulf region.

“The president has won,” Chretien said in an interview taped Saturday for the ABC news program This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “I have no doubt about it. He won.”

The danger of delusional victory is that it has a way of coming back to bite you in the ass. Say the world agrees with Chretien and decides that Iraq has been successfully contained and disarmed. Say they then decide to back off. Everyone will be happy, under the delusion that they made peace . . . but saying it’s so doesn’t make it so, as we’ll find out all too soon when Saddam launches one of the many weapons he keeps claiming not to have against the Western powers who were so cheerfully sure of their victory.

In 1991, everyone thought we won too, remember? So the cardinal rule was broken: nobody bothered to finish the job. That’s why we’re now in this mess, twelve years later.

Chretien may enjoy living in la-la-land. But it’s the Americans who are the realists here. They know that victory isn’t just a declaration on a TV show; it involves a price. And unlike Canada, they have the moral fortitude to be willing to pay it, if necessary.

Our grandparents’ anti-war allies enabled the Holocaust — by accident. Your present day anti-war allies wish quite deliberately to destroy “Jewish interests” — and the lives of many, many Jews in the process. And this is not an unintentional byproduct of good intentions — but for many leaders of the peace movement, a precious goal.

[ . . . ]

As Orwell pointed out long ago, pacifism in the face of armed evil is equivalent to a blind worship of force. For those of our race – the historic victims of so many causes – it would be disastrous to make the same mistake twice, and entrust our children’s fate to the hands of these sad and complicitous pacifists.

Yeah, go read the whole thing. Twice.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has ordered uniforms replicating those worn by U.S. and British troops and will issue them to paramilitary fighters who would attack Iraqi civilians and blame it on Western forces, the U.S. Central Command charged on Thursday.

Sound familiar? Sounds an awful lot like how Hitler started World War II, doesn’t it?

But of course, the anti-war protesters charge that it’s the Americans who want to kill innocent Iraqi civilians. Sure, right.

Atran, who has lived in Jerusalem and who did his own research as well as reviewed the work of others, noted that many suicide bombers are relatively affluent and well-educated, and so cannot be seen to be acting out of desperation. Instead, they are manipulated by leaders who know how to tap into instincts on par with the need to eat and reproduce.

“They do so very effectively,” Atran said.

“My feeling is that people have been barking up the wrong tree completely in dealing with this. They are often thinking these people are crazed, which they are not. They have no suicidal tendencies, no split families,” he added.

“There is no evidence whatsoever of poverty. On the contrary, they are usually better off than the surrounding population.”

This cuts against the propaganda that pro-Palestinian apologists for terror want people to believe – that suicide bombers are fringe extremists, acting out of poverty and desperation.

Atran then goes on to criticize the Western – namely American – response to Palestinian terrorism and suicide bombings:

“(President) Bush has been saying the way to fight terrorism is by raising education and fighting illiteracy but he is just whistling in the wind.”

It is also impossible to ’sell’ American values to these groups, Atran maintains. [ . . . ] “If people are already convinced of an ideological position that is antagonistic to your own, then bombarding them with information relating to your own only increases their antagonism,” he said.

Atran believes a better approach would be to sideline the extremists. “I think the United States and its allies should try to empower moderates from within the community,” he said.

So far so good. Sideline the extremists. Empower the moderates. Gotcha. In other words, exactly what Israel has been insisting on all along when it refuses to negotiate with Arafat’s leadership and wants to wait for a real partner for peace to emerge. Right?

But then Atran goes out into left field:

Atran, who addresses these issues in a recent book entitled “In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion”, said attacking Iraq will only worsen ill-feelings against the United States.

“We know from polls in Israel and Lebanon that when force is used to go after what people consider to be Arab terrorists, and usually miss the mark, that increases support (for those groups),” he said.

In other words, the U.S. shouldn’t go to war in Iraq because it might piss off the terrorists?

Do I even need to explain what’s wrong with that statement?

The US attack on Iraq could be launched “any day” after the beginning of next week if the Turkish parliament gives the go-ahead for American troops to operate via its territory, the head of IDF intelligence told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

[ . . . ]

On the Iraq issue, Ze’evi said that if the Turks are not persuaded to let the US use their bases as a launching pad, a US attack could be delayed “for some time.”

But Ze’evi said the weather would not present an obstacle for a military operation through the end of April or May.

This is pretty much the same as most people are speculating. But Israeli intelligence is usually fairly accurate. A lot will come down to this week’s events.

The problem with U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration is that it is unilateralist much of the time and multilateralist only some of the time. And the problem with U.S. war policy on Iraq is that the U.S. government hasn’t made a conclusive case linking Saddam Hussein to terrorism.

[ . . . ]

The world knows Saddam is a thug but is not convinced he is a terrorist, or even hosting terrorists. The world knows he’s playing a game of cat and mouse with his missiles and other forbidden weapons, but then there’s a really scary guy named Kim Sung Jong-Il in North Korea, and the United States is trying to talk him out of nuclear brinksmanship with food and money.

Not only has the White House failed to connect the dots on terrorism, there is a logical disconnect between Iraq and North Korea. And on the world street of public opinion, war on terrorism is one thing, war in Iraq quite another.

Macdonald is not saying he necessarily agrees with this opinion, but merely observing that it exists. His article is a pretty fair and accurate description on where the U.S. foreign policy went wrong.

Les É.-U. jugent qu’il ne respecte pas certaines ententes et qu’il est dangereux pour la sécurité internationale qu’un tel président soit au pouvoir. Le président Hussein récolte toutes les sympaties, et des millions de manifestants, surtout dans les pays démocratiques et libéraux, manifestent contre la politique américaine. On observe aujourd’hui une forte division, une faiblesse au sein des démocraties occidentales. J’ai comme l’impression que l’opinion publique n’évolue pas avec l’histoire.

[ . . . ]

Hitler utilisa ce doute qui siègeait au sein même des démocraties pour se débarasser, subtilement, point par point, des clauses du traité. Chaque fois qu’il enfreignait le traité, l’occident se consolait en se disant que l’Allemagne ne voullait que corriger certaines des injustices les plus criades commises — Versailles et appliquer “le droit des peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes”. À chaque écoupé, Hitler se répandait en discours pacifistes, proposait de nouveaux accords pour rassurer les états inquiets de sa gourmandise. L’occident ne voulait pas de guerre.

[ . . . ]

Churchill ne voulait pas tuer des enfants allemands pour assouvir une soif de sang ou assurer la supériorité anglaise en Europe, il voulait arrêter un virus déjà installé; c’est-à-dire couper un pied avant que la gangrène gagne le corps. Et pendant que les médecins occidentaux ne reconnaissaient pas l’infection ou refusaient de porter la responsabilité d’une amputation, le cancer se renforça et l’opération fut beaucoup plus sérieuse.

Lapperrière is right; the world has learned nothing from history and from its mistakes. And it’s about to make the same ones all over again. I can only hope that someone has the courage to step in before the cost is as high as it was sixty years ago.

When asked about the Canadian proposal, Fleischer said Bush believes his resolution is the “way to go.”

“Time is running out, this issue must come to a conclusion,” said Fleischer.

Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell also discussed the proposal. Afterwards, U.S. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said Canada’s proposal “only procrastinates on a decision we all should be prepared to take.”

While I understand Canada’s desire to forge a compromise and mediate between an increasingly polarized UN, I gotta agree with the Americans on this one. There’s nothing magical about March 28th. The anti-war protesters won’t have changed their minds by then. Saddam Hussein won’t turn into Mother Teresa by then. Really, nothing will change between today and March 28th on an issue that the world has been stalling on for months already.

The saying goes “procrastination gives you something to look forward to”, and that’s all very well and good – while I’m writing a paper or completing a project. But the only thing further delay will accomplish here is to increase anti-Americanism and to give Saddam Hussein more time to prepare weapons of retaliation. It’s time to act, not to delay. And it’s time for Canada to get on-side.

Hahahahahahaha.

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday that Iraq must begin destroying its illicit al-Samoud missiles by Saturday and he did not expect any more talks with Iraq on the issue.

[ . . . ]

Blix last Friday ordered Baghdad to begin destroying the missiles, their warheads, engines, launchers and other components by Saturday after concluding they exceeded the 90-mile range set for Iraqi rockets by a Security Council resolution.

But without the U.N. agreeing to take any kind of action if these demands are not met, this threat is as empty as a scrawny kid telling the schoolyard bully to stop stealing his lunch money “or else”.

Both were saying how ridiculous that is, and how they don’t understand it. And MacDonald said how there’s a difference between legitimate criticism of war priorities and of what would happen in the region after Saddam was ousted, and irresponsible blanket criticism based on “a wave of anti-Americanism in this country, which is not unlike antisemitism in that they’re both based on envy.”

I always liked that guy.