Maclean’s magazine has an interesting profile of Michael Ignatieff, one of the few prominent Canadians to speak out in support of US military action in Iraq:
“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.
Ignatieff, like many Canadians who spend too muich time in the US, is losing track of the Canadian mainstream.
We value the UN and we value multilateralism. And both are ways for a small country to have its voice heard on international issues.
“screws up most of the time?” Who doesn’t?