Blundering Into Foreign Affairs

Watching HarperCrit run around and completely screw up Canada's foreign affairs is almost too painful to watch these days.

First, we have Harper walking in lock step with Washington in regards to Israel's brutalization of Lebanon and the Gaza in recent days.

This is problematic for a few reasons. First, Canada has historically taken a relatively neutral stance regarding affairs in the Middle East. This has served us well, building credibility as an "honest broker" between the various factions. For Canada to come out and take an amazingly polarized position is very damaging not only to that credibility, but also, ultimately to Canada's interests as a nation.

If we are seen as "the 51st state" by other nations, then any action that Washington takes will reflect upon Canada by implication. We've already seen this happen with the United Kingdom and Blair's toadying sycophancy towards BushCo. In many places, it has become quite obvious that 10 Downing St. is seen as an extension of the White House. As I've said before, Canada's best interests are seldom served by aligning ourselves too closely with US policy on anything.

The second thing that is utterly painful is the utter cock-up of evacuating Canadian Citizens from Lebanon. In a sleazy attempt to gain some political points, Harper redirects the government aircraft to Cypress to pick up 100 or so evacuees. Other than being an amazingly blatant attempt at a photo-op, this is also one of those moments where Lebanese - and Arab - Canadians have to be wondering just what kind of credibility Harper really has. On one hand, we have Harper blindly defending Israel without so much as a hint of critical thought involved; and on the other hand, he's busy trying to make himself out to be "the hero" by "rescuing" a few evacuees.

Meanwhile, The Globe and Mail is busy researching just what was going on with organizing the evacuation of our citizens from the mess that is now Lebanon. Sure enough, we are once again introduced to the spectacle of the micro-manager. Apparently every major decision was being vetted through the PMO, often with painfully slow turnaround times on decisions.

Mr. Harper, evacuating Canadian Citizens from a WAR ZONE is not about your political image, you fuckwit! Micro-managing the issues from Ottawa merely screws things up even more - and explains the utterly farcicle delays and screw ups that we are hearing about.

When we do get rid of this incompetent boob as PM (and his henchmen), it's going to take decades to clean up the damage they will have done to this nation.