Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Bloc right for all the wrong reasons

Well, here we are. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men time again.
maxbyline

Well, here we are. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men time again. Unless, of course, you’re Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, white, black, communist, capitalist, socialist, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, democratic, totalitarian, living, dead, fictional or real. In which case, it’s open season on you, mothertrucker.

The cosmic forces of hope and fear are aligning in such tight formation it’s almost impossible to know which is which. Truth and fiction have never been harder to tell apart.

Consider this. For the first time ever, I am in total agreement with the leader of the federal secessionist party. If ever there was more proof needed that something so fundamental as the Earth’s magnetic poles are indeed changing right under our feet, this is as close as it comes.

The Cheesehead says he’s going to bring down GI Dough Boy’s minority government if the faux Conservatives don’t change the role of Canada’s troops in Arfghanistan. No more rock ’em, sock ’em, kill ’em in the name of peace soldiers will the Blocheads endure. If we can’t go back to the future and be the kinder, gentler chocolate and nylon distributing peacekeepers we’ve lulled ourselves into thinking we are, Gilles Duceppe is ready to cozy up to Diamond Jack’s NDP and — let’s see, who did the Libs finally elect after a year of dithering… oh yeah — Stéphane Dion’s natural ruling party who, let us not forget, embarked on this mission in the first place, and put an end to the Dough Boy’s dreams of grandeur before he even has a chance to act like a real conservative.

And it’s about time.

Naturally, as one might suspect when one finds oneself in agreement with the devil, the lamentable Mr. Duceppe is right for all the wrong reasons. He is, after all, a one-trick pony. His is no doctrinaire belief in strength through peace. He doesn’t find aggression and war abhorrent or have any internal philosophy suggesting the only hope for humans evolving toward enlightenment instead of eroding back into barbarism lies in finding peaceable ways to coexist. His newfound antiwar stance is being driven by the fact that Quebec soldiers are scheduled to be shipped out to Arfghanistan next August. He’s more afraid of losing votes one bullet at a time than he is interested in profoundly changing Canada’s slide into militarism.

He’s also fearful the inroads already made by the Conservatives in Quebec — 10 seats in last January’s election — will grow into something approaching popular support because of D’oh Boy’s fuzzy, and quite possibly meaningless, nation-within-a-nation nostrum which has taken on a heightened cachet on the cocktail circuit in La Belle Province.

What better way to fan the flames of the separatists’ dream than to play to their historical pacifism and utter distaste to send their young off to die for a cause touted by an uninspiring Anglo leader with a fictional mandate? Given the misadventure was launched by the already discredited Liberals and distorted by the Conservatives, Gilles wounds two enemies with one salvo, cements his popularity in Quebec, brings down a government and leads the distinct Quebecois nation in a rousing French rendition of John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, waving Bics a’warming the chill winter air.

But quite frankly, even a deal with the devil is a good one if it keeps this country from slipping into yet another quagmire in a country with a gloried history of thumping foreign occupiers.

Bluntly put, there is no appetite among the other partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to do what has to be done — assuming that’s even possible — to keep Arfghanistan from slipping back into another Taliban-led Dark Ages. If Canada’s stupid enough to keep sending troops over there to be slowly slaughtered, it’s going to do it virtually alone. Somebody, even the Bloc, has to take the toy drums of war away from the Dough Boy.

Writing in the New York Times yesterday, Anthony H. Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, drew the following grim picture. Bear in mind, the statistics reported were gathered by U.S. intelligence experts and we’ve all been left wondering about the credibility of that source. Be that as it may, suicide attacks rose from 18 in the first 11 months of 2005 to 116 in the first 11 months of 2006; direct fire attacks increased from 1,347 to 3,824 during the same period; improvised explosive devices from 530 to 1,297 and other attacks from 269 to 479. The number of attacks on Afghan forces increased from 713 to 2,892; attacks on NATO forces from 919 to 2,496, and attacks on Afghan government officials are 2.5 times what they were.

How do you spell Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E?

Coupled with that statistical reality is an equally grim political reality. A reinvigorated Taliban, fighting merrily arm-in-arm with Al Qaeda and other growing Islamist forces, are winning popular support from a populace more than willing to trade freedom for security, a human trait not limited to western democratic countries. Having found relatively undisturbed sanctuary within the Pakistani mountains bordering Arfghanistan, they seem to operate with impunity. In other words, the enemy is building its own coalition and gaining strength.

NATO, on the other hand, has morphed into a eunuch pimping for a government unable and, quite possibly, unwilling to govern anywhere outside Kabul city limits. British, Canadian and U.S. troops — all of whom have been taking increasing casualties — have been unable to beat back the forces of darkness. And NATO’s other allies, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are doing the Surrender Monkey dance and refusing to send their troops to be deployed in any area of the country more disputed than the lobby of the Kabul Hilton.

So ’splain to me why Canada should be willing to play the chump in a country that has never been successfully occupied, has only a marginal and passing interest in something as esoteric as democracy, has no economy outside of opium poppies and, quite frankly, probably isn’t a real country within the hearts and minds of the people who live there?

Even I am not cynical enough to believe it’s all about an oil pipeline.

But I haven’t heard one good reason why one more Canadian, American or British kid ought to celebrate Christmas 2006 by coming home in a body bag.

And so it is, for the first time ever, I’m ready to say, “I’m with ya, Cheesehead.” Let’s lose the Dough Boy before his absurd dreams of building Canada into some kind of pseudo military power can see the light of day. Better we let the Liberals squander the treasury on corrupt attempts to keep the country together than spend it and young lives on a pointless war in a pointless country.

Is it Christmas yet?