Ignatieff's Afghan Problem

Peace keeping means what it says. It involves keeping the peace between two identifiable warring factions who want peace and have invited third party in to keep it. It really only has a hope of succeeding when those groups are separated from one another by geography. In this sense Ignatieff is right about the Afghanistan mission and the others dead wrong. Afghanistan is not suited to peace keeping. Furthermore, as guerilla war supplants state on state violence as the dominant form of conflict, peacekeeping missions have become less and less useful. In this sense too Ignatieff is right, albeit for the wrong reasons, and his opponents are wrong. Peace keeping has had it day; it represents a proud chapter in Canada history, but that chapter has been written; let us move on. The question is to what.

Given that he is the only one willing to admit that peace keeping has had its day, it should come as no surprise that Ignatieff is the only candidate is to propose a replacement and for this he deserves still more credit. Ignatieff, however, proposes that the Liberals adopt a Neo Wilsonian doctrine that works in theory, but is a miserable failure in practice. In short, without Ignatieff the Liberals would have remained trapped in the past, but with him the Liberals are trapped between ideology and nostalgia.

Moreover, while Ignatieff "responsibility to protect" doctrine does not piggyback on US foreign policy in theory, it certainly does in practice. No other Western country has the economic, military, political and diplomatic wherewithal to intervene in situations that Ignatieff claims we have a duty to intervene and in the manner in which he advocates. If the US does not intervene, then the West will not intervene and the UN and other international bodies will certainly not intervene.

Ignatieff: "Multilateral solutions to the world's problems are all very well, but they have no teeth unless America bares its fangs."

http://empirelite.ca/ The relationship is not entirely a parasitic one though. The so called "liberal hawks" did much of the intellectual heavy lifting for the Bush administration prior to the Iraq War. If Ignatieff has his way, Canada will fill that role as well as offering token support.

Needless to say, being wedded to US foreign policy has it consequences. If the US attacks a Muslim country, an obvious consequence is an increased risk of terrorism, but more on that latter. Another one was mentioned by Ignatieff following the Iraq war. Motives matter. It is not enough that an intervention be justified on humanitarian grounds. Motives determine policy. As a result, if the motives of the interveners are not in the right spot the desired outcomes will likely not be achieved or worse. Ignatieff claims that he only recognized this with regard to Iraq after the fact. To date, Ignatieff has not, however, mentioned what motivates US policy in Afghanistan and how this might affect outcomes there.

As for Afghanistan, while many people may side with him and admire his past writings, the manner in which Ignatieff has defended the mission has angered people on both sides of the debate. His performance in the first Liberal leadership debate particularly irked people. During the debate Ignatieff claimed that the death of a Canadian soldier meant that if the house did not vote to extend the mission her death would have been in vain and by implication that the mission had merit by virtue of her death. "I supported the extension of the mission because that very day a brave soldier from Shilo, Manitoba, gave her life". http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/10/libs-sat.html?ref=rss Now, no one wants to see someone die for a mistake, but it is incredible that Ignatieff would imply that a mission is validated if soldiers have died carrying it out. That was not the worst of it though. He went to say suggest that voting against an extension meant that one did not “support our troops”. "I couldn't in good conscience stand up in the House of Commons and not vote for the extension of a mission when our soldiers' lives were on the line." The Star's Chantal Herbert rightly called him to task for this:

"Saturday, he said he felt he would have let the Canadian soldiers who had put their lives on the line in Afghanistan down if he had voted differently. The notion that support for our troops should mean support for the government's decisions on the deployment is one of Stephen Harper's most demagogic arguments. In a rebuttal to Ignatieff, Bob Rae was right to point it out."

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150064106473&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907622983

However bad these talking points are, what threatens to do the most damage to Ignatieff's reputation is his failure to acknowledge the Afghan elephant in the Canadian living room. Namely, Ignatieff has not acknowledged that our presence in Afghanistan greatly increases the chances that Canada will be targeted by terrorists, especially domestic ones. The arrest of the Ontario 17 has certainly driven this point home. According to the crown, Canada's Afghanistan policy was what motivated them. Canada is thus added to the list of countries targeted (Britain, Spain and Australia (the Lodhi case) and the US) by its own citizens because they were angered by their country's foreign policy. If a desire to speak the truth was not motivation enough, then Stephen Harper's denials should have been. Ignaiteff gains nothing by remaining silent. The Canadian people certainly do not believe Harper's propaganda about the Afghan mission making us safer.

"When asked about the likelihood of Canada being a terror target because of its military presence in Afghanistan, 56 per cent said we are more likely to be attacked.

This represents an increase of 18 per cent compared to one year ago. Thirty-four per cent say the military presence has no bearing; while five per cent say having soldiers in Afghanistan make us less susceptible to an attack."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060609/terrorism_poll_060609?s_name=&no_ads=

And it is not as if Ignatieff has not acknowledged a connection between foreign policy and terrorism before. For example:

"After 9/11, Islamic terrorism may have metastasized into a cancer of independent terrorist cells that, while claiming inspiration from Al Qaeda, no longer require its direction, finance or advice. These cells have given us Madrid. Before that, they gave us Istanbul, and before that, Bali. There is no shortage of safe places in which they can grow. Where terrorists need covert support, there are Muslim communities, in the diasporas of Europe and North America, that will turn a blind eye to their presence. If they need raw recruits, the Arab rage that makes for martyrs is still incandescent. Palestine is in a state of permanent insurrection. Iraq is in a state of barely subdued civil war. Some of the Bush administration's policies, like telling Ariel Sharon he can keep settlements on the West Bank, may only be fanning the flames."

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/ignatieff_less_evils_nytm_050204.htm

The longer Ignatieff sits by and lets Stephen Harper echo Bush and claim that Canadian foreign policy plays no role and that "we are a target because of who we are, and how we live, our society are diversity our values” the more damage is done to his strongest asset, viz., his reputation as public intellectual committed to open and honest debate, and the more ammunition he gives to those who claim that he a Republican lap dog. No public intellectual worth his salt, no matter where they stood on the mission, would tolerate Stephen Harper claiming that sending troops to Afghanistan will protect Canadians from domestic terrorists, who have never sat foot in Afghanistan, but who are, according to the crown, motivated to attack Canada because we have sent troops there.

Even Bin Laden has mocked Bush's claim that the reason Al Qaeda attacked the US was because Al Qaeda hate American freedoms.

"Oh American people, my talk to you is about the best way to avoid another Manhattan, about the war, its causes, and results. Security is an important pillar of human life. Free people do not relinquish their security. This is contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have proud souls, like the souls of the 19 people [killed while perpetrating the 11 September 2001 attacks], may God have mercy on them. We fought you because we are free and do not accept injustice. We want to restore freedom to our nation. Just as you waste our security, we will waste your security."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3966817.stm It goes without saying that no Conservative has ever explained why Al Qaeda has singled Canada out, but that is not because they have not said. Al Qaeda has made it clear it is because of our presence in Afghanistan.

"What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia. We warned Australia before not to join in the war in Afghanistan, and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/osamabinladen/tape.html In Al Qaeda speak, Canada's involvement in Muslim lands makes us part of the "far enemy"; the "near enemy" are the regimes of the Middle East. However much Harper might wish it, Bin Laden's words can wished away with the wave of his neo conservative wand. Bin Laden's words lay out an ideological and strategic Western citizens inspired by Al Qaeda's ramblings and as sure as the sun will set and rise some Canadians will be inspired and will consider carrying out acts terrorism so long as Canada is part of military operation in a Muslim country. Furthermore, pace Rae, Kennedy and Volpe, it likely does not matter what the nature of our military role in such missions is. Sending a "reconstruction team" is just as likely to get us targeted as peace making team. It is foolish to believe that anyone inspired by Al Qaeda would care to make such distinctions; most are too blinded by ideology lies and hate and those that are not will see the strategic reasons for erasing such a distinction.

His support for Afghanistan good harm Ignatieff in yet another way. According to Ignatieff, despite his strong support for war in Iraq, he would not have sent Canadian troops into the country. He gave several reasons. http://www.speakeasy.invisionzone.com/lofiversion/index.php/t7732.html One was that Canadians did not support going to Iraq and public support in a democracy matters. The other was that going to Iraq would have had significant consequences for national unity here at home. Separatists had historically made hay whenever Canada had sent troops abroad and this time would have been no different; it is hard to argue that Ignatieff is wrong in this regard. Iraq would have been a huge boast for them. That said, in trying to distance himself from the Iraq war, Ignatieff created more troubles for himself then he solved. For you see, the sword cuts both ways. As with Iraq, the Canadian people did not support extending the Afghan mission. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that separatists could not make hay with Afghanistan. Indeed, a terrorist attack, inspired by Canada's presence in Afghanistan, could spilt the country apart, especially if Quebec is the victim. Currently the Afghan mission is opposed by what 60% of Quebecers and huge number opposed the mission's extension. If Quebecers die as a result of us being there, the separatists will use it as a reason why Quebecers need their own country with its own foreign policy. Given what has just transpired in Ontario and the fact that the accused were said to be motivated by Canada's role in Afghanistan, Ignatieff can not very well claim that chances of such an attack or not insignificant.

Indeed for a schoolar who has made a reputation for himself sketching out the possible and actual consqunces of a war on terrorism, Ignatieff has been remarkably silent on what a terrorist attack motivated by Canada's involvment in Afghanistan might mean for the country. A further problem that Ignatieff surely recognizes but cares not to comment on is this.. If Canada is going to avoid a European like demographic meltdown, Canada will have to keep allowing in large numbers of immigrants. If a terrorist attack does occur, this may no longer be politically possible. We may find ourselves in same situation as Europe, namely, badly needing immigrants, but unable to do so because it is not politically possible.

One would think that given such risks, not to mention the costs, that Ignatieff would at least have a convincing argument for why the Afghan mission will succeed and, just as importantly, how success in Afghanistan furthers Canadian interests, but alas no. He has not said a peep. It would thus appear that while Ignatieff the intellectual might be worried about mounting coalition causalities, the introduction of suicide bombings into Afghanistan, riots in Kabul, aid agencies all but abandoning Afghanistan's hinterlands and recent reports that the coalition is loosing the battle for hearts and minds, Ignatieff the politician seriously believes that good intentions somehow guarantee success.

Thankfully not all supporters of the Afghan mission have sold their soul and their brain in the hopes of political glory.

Ahmed Rashid:

"Since 2003 when the Taliban first began to regroup, they have gradually matured and developed with the help of al-Qaeda, which has reorganized and retrained them to use more sophisticated tactics in their military operations. As recently as a year ago, the main Taliban groups were composed of a few dozen fighters; now each group includes hundreds of heavily armed men equipped with motorbikes, cars, and horses. They burn down schools and administrative buildings and kill any Afghan who is even indirectly associated with the government. In the south, they operate with impunity just outside the provincial capitals, which have become like Green Zones. Approximately 1,500 Afghan security guards and civilians were killed by the Taliban last year and some three hundred already this year. There have been forty suicide bombings during the past nine months, compared to five in the preceding five years. ....

The aid programs supposed to provide alternative livelihoods to farmers producing poppies or help them grow other lucrative cash crops are derisory when compared to what the drug smugglers offer. The best-functioning programs to help farmers are run by opium traffickers who provide improved varieties of poppy seeds, fertilizer, and better methods of cultivation to increase opium yields and even large-scale employment during the poppy harvest. When we compare Afghanistan's situation today with that of 2001, we see the country now needs to develop an entire alternative economy to replace the drug economy."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19098 (The Taliban have recreated themselves as the champion of the opium trade; defending Afghanistan's only viable crop and export from outsiders who only seek to destroy the opium trade, has proved very successful and explains why many experts fill the Taliban is winning the battle for hearts.)

How the Neo Cons paved the way for liberal Interventionists

Saying that intervening in foreign conflicts purely for humanitarian reasons is bad foreign policy is certainly legitimate -in fact, this is basically the position of the neocons who dominate the Bush administration (and recall that Bush himself opposed "national building" like NATO's eventual intervention in Yugoslavia after the spectacular failure of the UN in the 2000 election campaign).

The Bush administration has never has been a unified monolith. There are and have been fissures. State and DOD were frequently at loggerheads when Powell was still there and CIA and Vice President’s office were not exactly friendly. Moreover, there are very real differences between 41 and 43. Philosophically, realists Scowcroft and Baker simply do not see eye to eye with neo cons such Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Before you interject I would certainly not accept Wolfowitz’s implication that what distinguishes the two camps is that one believes in democracy and the other in propping up tyrants. If I was to draw the line, I would say the main difference is how powerful each group believes the US to be.

Anyway, whereas you imply that Bush’s hostility to nation building in the 2000 campaign is continuous and compatible with post 911 rhetoric, I believe a major shift has occurred. After 911 the neo cons not only won over W, they won the battle for the Republican hearts and Republican minds. Their victory was so complete that in the lead up to the Iraq war realist critiques of the potential consequences of such an adventure went entirely unnoticed. The Republican base bought into Neo Con assumption that the UN was only ever a constraint on US power and rejected that realist belief that the multilateral institutions were a useful way of limiting potential costs and risks. Rumsfeld’s yammering about “old Europe”, "freedom Fries" etc were seen by the Republican base as evidence that Gulliver had at long last broken free of the Lilliputians. It was cause for celebration and no thought was given to the fact that such comments or campaigns might have caused the US a great deal of damage. Similarly, traditional realist laments about nation building went unnoticed for one simple reason. A key neo con assumption is that nation building, in the traditional sense, is not necessary. This is the main reason for the complete lack of planning in Iraq. Society is organic. Free it and the market from various “unnatural” restraints and it will flourish all by its own. The Republican base swallowed this assumption whole. With concerns over nation building out of the way, the Republicans were able to play up the humanitarian angle to a much greater extent then they would have had such a campaign occurred before 911 and in the process draw closer the liberal interventionists/ “liberal hawks”. (Sure the administration focused primarily on WMD, but Republican chattering classes, most notably those at the weekly Standard, and the right wing think tanks certainly pushed transformative power of democracy and the market line.)

For me whether Ignatieff can offer a convincing reply to this question is the litmus test that determines whether he is legitimately a liberal interventionist or merely an academic apologist for the Bush administration's imperial fantasies.

Look there is always going to be a decent humanitarian case for following the Bush administration on any given adventure. After all, the type of places the Americans are limited to attacking openly are always going to tokens of world’s worst. That is why the rise of neo conservatism has made me dislike liberal interventionism a lot more than I used to. Not constrained by with usual realist laments, the project for new American Century promised to turn liberal interventionists into kids in a candy store. They insured that no one would be attacking them from the right flank at a time when the post 911 zeitgeist in the States had muted the left wing of the Democratic party. In return, these so called "liberal Hawks" did the intellectual heavy lifting for Bushco on the Iraq war.

Pramatic Turn

I would love it if a Liberal candidate made a speech resembling the following.

Peace keeping means what it says. It involves keeping the peace between two identifiable warring factions who want peace and have invited third party in to keep it. It really only has a hope of succeeding when those groups are separated from one another by geography. As guerilla war supplants state on state violence as the dominant form of conflict, peacekeeping missions have become less and less useful. In this sense Ignatieff is right and Rae, Volpe and Layton are dead wrong. Peace keeping has had it day; it represents a proud chapter in Canada history, but that chapter has been written; let us move on. The question is to what.

Ignatieff is the only candidate is to propose a replacement and for that he deserves credit. Ignatieff, however, proposes that we adopt a Neo Conservative doctrine that works in theory, but is a miserable failure in practice. So here we Liberals are, trapped between ideology and nostalgia.

It is time we Liberals take a pragmatic turn. This should be a simple enough, but alas I fear no. For most Canadian politicians foreign policy is a subject they would prefer to forget much less discuss and is only made tolerable for us Liberals by a number refined and ready made platitudes. Do not be fooled by Ignatieff’s muscular Victorian venire either, a puritanical adherence to altruism still has domain over all parties and one asks “how does this benefit Canada?”, “what are the risks?” or “how likely is such a mission to succeed?” at ones own peril. Good intentions and moral obligation are still seen as magical guarantees of a mission’s success. Ignatieff’s position is just more in keeping with Conservative axiom that when it comes to foreign policy all one need do is to puff out one’s chest and hope for the best and a different set of platitudes. In keeping with such a testosterone driven attitude, Ignatieff followed Stephen Harper’s lead and claimed that anyone who opposed the extension of the Afghan mission does not “support the troops”. Where Ignatieff differs from Harper is that he does not believe that our obligation to protect does not in theory depend upon American’s willingness to intervene even if it does in practice.

As Liberals, we must not be tempted either of these two sets of platitudes. We must be more worldly in outlook. We must start asking questions that we have either repressed, or were afraid to ask. Only once we start asking the more mundane questions about how this or that policy benefits Canada, what are the chances of it succeeding, will we create a more realistic picture for the Canadian public. As representatives of the people, we owe the public that much; we owe them the truth.

For starters this means removing the fig leaf of Conservative procedural misconduct and having the very debate about Afghanistan we, rightly claim the Canadian people missed out on. In doing so, pace Ignatieff, scared cows are not the only wild animal to be avoided. We must also be wary of elephants and guerillas. Let us not pretend, for example, that our Afghanistan policy will not have domestic consequences. We have recently seen that it does. We can not pretend, as Stephen Harper does, that sending troops to Afghanistan will not protect us from terrorists who have never set foot in that country, but who wish us ill will because we have sent troops there. We must accept that in a democratic society, politicians have a duty to base their arguments on the truth and that they do not have the option of designing arguments to obscure it even if believe our hearts in the right place.

Ignatieff and Rae on Afghanistan

Bob Rae /http://www.bobrae.ca/enontheissues.php has adopted the NDP line that the problem with Afghanistan is that our role has supposedly changed and we have moved from being peace keepers to peace makers. "The unilateral extension of the combat mission is a departure from Canada's traditional role of peacekeeping and reconstruction. Bob believes Canada could have instead focused our military, aid and diplomatic resources on reconstruction and rebuilding that war-torn country . . ." This is kind of idiotic reasoning born of focus groups and polling. Such polls show that Canadians have a high opinion of peacekeeping, but a low opinion of offensive missions. So the NDP says give the people what they want. The thing is, though, that Peace keeping means what it says. It involves keeping the peace between two identifiable warring factions who want peace and have invited third party in for that very reason. (Ignatieff says that Rwanda was peace keepings death nail. I disagree. Rwanda was never suited to be a peace keeping mission. Indeed, in many ways having peace keepers in Rwanda lessened the chances of the needed military intervention. The killing of Belgium peace keepers made intervention far harder politically and the prospect of more dead UN peacekeepers also probably played a role. The two groups were not geographically separate. That said, just because you can not use a hammer as a screw driver does not mean that hammer is useless. A hammer is only useless only in so far it no longer serves any purpose and that might just be happening with peace keeping. As guerilla war supplants state on state violence as the dominant form of conflict, peacekeeping missions have become less and less useful. In this sense Peace keeping is indeed dying.) Despite what Rae, Volpe and Layton might say, Canada was never doing this in Afghanistan nor could it ever hope to. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are not so kind as to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population and they simply do not recognize the distinction between a foreign military force focusing on peacekeeping and reconstruction and those focused on peacemaking. (Some have suggested to me that a focus on reconstruction and peacekeeping would result in fewer causalities, would make us less susceptible to terrorism and would produce better results. This is bullocks. The Auzzies took on an offensive role in Iraq and Spanish took on the role of nation builders. The Auzzies lost far fewer soliders than the Spanish, spent far less than the Spanish and it was Spain and not Australia that was attacked by terrorists for their role in Iraq. If Canada signs on to some furture American adventure, I hope they have the good sense to at least to take on a short term offensive role (special forces air strikes), a la Austraila in Iraq, and not a nation buidling role, a la Spain in Iraq. ) What changed is that we went from a region where the insurgency was weak to one war it was strong.

Ignatieff employed his own focus group and poll driven talking points with regard to Afghanistan during the recent leadership debate and unlike Rae's Ignatieff’s went down like a Led Zeppelin. Incredibly Ignatieff http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/10/libs-sat.html?ref=rss claimed that death of a Canadian soldier meant that if Canada did not vote to extend the mission her death would have been in vain and by implication that the mission had merit by virtue of her death. "I supported the extension of the mission because that very day a brave soldier from Shilo, Manitoba, gave her life," No one wants to die for a mistake, but it is incredible that Ignatieff would imply that a mission is validated if soldiers have died carrying it out. That was not the worst of it though. He went to say suggest that voting against an extension meant that one did not “support our troops”. "I couldn't in good conscience stand up in the House of Commons and not vote for the extension of a mission when our soldiers' lives were on the line." Chantal Herbert http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150064106473&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907622983 rightly jumped all over him:




"Last month, Ignatieff was one of only two leadership candidates to support the Prime Minister's decision to extend the Afghan mission for two years beyond next February. Saturday, he said he felt he would have let the Canadian soldiers who had put their lives on the line in Afghanistan down if he had voted differently. The notion that support for our troops should mean support for the government's decisions on the deployment is one of Stephen Harper's most demagogic arguments. In a rebuttal to Ignatieff, Bob Rae was right to point it out."


Rae http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/10/libs-sat.html?ref=rss “I disagree quite profoundly with Michael [Ignatieff] on this issue," Rae said, adding that "it's most unfair" to suggest that "if you vote against the resolution you are not supportive of Canadian troops overseas."


Liberal Bloggers, even the pro war ones, made the same point as Hebert and Rae.


Calgary Grit http://www.gerardkennedy.ca/default_e.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/blogfull_e.aspx “For Iggy, he couldn't vote against the motion because Nicola Goddard had died that same day. That answer just blew my mind. Here we have a world famous intellectual who has written about international conflict his entire life and his answer was that we had to extend the mission because someone had died. If Ignatieff is going to name drop Trudeau twelve times in his opening statements, then he should at least follow the "reason over passion" mantra Pierre lived by.”






A Bcer in Toronto: http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2006/06/dont-be-playerhatin-or-afghanistan.html#links “I was disappointed at Ignatieff's poor showing defending his Afghan vote on Saturday though. His saying he couldn't vote no because a soldier had died that day doesn't fly. He's a smart man and even in the limited time allotted he was capable, or should be capable, of making a far better argument than that. Because I do agree with his vote on that issue, and it was the right thing to do.”






Cerberus: http://canadiancerberus.blogspot.com/2006/06/liberals-and-afghanistan.html#links “It is utterly asinine to say that supporting or opposing an extension of our mission is tantamount to supporting or opposing our troops.” Ted did not direct this comment towards Ignatieff but rather Stephen Harper. However as both held the same “asinine” view it is applies to both.




Just as bad Ignatieff has still not addressed the concerns many people have with the Afghan mission. Indeed, his arguments so far add up to little more than good intentions and moral obligation guarantees success. What is more, Ignatieff has not acknowledged that the same arguments he used to say that Canada was justified in staying out of Iraq can also be used against the Afghan mission. http://www.speakeasy.invisionzone.com/lofiversion/index.php/t7732.html For one, polls suggest that the mission has no better than support of half the population and polls showed at the time of the May vote that most Canadians were opposed. Ignatieff said that support of the population was vital. For another, a terrorist attack, inspired by Canada's presence in Afghanistan, could spilt the country apart, especially if Quebec is the victim. Currently the Afghan mission is opposed by what 60% of Quebecers. If Quebecers die as a result of us being there, the separatists will use it as a reason why Quebecers need their own country with its own foreign policy. Given what has just transpired in Ontario and the fact that the accused were said to be motivated by Canada's role in Afghanistan, Ignatieff can not very well claim that chances of such an attack or not insignificant. Ignatieff claimed that a potential national unity crisis was reason enough for staying out of the Iraq war.

Multiculturalism's true signifiance

Actual policies associated with multiculturalism mean very little and if the associated programs disappeared tomorrow not much would change. That said, the importance of multiculturalism does not lie there. Over the years it has morphed into a founding story of who we are. Indeed it is the antithesis of what conservatives, such as Travers, drone on about.

Travers: “In pursuing multicultural tolerance, Canada has been negligent in reinforcing essential, common-denominator values. Most of those are self-evident: human rights, the rule of law and the understanding that one person's freedom ends where another's begins.”

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1149545411381&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907626423

For Travers et al, we need to lay down a number of core principles for what it means to be Canadian. For Travers et al, ambiguity is a dangerous thing. Nothing is specifically ruled out and so everything is permitted. Such thinking is old world and is not suited to any country (basically any Western country) dependent on immigration for its very survival. Most Western nations have a fairly good sense of themselves, but far from being a strength such fixed notions of what it means to be French, German or Polish, for example have proved to be obstacles to integration. Canada has not had as nearly a difficult a time. One reason for this is that Canadian identity, as signified and legitimized by official multiculturalism, is not a fixed set of precepts, but rather a byproduct of existential engagement, bounded by certain legal framework to be sure, of peoples from all over the globe.. It has severed as an anticoagulant, preventing a crust from forming on top of the Canadian melting pot. Canadian identity is, as it should be, a work in progress. There is no Canadian dream as there is an American dream. We are not limited that way. We do not believe in passing down a script of what it means to be Canadian down from one generation to the next. We leave it up to each generation to decide who they are through existential engagement. The process only allows a generation to do decide who they were by retrospectively looking back; for Canadians as for Hegel, the Owl of Minerva only flies at night. For those who are still in the sunshine of their lives, they simply say want they know they are not, viz., Americans.

They hate our Policies: what this means

US foreign policy, both real and imagined, is the well spring of terrorism. Anyone who believes the Bush line about they attack the US because they hate their freedoms is an idiot.

Similarly anyone who believes Harper’s application of the Bush line to Canada is also an idiot. "We are a target because of who we are, and how we live, our society are diversity our values.”

As with US, the major bone of contention Jihadists, both domestic and foreign, have with Canada is not our freedoms, but rather Canadian foreign policy. They do not like us being in Afghanistan. Needless to say, most of what they say about our motivations for being there and the conduct of our troops is patently false and often absurd. For example, I do not think for a second that Canadian troops are raping thousands of Afghani women, as the ideological ring leader of the Ontario terror group is alleged to have claimed. In fact, I am rather inclined to believe that they are preventing many more rapes than they are committing if they have committed any at all. The validity of what these nut bars claim is not the issue though. The issue is does Canada being in Afghanistan greatly increase the chances of Canada being the target of a terrorist attack. The answer is yes. Bin Laden has said we are an Al Qaeda target because we are there. However, much more important is the fact that the chances of the Canadian government, or any other Western government for that matter, being able to prevent groups of disaffected youths from within their own populations from adopting Jihadist ideology, or worse is hopelessly unlikely. In other words, whatever the merit of what these nut bars are saying, the chances that they will say it and find domestic coverts, who will act on what they say, is all but guaranteed. This is the part conservatives have gotten right. Jihadist terrorism is a reality Canadians must face. What conservatives are not saying though is what this means; it means that we must assume that trying to install democracy at gun point in Muslim countries greatly increases the chances domestic terrorism.

Sometimes this risk will be worth it. However in the case of Afghanistan, for me and for many other Canadians this increased risk is intolerably high price to pay for involvement in a war that is costing us billions, is doomed to failure and in no way furthers our national interests.