Chantal Hebert had me until this point.
...The Prime Minister's decision to take on public opinion and invest his political capital in a dicey Afghan mission is more reminiscent of Chrétien's shepherding of the Clarity Act and of his gutsy decision to keep Canada out of Iraq than of anything Martin handled.In hindsight, those two Chrétien moves have come to look like no-brainers. But they originally did not inspire anything resembling a popular consensus. That came later, after the prime minister had made his case.
I will trust Ms. Hebert's judgment on the Clarity Act but keeping our troops out of Iraq was the easy way out - it was the furthest thing from a gutsy decision. It would be have been gutsy if PM Chretien said that he had looked at the evidence and there is not compelling reason to act and/or Hussein does not pose an immenent threat. However PM Chretien said he would commit troops only under the direction of the UN. That is not leadership, that is punting. By trying to display an "independent foreign policy" he tied our foreign policy to some less than stellar democracies (or worse) at the UN.
Comments (4)
I’m not sure the Clarity act was so gutsy. It was basically a steal from a 1994 (ie, pre-referendum) private member’s bill, proposed by a young man named Stephen Harper.
Posted by MarkC | March 15, 2006 9:39 AM
Posted on March 15, 2006 09:39
I agree with you. Staying out of Iraq was the opposite of gutsy. It was the standard do nothing, coast-along-and-maybe nobody-will-notice-us Liberal governing style that made me want to puke.
Posted by Jeff | March 15, 2006 11:22 AM
Posted on March 15, 2006 11:22
Nice catch on this VERY uncharacteristic slip by Hébert. An article last year (forget what paper) reported that Chrétien was polling about whether to go into Iraq or not until just days before his announcement. Hébert should know this.
Posted by AD | March 15, 2006 11:53 AM
Posted on March 15, 2006 11:53
Another parallel is going to be on the media front.
Martin was always distracted by the need to feed the media.
Chretien wanted to to make governance look like golf, something to be left to the steady of nerve.
Posted by anon | March 15, 2006 1:51 PM
Posted on March 15, 2006 13:51