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Participant: Vox
Date: 2003-02-10 15:58:52
To give you a straight answer to your 1st question - No, you read me incorrectly. But before I proceed further, I would first like to address a concept that seems to elude many politicians and something that might have prevented endless grief suffered by many peoples throughout history.
A recent name given to the concept is "doublethink".
I believe it was coined by the British author George Orwell. It describes a person's ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in his mind and accept them both at the same time. Similarly, another author, an American by the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald stated that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function".
Personally, I find the latter description to be slightly more interesting.
From the emotional and reactionary tone of your message, you would seem to immediately tie the question of Canada's support of the US to perhaps a number of pre-existing gripes that you and perhaps Canada has with them. IMO, this is the same unfortunately mentality that Schroeder fell victim to when he connected his personal grievances to deny the US of support even if a UN resolution should ask for it. If you extend the analysis much further, you can detect certain similarities to the twisted mentality that drove people to feuds, ethnic hatred, the piling up of grievances, often one based on the other, that prevented people from discussing and cooperating on issues based on the merits of the arguments presented. It drove many people to mindlessly disagree with each other, ending up with blind hatred imposed on succeeding generations, and unending tragedy.
Some people refer to this as poison. They're right. It is poison because it can pervade and twist people's responses to so many things. It does not matter how worthy subsequent issues (or people) may be of eliciting cooperation or goodwill, deep-rooted bias and failure to "...hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" would doom those people to failure and misery, not only for them, but also for other people they so often "claim" to be responsible for (like their families, clans, tribes or countries).
It's unfortunate that the concept of "doublethink" has an esoteric quality to it because it really is a commonplace idea. One may also label it as being "sensible", "level-headed" and "open-minded".
So, IMO, it is foolish to tie a decision of supporting the US to past issues (or "baggage"). It's more constructive to tie it to current issues. I'll discuss a few of these below.
Regarding other people's opinion on the dangers of attacking Iraq, one can always find a contradicting opinion. You may perhaps recall pundits' opinions prior to the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan...etc. So where were these opinions afterwards? I think it is not fruitful to speculate either way. War is very risky but so should defying the world, using chemical and biological weapons on people and developing weapons that goes way beyond any self-defence requirements. By "stepping up to the table" and being the enforcer for the UN on this issue, the US serves the critical role of preventing the proliferation of WMD. We all live with the concept of being policed. While you and I may mean to be good abiders of laws we know it's not that simple.
You may complain that the US, France, UK, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, China and India (and possibly South Africa) all have WMD but again, use "doublethink"... what the US (and the UN) are saying is that "proliferation" and willingness to use WMD are the issues. Ideally, we want every nation to disarm but that's no longer possible - the Genie has been out of the bottle for many years. It IS hypocritical of us but we currently do not want to force the other nations to disarm because the complexities and risks involved "currently" outweigh the benefits.
As for linking Bin Laden with Hussein, everyone has theories and answers but the real truth lies with them. Once again, your emotionalism would seem to betray you. Why should you be so upset at the American people? The issue is really with Hussein. Because he defies all efforts from the world community to have him comply with UN resolutions on the issues of disarming, he poses a great risk as a "proliferater" of WMD. North Korea is already a "proliferater" of arms but presents a nastier risk because it may already have WMD and any escalation may justify Japan to re-arm. I may be wrong but if Japan has WMD it may suddenly become a huge problem for China and so on...again "doublethink" - you may want to call it hypocrisy but in this case that's just getting annoyed and as I've indicated, too much emotion can be problematic.
IMO, the US stands the most risk of being attacked by the first WMD used by terrorists. Terrorists of Bin Laden's nature want rapid global change to world order. His vision is to re-map and undo whatever we have at the moment. To do this he must quickly break down the current structure. The US is the de facto backbone of the current structure. Rogue nations like Irag, N. Korea and perhaps Iran may be tempted to let these terrorists "borrow" or "buy" a couple of WMD that may knock over their nemesis (i.e. the US). In the past, someone may try to blow up a car or a building but the government as a whole would survive. However with WMD, you can lose the whole city and the nation and perhaps the world would probably experience widespread chaos. No US head of state can allow that. I suppose our PMs never had to worry about being a target for a WMD but when you lead a country like the US, your operating mentality would be drastically different from Canada's, Germany's or France's. It's easy to criticize when you know the other party is really the one who will suffer the first blow. If we ignore this we would no longer "get it". And if we don't "get it" we'll likely fail miserably in diplomacy. IMO, Prime Minister Blair demonstrates clearly that he "gets it".
As for your observation about Canada vis-à-vis the EU, I wish others had similar clarity of thought.
Finally, I want to add that I did not post my original message to debate. I have many other matters that require my attention. I did not want to contradict other people but simply wanted to offer food for "doublethink". I only saw your message because I checked to see if my original message got posted.
Good luck to you and while I share some of your sentiments they do not get in the way of my view of what Canada currently needs to do in foreign policy. The word you should heed is "currently". If you really wish to take this further you can read up on "game theory". It offers very good guidance on how people can live more successfully with one another.
I must go now...cheers,
Vox Canadiana
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