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Participant: banquosghost
Date: 2003-03-20 20:19:24
"Canada has turned its back on democracy and human rights."
Presumably this means that had we chosen to saddle up and ride off with Buddy to blow up Iraq we would be a more democratic country demonstrating a stronger committment to human rights.
Irrespective of the clearly expressed will of the majority of Canadian citizens. Irrespective of the will of the majority of the citizens of the rest of the world excluding the US and maybe Bulgaria.
Democracy isn't the exclusive property of the US, something they get to validate as real or false. In fact there are many US citizens who would today strongly argue that their democracy is under attack from within their own borders by some of their fellow Americans. I have an American acquaintance for example, a historian in Virginia, who has for months been telling his non-US friends to boycott the US and it's products and to work to convince their governments to do the same because in his opinion the US has now gone beyond the pale. He's not alone by any stretch.
People are said to "vote their aspirations". If public opinion polling can be compared in any way to the process of voting then Canadians have let their aspirations be known by saying that they would only join in this attack if it was sanctioned by the UN. That's a strong statement of faith in democratically exercised multi-lateralism, noisy and time consuming as it usually is, and a strong expression of a fundamental democratic principle.
You appear to have scorn for both.
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