You're right...obscure....And it was an "opinion" of a columnist, not an Editorial by the publisher of the paper....She is a paid opinion. And NOTE that she did NOT say WHERE nor WHEN the supposed "slur" occurred....Blithely skips by that entirely, waiting for silly people to not pay attention to questioning her "word."
She evidently isn't in love with the US. There are many of her leftist columns here....and this is what she had to say immediately after the 9-11 attack on the US...She had perhaps forgotten that we are all citizens of the world, and that Canada could have been the target as well.
Who would come to Canada's rescue? Right...the good ole' USA.
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You think you can find a 'safe' harbour? Not in this world
By HEATHER MALLICK
Saturday, September 15, 2001 – Page F14
Never has the word "harbour" sounded so sinister.
"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them," U.S. President George W. Bush has said, words I interpret with a sinking heart. "Harbour" is an amorphous word and therein lie dangers. We all harbour something and we should consider this question now, not later.
Why does he say he will make "no distinction"? That's what statecraft is, the art of making the finest of distinctions in an atmosphere that clamours for good and evil, black and white. Politics may demand this oversimplification and it will make Bush popular. But popularity is a soft bed; the nails are underneath.
And what does he mean by harbour? To "harbour" means to nurture, to shelter and protect, as the countless valleys and caves of Afghanistan are said to do for Osama bin Laden today and as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency did 15 years ago when it financed and protected the Saudi-born fanatic during the Islamic holy war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden was America's adoptee, as dozens of other thugs have been over decades. The United States harboured him.
Now, they have demonized him, which is difficult to square with BBC world affairs editor John Simpson's astonishing 1989 encounter with bin Laden in Afghanistan and his description of him in his latest book, A Mad World, My Masters,as a blithering idiot. Bin Laden, then a hyper, youngish man, frantically offered $500 cash to anyone present who would kill Simpson and his film crew then and there.
When the Afghan warriors who were present refused, bin Laden threw himself "on a camp bed, weeping and beating his fists on the pillow out of frustration." Simpson said he felt like offering his condolences.
The CIA is given $30-billion (U.S.) a year to think ahead, yet it didn't predict the New York attack. Let's think for them and make some of the fine distinctions that Bush declines to make.
Canadians are unnerved by reports that terrorists may have entered the United States from Canada. That is because we see Canada as a nice place and harbouring is what we do best.
We didn't knowingly harbour these people, but we did shelter draft dodgers. We boast of our harbouring tendency, the same way we boast about peacekeeping. We would like to be a Switzerland, but our proximity to the Americans makes that impossible.
Only this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 in a noticeably smug tone that the country must not extradite accused killers if they face execution. It left room for "exceptional cases," but it made it clear that given the choice now, it would not extradite Charles Ng as it did in 1991. Ng, who has now been sentenced to die for the murder and sexual torture of 11 Americans in the mid-1980s, was harboured by Canada for six years.
Is harbouring a selective moral concept, or a useful political one, where it is fine to shelter people for their utility? We harboured Ng out of a twisted sense of morality that caused great pain to many Americans. The United States backed bin Laden out of their insane notion that whatever he was, he wasn't a Communist.
You may say I am making unnecessary distinctions and that any alleged terrorist smart enough to use Canada as a harbour would be considered extraditable. I disagree. James Kopp, a Christian fundamentalist terrorist accused of killing abortionists, found a legal hideout in France and to get him back, the United States had to promise France he would never be executed.
He was France's boy, as was the Ayatollah Khomeini.
France chose to protect him. Any number of countries -- Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Panama, Colombia -- could be accused of making a habit of "harbouring" terrorists, but the United States has used them or alienated them all, depending on its mood.
Americans are incoherent with shock and they'll be apoplectic if Canada doesn't immediately hand over suspects, should we appear to be harbouring any. But it will be difficult for Canada to do the doormat thing when the suspects' lawyers appeal, as they will, to the Supreme Court.
If the Taliban in Afghanistan continues to harbour bin Laden, what then? It is an awkward truth that the Taliban's essential prop is neighbouring Pakistan, which is in an untenable position, given its populace's overwhelming support for the Taliban.
The Americans will have to find the hated harbour itself. George Bush Sr. couldn't find the warlord Aideed in Somalia and Bill Clinton couldn't find bin Laden in 1999. If they can't find him now, presuming that he is even the target, their instinct will be to bomb, and it will work as well as it did in Vietnam, this time in a world packed with nuclear arms. Pakistan has nuclear capability.
Thus the word "harbour" becomes fraught, subject to almost infinite distinction. If a harbour is a target, it's a shifting one.
It's not comfortable to be harboured and it is not comfortable harbouring. It is complicated, the kind of situation Bush is least able to cope with. What ill luck that it should come to a head under his leadership, which we are morally bound to follow.
hmallick@globeandmail.ca
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