I think that Jeffrey Simpson is often quite wet but he nailed it with yesterday's column.
QUEBEC CITY -- The New Democratic Party, largely because it has never known the responsibility and discipline of power, views a frequently immoral world through the prism of moral crusades. Like so many Canadians, the NDP wants Canada to do good in a bad world, whose miseries the party instinctively blames on the United States.
The Bush administration therefore provides an irresistible target, for reasons quite easy to understand, but the instinctive anti-Americanism ingrained in the NDP runs deeper than distaste for this administration.
Anti-Americanism reflects New Democrats' suspicion of market capitalism, transnational corporate structures, free trade, wealth and, most profoundly, the use of power in international affairs -- all of which are associated negatively with the United States.
Instinctively siding with underdogs, New Democrats dislike top dogs such as the United States, and its friends such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the subject of almost universal loathing within the NDP. This dislike now infects the NDP's attitudes toward Israel, a country for which the early generations of Canadian socialists showed sympathy and solidarity, in contrast to today's party preferences for Palestinians whose struggle ignites the NDP's moral fire.
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THE COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER DEVASTATED ONE SMALL INVESTMENT FIRM. IT LOST ONE-THIRD OF ITS STAFF, INCLUDING MANY TOP EXECUTIVES. ALTHOUGH STUNNED BY WHAT THEY HAD BEEN THROUGH, THE SURVIVORS BANDED TOGETHER -- IN PART FOR THEIR LOST COLLEAGUES AND THOSE THEY HAD LEFT BEHIND. FIVE YEARS LATER, KBW IS BOOMING, THEY TELL HAWN McCARTHY, BUT THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME
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Of course, many New Democrats will take umbrage at this description, insisting some of their best friends are Americans. But even the most casual perusal of NDP speeches or review of party positions, let alone a glance at the many resolutions presented at this weekend's convention, demonstrates the fatuousness of this denial.
Leader Jack Layton's call for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan is the latest manifestation of this instinct, since he justified his position, in part, by insisting that Canada was foolishly following "George Bush."
It is true that after 9/11 -- the senior perpetrators of which had lived and thrived in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime -- the United States (and others) attacked Afghanistan to replace the regime.
Subsequently, seven United Nations resolutions (in contrast to the Iraq invasion) authorized the creation of a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, whose leaders since the beginning have come from Britain, Turkey, Germany, Canada, France and Italy. Normally, the NDP insists on UN approval for any international force projection, but once ISAF began to fight, it became part of U.S. war-making and therefore illegitimate for the NDP. Instead of stopping the Taliban from returning to power, as the UN wanted, the NDP stance was to negotiate with the Taliban -- over what, precisely, remained unclear.
Meanwhile, Mr. Layton proposed that Canadian forces take the lead in Darfur, without specifying how the African Union, which does not want NATO forces there, could be otherwise persuaded -- to say nothing of the Sudanese government.
But Darfur had taken on the allure of a moral crusade, more compelling apparently than that of the plight of ordinary Afghans under the Taliban, and so the ever-changing moral compass of the NDP swung toward Africa, the theory being that in Darfur Canadian soldiers would be keeping the peace rather than making war.
It was never clear, of course, just how the peace could be kept in Darfur without the application of force against marauding gangs who, with the encouragement of the government in Khartoum, murder, maim and rape. Nor was it clear how the unwanted Canadians would implant themselves in a place they knew next-to-nothing about, at the head of a force few other countries wished to join.
But the NDP, unschooled in the realpolitik of the world and besotted by anti-Americanism, has sought (with some success) to position itself domestically as the custodian of Canada's international virtue, however exaggerated that virtue might be and however overwrought it often appears in the eyes of the world.
Foreign policy is, of course, an extension of domestic politics. The call to leave Afghanistan, the party hopes, will fall on especially receptive ears in Quebec, where anti-Americanism is rife on the political left and in nationalist circles, and where all military commitments are regarded with inherent suspicion.
The other day, one of the old lions of the Parti Québécois, Jacques Brassard, penned an article imploring Quebec separatists to drop their anti-American, anti-Israel attitudes and offer a more balanced, and therefore a more realistic, view of the world.
It's too bad no NDP elder statesman would echo similar sentiments. Chances are, sadly, that such a call would be just as ignored in the NDP as Mr. Brassard's in the Bloc Québécois.
jsimpson@globeandmail.com |
