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Bomb Canada: The case for war
National Review, Nov 25, 2002 by Jonah Goldberg
It is no exaggeration to say that Jean Chretien is no friend of the United States. Shortly after 9/11 he made a series of idiotic remarks about how America essentially deserved what it got from al-Qaeda: We were attacked because we are too rich and arrogant, and the rest of the world is too poor and humble. He's never backed off those remarks and has even reiterated them. Chretien's view is the settled opinion of most of Canada's intellectual class.
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The Chretien government believes that the war on terrorism is basically illegitimate. Hence Chretien's mortifying foot-dragging before visiting Ground Zero; his insistence that it wouldn't be right to outlaw Hezbollah on Canadian soil; and his government's absurd hissy-fit over America's attempt to police its borders against immigrants from terrorist states who try to come through Canada. These policies are partly the product of a longstanding Canadian desire to be the U.N.'s favorite country: Breaking with its immediate family -- the U.S. and Britain -- Canada has found a new family in the "international community." Canada has internalized the assumptions and mythology of U.N.-ology: not just anti-Americanism but also the belief that Western nations don't need military might anymore. As a consequence, Canada is simply unarmed.
"Canada has never been able to defend itself," says Barry Cooper, a Canadian defense expert. "We've always had to rely on coalitions, be they British, French, or the Americans." The difference today, notes Cooper, is that Canada pretty much has no interest in even contributing to the coalition. Canada's military has an immensely proud tradition and by all accounts Canadian warriors remain an impressive lot, but they are ill-equipped and increasingly under-trained.
Canadians have long talked about how they are a "moral superpower" and a nation of peacekeepers, not warriors. While they were never in fact a moral superpower -- when was the last time a dictator said, "We'd better not, the Canadians might admonish us"? -- Canadians were at one time a nation of a peacekeepers who helped enforce U.N.-brokered deals around the world (Suez 1956, Congo 1960, etc.). Today, Canada ranks Number 37 as a peacekeeping nation in terms of committed troops and resources, and it spends less than half the average of the skinflint defense budgets of NATO. Chretien talks about not sending troops to Iraq; in truth, even if Chretien wanted to join the Iraq invasion, Canada's role would be like Jamaica's at the Winter Olympics -- a noble and heartwarming gesture, but a gesture nonetheless.
Despite Canada's self-delusions, it is, quite simply, not a serious country anymore. It is a northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility. Canada has no desire to be anything but the United Nations' ambassador to North America, talking about the need to keep the peace around the world but doing nothing about it save for hosting countless academic conferences about how terrible America is. It used to be an equal partner in NORAD, but now chooses to stay out of America's new homeland-defense plans -- including missile defense -- partly because it reflexively views anything in America's national-security interest to be inherently inimical to its own, partly because it draws juvenile satisfaction from being a stick-in-the-mud. In a sense, Canada is the boringly self-content society described in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, except for the fact that history continues beyond its shores.
