Posted on 09/12/2002 5:30:31 AM PDT by Lorenb420
OTTAWA — The perceived greed of the Western world, including the United States, is one of the underlying causes of the horrific terrorist attacks of a year ago, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien says.
In an interview with CBC-TV, which aired last night, Chrétien said the unchecked greed of the West made it lose sight of the consequences of its actions 20 or 30 years into the future.
"I do think the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world,'' Chrétien said.
"We're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits.
"The 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more.''
Power cannot be exercised to the point that it humiliates others, the Prime Minister said in the documentary, in which he also revealed he authorized a Korean passenger jet to be blown out of Canadian skies if it appeared bent on heading for Vancouver or Toronto the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.
History is full of stories of power that was not curbed, Chrétien said.
"There is a moment when you have to stop, a moment when you are very powerful,'' he said.
Chrétien, who will speak to the United Nations in New York on Monday, said he made the same point once before to an audience of Wall Street magnates in New York who were complaining to him about Canada maintaining relations with Cuba.
"I said: `When you're powerful like you are, you guys, this is the time to be nice.' That's one of the problems. You cannot exercise your power to the point of humiliation for the others," Chrétien said.
"The Western world, not only the Americans, but the Western world has to realize because they are human beings, too.
"There are long-term consequences if you don't look hard at the reality in 10 or 20 or 30 years from now.''
The CBC documentary also shed new light on a tense landing of a Korean Air passenger jet in Whitehorse in the Yukon.
The plane was believed to have been hijacked and the drama unfolded only hours after four hijacked planes south of the border unleashed their carnage.
Chrétien said he knew he was faced with a decision that he might have to regret for the rest of his life. "If there is a plane, and they tell you there is a plane that can go and land in Toronto and kill thousands of people, you have no choice,'' he said. "So you say you have no choice, you have to do it. Of course, I would have been responsible for killing 300 people, but it's better ... you have no choice.''
The Korean 747, with 300 passengers aboard, had radioed that it had been hijacked.
Chrétien allowed American fighter pilots to trail the passenger jet because Canadian CF-18s based in Inuvik could not catch up to it.
The Prime Minister said he authorized the plane to be shot down if it showed any "hostile'' movements, but stipulated that the decision be made by him, not the U.S. pilots. American authorities refused to allow the plane to land in Alaska. They told Canadian NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence) Brig.-Gen Angus Watt that the plane was being diverted into Canadian airspace.
In the chaos of Sept. 11, it was feared the plane would head down the west coast toward Vancouver.
"They explained to me the situation. They could not communicate with this plane and they didn't know where it was going,'' Chrétien told the CBC's Peter Mansbridge. "So he (Watt) said `we might have to shoot it down.'
"And I said, `yes, if you think they are terrorists, I said, you call me again but be ready to shoot it down'
"So, I authorized it in principle, yes. It's kind of scary when you know this plane, with hundreds of people, and you have call a decision like that.''
The plane ultimately landed without incident in Whitehorse. The radio dispatch was blamed on language confusion.
Chrétien also told the CBC he feared for his own safety after the RCMP had told him not to leave his home at 24 Sussex Dr. "If they want to get me, it's easy,'' Chrétien said he thought at the time.
He told his wife Aline to leave the official residence and head to another residence at Harrington Lake.
She refused.
Transport Minister David Collenette also revealed that in deciding to divert all Canadian air traffic to the east coast, he was concerned about keeping jets away from Toronto and Montreal because Ottawa had reports that as many as 12 hijacked jets could still be in the air. For a time, one of the potential hijacks was believed headed for Hamilton.
Collenette said he assumed other attacks were still planned and that the planes would not go back to New York, making a Canadian attack a possibility.
"I remember thinking a plane could be coming here,'' Collenette said.
Finance Minister John Manley, who was foreign affairs minister at the time, received the news aboard a commercial flight from Frankfurt to Toronto. He told the CBC he was informed of what had happened by Lufthansa flight attendants and his first fear was the possibility that terrorists had entered the United States from Canada.
NONSENSE!
My wife had an interesting insight yesterday: While watching CBS news explain to us how we had brought the 9/11 attacks upon ourselves, she commented on the similarity between anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism. She felt that both sentiments were nothing more that institutionalized envy. That the success of Jews in Europe and the middle east is the “root cause” (if you will forgive the liberal language) of anti-Semitism, and that the success of Americans on the global stage is the “root-cause” of anti-Americanism.
And that the degree to which we are hated is dictated by the difference between our level of success, and the success level of the envier. Thus the English find us tolerable if annoying, the French find us to be insufferable and arrogant, and the Arabs find us to be the great Satan.
She also saw a parrallel between the sincere (albeit temporary) outpouring of affection for the US in Europe last year, and the temporary outpouring of sympathy for Jews in Europe after the Holocaust. (I don’t mean to equate the deaths of 3000 with several million, but you get the idea)
Since envy is not a sin I’m particularly prone to, her thought was quite the revelation to me. Her conclusion seems obvious enough. But the question I have is: If success leads to envy, and envy to the sort of institutionalized envy of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, then maybe we really did bring it on ourselves. But given the conscious choice, would we really have it any other way?
And if we know that to succeed further is to incur the wrath of the least …lets call them the least influential… then should our foreign policy change to reflect that? Do you think this is an argument for imposing a PAX AMERICANUS?
At least he is good at something...
Mike
Huh. Some might say that the poor world is staying too poor in relation to the civilized, capitalist world (or even the quasi-capitalist social democracies).
I think you mean cretin, which is really close to Chretien, now that I think about it...
There will always be a desire, among the less successful, to attribute their station to the doings of those who have more. Ludwig von Mises commented on this in The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. This is part of the reason that the approval of despotisms will never be extinguished: If Smith's whole life is regulated by a power too large and too strong for him to oppose, then Smith might not have much, but among the things he doesn't have is personal responsibility, a burden he might prefer not to carry.
The great danger for Americans is that we're altogether too ready to accept transferred responsibilities. It's why we police the world, which, though we do it justly and well, isn't really our job to do by any rational standard. It's why we hand out billions each year in "foreign aid," which is always premised on noble motives and always comes back to bite us on the glutei maximi. It's why we're forever seeking the approval of others, which puts those others in charge of our destinies when they can't even manage their own affairs.
A modicum of Randian bird-flipping and a stronger resolve to do only what we know is right, objectively required of us, or in our own personal and national interests would serve us well. Better, at any rate, than further bowing and scraping in assumed but unearned guilt toward the assertions of moral imbeciles like Jean Chretien.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Trust me, he's doing everything he possibly can.
A few people took me to task for my "insensitivity." H*ll, I'm not the one who's "insensitive"; that distinction belongs to people like Prime Minister Cretin here.
Why it's so hard to see that people like this, abroad AND within our own borders, are ALSO part of the problem is beyond me.
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