[NZerFromHK]

You hear that, Canada?

(Note to administrators: the original title is too long to be posted here, and I apologize for changing the title)

[NZerFromHK]

Ping!

[Owl558]

"Australia is emerging as a global player and diplomatic powerhouse."

What do you mean emerging? Only if you've been asleep.

[jokar]

Good on ya for your self reliance and helping on the frontiers. Poor Canada has be come the fat and lazy ex wife of America.

Australia can only become more robust and independent from taking responsibility for it's own future. That makes you more desirable as an ally to all the country's of the world.

[Aussiebabe]

One very incorrect item in the article mentioned that we have comparable populations and militaries--although we have 20 million people and Canada 30 million, please don't compare our military to Canada's--the Canadian's just aren't in the same league as the Aussies--they lost the will to adequately fund and staff their military many years ago. Not sure the Canadians could repel an attack from Greenland.

[CeDex]

Out of respect, I'm certainly hoping members of the Canadian Armed Forces currently deployed in Afghanistan, which number four or five times that of what the Aussies have in Iraq, ARE NOT reading FreeRepublic right at this moment.

I'm referring to the COMMENTS posted here, NOT the news piece itself (which the average Canuck volunteer grunt over there would probably agree with).

Very disrespectful. And I'd imagine it would be somewhat demoralizing if they were reading it from over there as well. I'm actually embarrassed that nobody here seems willing to make the distinction between the ARTICLE and the volunteer Canadian soldier deployed.

But by all means. Carry on. It speaks volumes about some of the posters around here.

[tophat9000]

Well I not going to dump on Canadian across the board there is a good size minority in Canada that know the score and conversely the US has it's own moonbat minority... There are Free Dominion Canadian http://www.freedominion.ca/ and DU Americans

So as they say ..."There but for the Grace of God"...

And thank God for the Aussies

[I. M. Trenchant]

Owen Harries, a foreign policy advisor to previous Australian governments ...... [declares that] [d]espite his skepticism of Australia's over-arching ambition to be in the big leagues, [he] is contemptuous of Canada's more cautious foreign policy, [saying] I don't admire Canada's foreign policy very much. For a country of its weight, it should be doing more than engaging in good works."

Are we to conclude from his sanctimonious prattle that Harries thinks Canada should be engaging, not only in good works, but also in bad works, non-good works, silly works, macho works, mindless works, or, more likely, pretentious works that would give it an appearance of having military strength that Canada (like Australia) does not and never can have in a world in which U.S. power is utterly preponderant in every way -- except in putting down insurgencies?

[Northern Alliance]

Guys, we are all on the same side. And any country that has to wait until their policemen are KIA before arming them really doesn't have bragging rights about leadership.

[wildcatf4f3]

damn thats gotta smart for the Hockeyheads

[kittymyrib]

God bless the Aussies. They have the old "can-do" spirit that the US once had, but is woefully lacking today. Troops should be stationed on our southern border right now to stop the lawlessness there, but the president is too timid to fix the problem and people are dying because of it. It's so much easier to make speeches about securing the territory in Iraq than it is to secure Laredo, Texas. Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the Rio Grande, has had more people killed since Jan. than we've lost in the war in Iraq this year, and this malignant crime spree sends thousands of illegal criminals into the US. Many Texans still have the same spirit that Australians have, so we look for a good turnout of Texas Minutemen to patrol the border in Oct. and show the girlie-men like Fred Barnes how it CAN be done.