Posted on 01/14/2003 9:37:40 AM PST by quidnunc
The headline in a recent edition of National Review magazine was certainly an attention-grabber: "Bomb Canada: The Case for War." But such rhetoric was perhaps justified by the magazine cover, which showed four red-coated Mounties on horseback above a banner that read "Wimps!" Naturally, I bought the magazine to find out about "Canada's whiny and weak anti-Americanism."
I didn't take the article too seriously. I took statements such as "nothing would be better for Canada than a rabble-rousing, American-style democracy" and Canada is "not a serious country anymore" for what they were: a sardonic poke at the sanctimoniousness of Canadians who, even as they pretend to be a moral superpower, shelter beneath the U.S. military and economic umbrella. But then along came prime ministerial spokeswoman Françoise Ducros and the "moron affair."
It was not just the intellectual inanity of the Ms. Ducros's remark that made it so embarrassing, but the intellectual obtuseness it reflected. In calling President George W. Bush a "moron," she implied that the United States is somehow wrong to defend itself as it sees fit against terrorist attacks, and, indeed, that it is somehow at fault for those attacks. But to hear such an inherently anti-Americanism sentiment at the highest levels of the Canadian government was disturbing not only because of the ignorance it betrayed, but because such attitudes can lead to policies harmful to our relationship with the United States.
There is nothing new about Canadians' anti-Americanism, of course. Historically, "not being American" is a cornerstone of our identity. Resenting Americans allows us to feel good about our inadequacies. Throughout the Cold War, many Canadians were convinced the U.S. would be responsible for starting a nuclear war. (Why nobody thought the Soviets equally or even more likely touch to off the nuclear holocaust always puzzled me.)
The anti-Americanism we see now, however, seems particularly virulent and widespread. A recent Pew Research Centre survey found that the image of the United States is increasingly tarnished everywhere, but especially in the Middle East, and Central and Southeast Asia. Considering the high Muslim populations in these regions, such hostility is understandable, if misinformed. But why would someone like British playwright Harold Pinter declare the U.S. "the greatest source of terrorism on Earth?" How those who know better can regard the U.S. as an evil empire when the weight of historical evidence shows such views are unwarranted is an intellectual obscenity.
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So why, against all sense and evidence, is anti-Americanism so prevalent? Oddly enough, French intellectuals provide the most credible answer. Jean-François Revel, in his new book L'Obsession anti-américaine, and Philippe Roger, in his book L'Ennemi américain, argue that anti-Americanism is not necessarily connected to anything people fear the United States might do, but rather to their own inadequacies. The inability of Europe to repeat the economic success of the U.S., the failure of European social policies, the fracturing of national identity in the face of immigration and a post-imperial malaise born of waning global influence have all engendered an inferiority complex among European intellectuals. For them, the economic and military supremacy of the U.S. is a discomfiting reproach to Europeans' presumed cultural superiority.
Mr. Revel argues that the geopolitical rise of the United States is directly linked to Europe's abandonment of its responsibilities to defend western values. "American unilateralism," he writes, "is the consequence, not the cause, of the reduction of power in the rest of the world."
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Now it is the turn of Americans to suffer the consequences of resentment and envy. Presumably, they are sufficiently confident in their cause to take the anti-American posturing for what it really reflects the congenital inability of others to examine their own self-inflicted failings.
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(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
A recent poll of Canadian attitudes toward the foreign policy of the United States finally illustrates that, when it comes to the war on terror, Canada does not in fact stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. as Prime Minister Jean Chrétien once pledged.
Although nearly half of the survey's respondents believed that the United States, as the world's sole superpower, had a responsibility to ensure global security, nearly seven in 10 agreed with the statement that the U.S. was "starting to act like a bully with the rest of the world." The poll also found Canadians lukewarm about the prospect of a war against Iraq.
Experts such as Michael Sullivan of Strategic Counsel say the poll showed that Canadians, while sharing many of the same priorities such as combating terrorism as Americans, don't necessarily share many of the same values. "As Canadians, we take pride in our role as peacemaking and peacekeeping," said Mr. Sullivan. "I think that that is part of our personality. We take pride in medicare, we take pride in our peacekeeping role. And when we look at the U.S., we don't see those kind of values necessarily reflected."
Canadians pride themselves on being members of the world's only "moral superpower," one that exercises a "soft power" when it comes to world affairs. Why employ soldiers where endless conferences might do the trick? It's an attitude that has sparked an arrogance no less pronounced then the one Americans are accused of possessing.
Unfortunately, unlike the the U.S.'s alleged arrogance, ours is based on little more than wishful thinking.
Ashbrook Center analyst Robert Alt recently remarked that Canada played the role of America's little brother, the "kid who would get beat up by every passing punk, but for the fact that his brother is the biggest kid on the block. No one really respects the little brother, because they know that there is no merit in this accident of birth."
Without the United States, he wrote, Canada would be little more than a Third World country with a thriving hockey league.
They're the kind of comments that get Canadians' backs up, but unfortunately they're not far from the truth. Thanks to the bulwark of the United States, Canada is essentially isolated from having to make the tough decisions that American leaders have been forced to make every day since Sept. 11, 2001.
When it comes to the war over values and morality, it is Canada that is losing each battle. That was best illustrated by the prime minister's comments last September during an interview in which he suggested the blame for Sept. 11 rested in part on the United States due to global economic disparity.
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(Steven Martinovich in The Ottawa Citizen, January 4, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
O Canada!
Still on a guilt trip are thee?
If in 1812, she wisely joined,
a different history.
O Canada!
A Province today might be,
a wondrous State of,
the greatest place,
"from sea to shining sea."
Actually, it's simple wimp logic.
It's safe to be anti-American. Spouting anti-US slogans WON'T get you attacked by the US, but it might get you eaten by the Moslem crocodiles last. Criticizing evil such as Islam and North Korea is dangerous - why they might strike at you, being evil and all that. Demonstrating and burning US flags basically causes nothing to happen. Because they are GOOD.
WHOOOO-HOOOO!!
When I lived in Germany, Russia, and the Ukraine, when the locals would criticize the US president I'd ask who they voted for. They answer that they could not vote, to which I'd reply "of course, since he's the US president, he looks after the interests of the US. Not Europe, not Asia, not Africa." I don't expect Putin to work against Russian interests in America's favor, why should others expect the US to harm itself?
And the clincher: If US world domination with its Big Macs (which they are free not to eat), Coca Cola (which they are free not to drink), and movies (which they are free not to watch) is so bad, consider the alternative - Chinese, Russian, or Moslem world domination would not be so gentle.
Someone will always be on top, and others on the bottom. Where there is life there is struggle, and Kofi Annan cannot repeal Darwin.
Very true, but there's another component at work.
To the Euro mindset a way of thinking to which the Canadian elite and much of the electorate have whole-heartedly subscribed they have evolved a morally-superior social system and way of governance.
But, they ask themselves, if this is so why are they so irrevelant in the global scheme of things vis a vis the U.S.
To their minds the answer must be that a greedy and power-hungry America has engaged upon policies designed to make itself a hegemon instead of contributing to the common good of the world.
Really, it's just a variation of the justification which the Islamists cite for their hatred of the Great Satan.
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