US losing faith in Canada

[TheBirdMan]

Originally posted by Willem


No you're not wrong. Bush is not well liked here. In fact we like him less than any president that I can remember, and I've been around for awhile. We liked Clinton, we can't stand Bush.

Hear-hear.

[Elok]

I, too, am not about to read 15 frigging pages, but I would like to say, if we're gonna nuke any US state, it should be Utah. Irradiated salt turns brown; we might be able to sell it to Japan as "farmland" in exchange for some high-quality electronics. Utah is the most useless chunk of real estate in the union. New Jersey smells funny but it seems to have some kind of valuable infrastructure, which might also be sold to Japan without the waste of nuclear weapons.
Anyway, to get back on topic, I'd like to say that Dubya doesn't seem to care in the slightest who's behind him, so the loss of Canada's precision assault beaver squadrons probably doesn't bother him much. As for me, I respect their opinion, even if I don't really respect Canada itself. Maybe if they stopped playing that daft game that's like hockey with brooms.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Loif


Obviously I'm not going to read through 312 posts before posting. Saw this one though and must say I have to agree. We are good friends with the USA but that doesn't mean we go along with whatever they do. I myself support Bush on this. I'm sure most Canadians do. Now, I'm off to read all of the posts in this thread. Back in a few hours (days?)

It's quite obvious you aren't bothering to watch the news or paying any attention at all to what's going on. A strong majority of Canadians, at least 60%, are opposed to this war. However, we would have supported it if it had been a UN led action.

[RedFred]

Originally posted by Elok
...Maybe if they stopped playing that daft game that's like hockey with brooms.

Curling? Broomball? Lacrosse?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by RedFred
Curling? Broomball? Lacrosse?

Yes.

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by Willem
A strong majority of Canadians, at least 60%, are opposed to this war. However, we would have supported it if it had been a UN led action.

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/31/poll030331

Only 48% of respondents to a recent poll say they see no justification for the war in Iraq, while 33% says it is justified. Ontario and the Praries are split almost even, and Alberta is more pro-war then anti-war. Only Quebec seems to be stead-fast against it (72%), but hell, they're steadfast against just about anything that anyone else does. Sorta like France .

I get the sense that Canadians are coming around, especially when cabinet ministers are shooting off their mouths with anti-American rhetoric and Chretien does nothing to rein them in.

As for a "UN-led" action, let's get serious here, that's basically just a US-led action with a UN rubber stamp, like Gulf War I. No rubber stamp, so we don't go? 18 other UN resolutions wasn't enough? 12 years of diplomacy and containment policies that directly led to 9/11 aren't enough to convince people that the status quo was no longer acceptable to the USA, and that finally removing the threat that Saddam poses to the region is somehow not a good idea?

[Arrian]

Man, you Canadians came out in force for this one.

Btw, apologies for the idjit US ambassador. Unecessary roughness, 10 yard penalty, automatic first down.

I consider Canadian help in Afganistan to be just as useful, militarily, as the same troops sent to Iraq. The issue here is diplomatic assistance, not military assistance. The US government did a horrific job of organizing support for this war, and now it's pissed off at the results. Bush had a concilliatory line in his pre-war press conference about our "friends & allies" having different opinions, but that we're all good buddies in the end... what the hell happened to that? If we had stuck to that, we might have begun to repair the damage. Now our ambassador to our #1 trading partner/neighbor/close ally goes and shoots his mouth off, proving that as in all things we've gotta try and prove that we do things bigger & better than everyone else (in this case, being *******s).

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by optimus2861

I get the sense that Canadians are coming around, especially when cabinet ministers are shooting off their mouths with anti-American rhetoric and Chretien does nothing to rein them in.

You get the sense from the media who have spent the whole week spreading FUD about what the US will do to Canada and talking to old soldiers and business people. Add to that Steven Harper's clownish anti-Canadian performance in parliament and it doesn't look too good. Why it seems as if there is more pro-war sentiment than there is, is that English Canada has been pretty much divided down the middle, but slightly anti-war, but in Quebec 4 out of 5 people oppose it.

Admittedly, Chretien could have been more forthright one way or another, but Canada would lose its considerable credibility as a fair player in the world if it went to war in Iraq. That's why the UN resolution is so important - Canada has made considerable international political capital for itself by being fair minded and multilateralist.

That's why everyone, except the US right now, likes you.

[Ben Kenobi]

Steven Harper's clownish anti-Canadian performance in parliament

Agathon:

Last I checked, we do around 85% of our trade with the US. How exactly is Harper's stance 'anti-Canadian?'

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by Agathon
You get the sense from the media who have spent the whole week spreading FUD about what the US will do to Canada and talking to old soldiers and business people.

It's not just old soldiers and business people who are pro-war. I'm 27, never held a gun in my life, and will never own my own business, and I think we're making a foolish mistake by tying ourselves to the inept bureaucracy of the UN instead of the democratic leaders of the USA, and by extension the free world.

Add to that Steven Harper's clownish anti-Canadian performance in parliament and it doesn't look too good.

Steven Harper's always been a clown, what's your point ? As a Maritimer, I think he's dangerously ignorant of this side of the country, and he forever lost my support with his "culture of defeatism" remark.

Why it seems as if there is more pro-war sentiment than there is, is that English Canada has been pretty much divided down the middle, but slightly anti-war, but in Quebec 4 out of 5 people oppose it.

Isn't that what I said with the poll numbers? Quebec was strongly opposed to Canada's fighting in WWII. They were wrong then, too.

That's why the UN resolution is so important - Canada has made considerable international political capital for itself by being fair minded and multilateralist.

Which UN resolution? 687? 699? 707? 715? 949? 1051? 1060? 1115? 1134? 1137? 1154? 1194? 1205? 1284? There's 14 for you, before UNSCOM was renamed to UNMOVIC. I can't find a similar list under the UNMOVIC links, though of course we've got 1441. All of them Iraq has failed to comply with, all of them passed the Security Council. Complying with the resolutions was a condition of the cease-fire signed in 1991. Iraq failed to comply, hence the cease-fire is broken and military action is justified, since all other avenues have failed to bring Iraq into compliance.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by obiwan18
How exactly is Harper's stance 'anti-Canadian?'

Depends. What did he say?