04.18.2013 06:02 AM

Boston: when silence improves the debate

Harper looks bad for recklessly politicizing a terrible tragedy. Trudeau looks bad for being completely out of his depth.

Advantage: Mulcair, for knowing when to keep his mouth shut.

28 Comments

  1. billg says:

    Yep. I expect better from my PM, and, I expected JT to stumble a bit.
    I’d say my guy blew it on this one.

  2. catherine says:

    Trudeau had a direct question posed to him, Mulcair didn’t. There will be lots of things Trudeau is asked to comment on that Mulcair isn’t. That goes along with being a media focus.

    • catherine says:

      I should add, that I don’t think having little media attention and consequently not speaking on many subjects of public interest is a benefit to Mulcair. Polls show Mulcair is the least well known by a considerable margin.

      Harper is acting a bit manic, with ads out immediately, taking a swipe at Trudeau on Boston, while Harper is overseas at the Thatcher funeral and was not even asked about this, releasing a letter from Trudeau on the temp worker case, when this is primarily the NDP line of questioning. I get the impression Harper worries that Trudeau will mature into his new role very quickly and Harper can’t afford to waste a single day or a single opportunity right now in attacking him.

  3. dillon says:

    The Prime Minister correctly states what the Canadian response to an act of terror should be. Trudeau seems to be saying we should hug the poor marginalzed perpetrator. He should be attacked for spewing this tripe and Mulcair shows no balls by keeping quiet. Leaders should let the people know where they stand immediately after the event. The victims need to be backed.

    • Jen says:

      I would have preferred something in the middle, if either of them were going to say anything at all. Condemn it strongly in no uncertain terms. Extend empathy and concern to the people who are suffering. Find the perpetrators. Look at root cause as part of long term approach, not as an alternative to addressing the issue that has already taken place. It is possible to do all of it. We don’t have to bloody well choose. It’s like saying “Don’t bother the quitting smoking thing, just treat the cancer harshly when it shows up!”
      Why can’t we do both? We can do both. It’s a bullshit argument. It’s just another trick to stir up people’s already inflamed emotion and plant a little more fear and freak-out factor at the mos insensitive and callous of times for totally inappropriate political reasons. It’s bullshit.

      I was a little stunned to see the PM explicitly say “No root cause investigation!” It sounded like someone bragging about their own stupidity to me. Like, forget about figuring out why this happens so we can prevent it. Just get mad and lash out with righteous anger. The harshly dealing with things approach is all about anger and is disinterested in problem solving. Very little prevention or prioritization of the safety of the public is involved in it and. If it worked as a stand alone approach, it would have worked already. We already know it doesn’t.

      • ray says:

        when overseas Steve dares to speak
        you know the squeak is getting greased
        when 66 die in a Baghdad square
        and no-one sees and no-one cares
        you know it’s karma time in paradise
        we never should have listened, we should have thought twice
        it’s karma time in paradise
        time for us to pay the price.

    • Ted B says:

      Sorry, bud, but you lie.

      Where did he say anything about “hug the poor marginalized perpetrator”?

      Don’t waste your time looking because you won’t find it.

      He condemned the attacks and the terrorists. He backed up the victims while Harper shamelessly politicized the tragedy. Trudeau ALSO said if we want to avoid another tragedy like this, we need to make sure we work at removing the factors that turn ordinary citizens into terrorists.

      Why don’t you and Harper want to stop the next terrorist attack? Do you really think it is better to let someone kill and put him in jail than it is to prevent the attack in the first place?

      • Curtis Joynt says:

        Touché Ted.

        • Tisme says:

          The vapid right are running scared and digging in every rat-hole to try and discredit an opponent they rightly fear. Ted B has it square on. Dillon sounds like the those in the Twittersphere who are twisting JT’s words to create a Frankenstein monster. The harder they try the worse they look.

      • AP says:

        Ted is right. The correct response to Harper’s comments is that once again he shows how closed-minded and anti-evidence he is. Really what’s Harper saying? “I saw some really bad things on TV. I have no idea who did this and why but its bad. I don’t care to know why this happened. I go by what I see. I don’t need fancy pointy headed types to tell me what I see – which is bad.” It’s the same attitude he has on crime, on Statistics Canada or any other issue he identifies as “leftist.”

        Harper: He’s small-inded, angry and powerful. You can be one of those things but not all three at once.

      • Swervin' Merv says:

        Maybe Harper wants to suppress thinking about “root causes” because, as CNN reported yesterday, an anlysis of the 77 people who tried to carry out a bombing in the U.S. “for political purposes” since 9/11 shows that 48 (almost two-thirds) were “right-wing extremists.”

      • patrick says:

        Well, thinking is overrated.

    • Big Bad Jim says:

      As a conservative I agree with Dillon. Justin shot himself in the foot with political correctness. I suspect that Harper was expecting him to walk into that one and merely capitalized on it.

      As a conservative I have heard the liberals say all this for the last several decades – and we still don’t ‘have an understanding’ of the swine responsible for this. Sorry, but good intentions aside you cannot negotiate with people that score political points by killing unarmed women and children with sneak attacks. That is savagery, and only the basest animals will indulge in it.

      One of Justin’s numerous other flaws is that he is predictable and you can bet Harper is going to be able to outmaneuver him.

      • GPAlta says:

        You are assuming that this was a politically motivated terror attack, even though no one has yet claimed any responsibility or attempted to use it to advance any cause. I think Justin was trying to say that we should find out what this was before deciding what to do about it, and he was perhaps inelegant in that. If this turns out to have been the act of a schizophrenic who fell through the cracks of the health care system, Justin’s comments will seem much more wise than Harper’s.

  4. Pipes says:

    Trudeau responded to this like a social worker not a leader. Very disappointing.

    No disrespect to social workers.

    • Lawrence Barry says:

      +1

    • David Bronaugh says:

      Why do you think terrorists are terrorists? Do they occur in a social vacuum?

      Check yourself. Terrorism is fundamentally a social problem. Like many social problems, both a police and a social response are required.

  5. J.W. says:

    I hope the Libs keep using Dominic LeBlanc as a hit man or attacker back at Harper when these incidents occur as they will over and over.
    He did a great job hammering Harper on the CBC political show last night: “What kind of person, would think like this? The body of an 8 year old is still in the morgue, and Harper is politicizing this.”
    Justin the high road; Dominic the low road.

  6. JH says:

    I’m afraid his response just feeds into the hug-a-thug scenario that Liberals have been accused of supporting. The NDP guy on P&P supported the Cons take, so they may avoid the criticism. And it’s no good screaming at me about this. Polls show Canadians support tougher crime measures and sentencing. Cons know it and play to it.

    • J.W. says:

      I guess the NDP’s immediate unqualified support for Harper’s comment made on the CBC political show, tells us what’s coming over the next 2 years?

  7. Austin So says:

    There is nothing fundamentally wrong with what JT said…though I think he misused the term “root causes” to explain the need to figure out who was involved first before pointing fingers.

    There is a need to understand what drives people to perform heinous acts, like this, like Newtown, like Columbine, like 9/11. If you don’t, this stuff will keep on happening.

    But these are issues to be dealt with on an ongoing basis.

    He made a rookie mistake of timing and saying too much (it was however a one-on-one interview rather than a scrum). Let’s hope he’ll learn from it.

    Sometimes you need to take punches, and sometimes you get knocked down, but you learn from it, pull yourself up and keep fighting. The key is always to play your game and adjust it to others if you want to win.

  8. Marc L says:

    Get used to it. It’s bound to happen when you elect a leader based on his lineage rather than his experience, knowledge, realizations and vision. There will be more.

  9. Jamie says:

    It was a weak, dumb response. You don’t get to be Prime Minister without being a politician first and JT demonstrated a very tin ear. There will be a time to talk about root causes – like when arrests are made there is some indication of motive. Now was NOT the time.

    Being a Liberal should be synonymous with being thoughtful, not with being weak.

  10. Michael Reintjes says:

    um..anyway….someone sent me this and I thought it was nice…….and why terrorists will never win
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzMsagY7oRs

  11. GFMD says:

    Yes, the time to consider root causes is not today. It was YESTERDAY.

  12. Jamie says:

    @GFMD – That’s a ridiculous statement. How are we supposed to know the “root causes” of this incident before any arrests have been made and perpetrators identified. You don’t know whether this is an organized terrorist attack or the work of a lone kook or small band of kooks with no rational motive.

    If it was an organized terrorist attack from an group that has a specific political motivation, we don’t know whether they are foreign or domestic. We don’t know if they are – or claim to be – a religious-based group or not. It could be Al Queada, or US militia members or whatever.

    So tell me how we address the “root cause” without knowing even this?

    Let me also make this educated guess. If the perpetrators turn out to be muslim and motivated by their concept of jihad, I’m sure you will take it as proof positive that US foreign policy should undergo and wholesale change, that the US has supported Arab dictators rather than the Arab street, etc. But what is they are members of a US militia group angry with Obama and convinced their “rights” are under assault? This attack did take place in the birth place of the American Revolution. Will you sympathetically implore us to consider the root causes of their actions then? Or will you just want to hang the bastards?

    • GFMD says:

      By addressing the root causes of all known acts of violence, whether foreign or domestic terrorism or mental instability. Heck, even crime generally. It’s NEVER wrong to think about what causes these kind of thing and work toward stopping them in the future.

      No offense, dude, but DUH.

  13. patrick says:

    Real men remove cancer by the chunk: prevention is for pussies.

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