01.30.2015 07:15 AM

63 per cent of Canadians are traitors

When I told one of the advisers to Justin Trudeau why I supported the International effort against ISIS/ISIL – and when I pointed out that I agreed with right-wing extremist warmongers like Barack Obama, Lloyd Axworthy and Bob Rae – I was told Messrs. Axworthy, Rae et al. were “traitors” to the party, because they’d disagreed with the leader. That’s a quote.

I guess us traitors can be comforted with the news that we’re not entirely alone. Here’s hoping we all get a big cell with a window!

38 Comments

  1. Brachina says:

    I don’t agree with you on IS, but being called a traitor because you have a different opinion on a particular policy then your leader is insane. I disagree with Mulcair on a GMO moratorium, which I oppose, but no one in the NDP, and certainly not an adviser to Mulcair, would call me a traitor for simply having a different opinion.

  2. Patrice Boivin says:

    political parties are like cults to some people. The “party” is greater than them, will outlive them into posterity so they may as well hitch onto it, the Leader is great, etc.

    Others are in it for personal gain, not for the general population.

    There are people like that in all the parties. Which is why many Canadians don’t vote and/or think the political system reeks.

  3. MCBellecourt says:

    I think what most people have a problem with is that we’re not being given the full story about Canada’s (or, should I say Harper’s) role in the mission. Canada, economically speaking, is on eggshells right now, since Harper put all the eggs in the tar sands basket and the price of oil and the loonie value have both tanked. The so-called “war effort” is being used as a diversion from the dismal job the Cons have done with Canada’s finances.

    With this government especially the Opposition should never take anything they say at face value. Look at the mess Obama got left with after Dubya finished playing with his war toys. We, too, are going to be left with an unholy mess, you can bet on it. The cost of the mission itself and the inevitable mission creep that we’re witnessing will leave us with our very own Vietnam.

    And we, as a nation, wiiollo not only be much poorer financially for it, we will be poorer in national spirit and reputation as well.

  4. graham watt says:

    Everyone sucked in to the fear vortex. Harper strikes again.

  5. Mary says:

    So this war in Iraq is good, but the 2003 war wasn’t? Why? Because we trust the motives of the US more this time?

    • Matt says:

      Well for starters, the government of Iraq specifically requested our assistance in dealing with ISIS.

    • MississaugaPeter says:

      Equating 2003 with 2015 is asinine.

      No one in Iraq in 2003 was encouraging terrorist attacks in Canada.

    • Elisabeth Lindsay says:

      Mary……Big difference. In 2003 we were AGAINST Iraq.

      In 2015 we are HELPING Iraq.

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        Elisabeth,

        Let’s follow the usual coalition strategy, preferably with no questions asked. That’s just what Iraq needs — the West fumbling and bumbling its way for an additional ten to fifteen years with little to show for it in the way of definitive success.

        ISIL knows how to go underground.

  6. Joe says:

    Based on evidence not innuendo I believe the LPC under its present leader to be the most dictatorial party in Canada. From determining what the candidates must believe before receiving the nomination to rigging the nominations in favour of the leader’s candidate to red lighting a formerly green lighted candidate because a “better” candidate has entered the race. At present it displays a bully mentality that I can not support.

    • Mark says:

      I completely agree. I have been a LPC supporter since I was old enough to vote (just missed the 1980 election) and worked on Chretien’s leadership campaign in Montreal in 1984. To paraphrase John Nance Garner’s characterization of the US vice presidency, I say “the Liberal Party of Canada isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit”… at least not for the moment. Sad.

  7. Al in Cranbrook says:

    For some truth about what other forces are doing over there, a straight up column by Matthew Fisher, NP…

    http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/01/28/matthew-fisher-openness-over-combat-with-isis-bites-harper-government/

    Truth which nobody else in the MSM seems to think Canadians need to know.

    Truth the Kumbaya crowd doesn’t want to know. Truth they apparently think we can make go away by collectively donning our sparkly little red slippers and clicking the heels together three times.

    • doconnor says:

      “Truth which nobody else in the MSM seems to think Canadians need to know.”

      The real problem is that the government didn’t want them to know either. Do you have a quote from anytime before this broke where it was explained our troops would be doing this kind of thing?

  8. Patrick Deberg says:

    My take on this action we have undertaken.

    ” Asked to evaluate the French Revolution nearly 200 years later, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was famously reported to have replied, “Too early to say.”

    And so we are faced with the invasion of Northern Iraq.
    Fact. Is ISIL horrendous? Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
    Are we going to tip the scales? No.

    Is it a noble endeavor? In a last hope, tragic, misinformed, storm the barricades way of thinking. Will we win? No. How do we win? We can’t. Will lives be lost? With certainty.

    Colin Powell the decorated soldier that had to break with his government gave us the mideast pottery barn rule. And so in the last 100 years we have broken Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Somalia, Kuwait and never owned it.

    And now this Harper government in it’s hubris has decided to bring the fire to something it has pompously decided to cut itself away from due to it’s ideology. So now we fight the Islamic, Extremist, threat. Without understanding Islam.
    Defining extremest, and plunging Canada into a war on the ground halfway across the world. And we are to blindly trust the most right wing government in Canadian history to lead us because of their leadership? Why wait 200 years to make a bad decision? Our children need this decision now.

    • Peter says:

      I assume you are prepared to look the Kurds, Yazidi and Iraqi Christians in the eye, share all that profound fatalistic wisdom with them and tell them they are on their own and there is nothing we can do for them?

      • Patrick Deberg says:

        Iraq/ Iran war 500,000 Iraqi dead and 750,000 Iranian dead.
        Iraq war 152,068 dead
        Saddams Iraq deaths 100,000
        Iraq – Kuwait 153,000 troops and civilians.
        How many of these people do you think you could look in the eye? If tough guys really wanted to end these struggles full of carnage they would immediatly stop the sale of weapons to countries that one week are our friends, next week are our enemies.
        or we could actually let thousands of these people immigrate but there will be all kinds os reasons this can’t be done. Money trumps everything and only a fool believes otherwise. I hate their suffering but storming the gats of heaven will not change a thing. Work on solar power and then oil will fade as a weapon of mass destruction that is continually killing millions of the people in these countries.

  9. wsam says:

    The great thing about the ‘debate’ we are having in Canada is the complete lack of context. It is the context of no context and Harper is exploiting it and Canadians are lapping it up. It is baffling Trudeau is not able, or not trying to, contextualize our involvement. I believe if he was able to raise the level of debate to what we are actually involving ourselves in Iraq Canadians would be hesitant. Obama clearly didn’t want to get involved and had to pressured by CNN and FOX showing Americans scary stuff on their TVs.

    This is where Trudeau should be starting:

    In 2003 George Bush lied to convince America to invade Iraq. In 2004, as Iraq disintegrated into tribal and anti-American jihadi chaos, he thumped John Kerry to win re-election. In 2014 Stephen Harper lied to Canadians about what their troops would be doing in Iraq. That he lied is unavoidable. The Conservative Party is celebrating that lie by hiding behind our soldiers. The fact that the Conservatives do not want to admit is Canada is now involved in a five-sided war. This war has as its cause by the original invasion of Iraq, which Stephen Harper supported. We are right in the middle of a Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia. How did Canada become a proxy of Saudi Arabia? Or are we a proxy of Iran? Do we even know what we are doing? How do we know we are not making things worse? Do we even know what success will look like? How much Canadian treasure will have to be spent?

    Of course it is easier to hurumf that Canadians soldiers are killing bad guys.

  10. domenico says:

    Bingo.

    Don’t get sucked in by war hysteria. Yes Isis are terrible but we are on the side of Saudi Arabia? How will this war fix Iraq and Syria? What is the end game? Or is this all part of an election strategy by Harper?

  11. Christian says:

    Just a question for those who were there (I was an observer). But isn’t this sort of behaviour i.e.: calling party stalwarts “traitors” and isolating them one of reasons why the Liberal Party collapsed into a disasterous civil war?

  12. terraderma says:

    Liberals, Cons. Same tie, different colour. Only their leaders make any difference, policy or otherwise.

  13. davie says:

    First, I was not aware that a political party had the power to throw members who disagree with the leadership into jail. Perhaps there is an exaggeration there.

    Second, my version is that Baghdad has a government heavily on the side of Shia in Iraq; Kurds have a USA supported autonomy within Iraq. Some Western based oil companies have significant holdings in oil facilities in Kurd controlled areas of Iraq. Sunni people in Iraq have been marginalized for almost a decade.
    We sent weapons and money to assorted rebel groups in Syria, including faith based rebel groups.
    We gave someone there sarin, and when they used it on civilians, we just about had our excuse to attack the government in Syria. Russia outfoxed us…but we are fixing them now.
    Some faith based groups committed terrible crimes in Syria, and one, Islamic State, committed atrocities for over two years.
    Islamic State began operations in Sunni areas of Iraq, and were well received by a marginalized community. Islamic State gave non believers the choice of conversion, special tax, or death. Our media focused on the deaths.

    But, when IS in Iraq seized oil facilities in Kurd areas, and sold oil at half price, we moved.
    Canada announced it would attack Islamic State in Iraq. In response, Islamic State (our media tells us) announced actions against Canada.

    I understand that we sent our military to Iraq to ‘degrade’ Islamic State. I assume ‘degrade’ means deprive IS of those oil facilities, but it could be there is some added measurable state of degradation our government has in mind for Islamic State.

    Something that irks me in our political life is the misuse of our military. That 63% of my fellow Canadians are for continuing 25 years of warfare on the people of Iraq is a testament to a very successful propaganda campaign.

  14. Pat O. says:

    As someone not constitutionally Tory, this situation troubles me. Despite all the machismo, beards and moustaches, yelling and boxing, Mulcair and Trudeau lack courage. True progressives:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk36pP_yD-Q&t=11m32s

  15. wsam says:

    I agree. Canada has firmly planted its flag with Team Dumb. If polls are to be trusted, 63% of Canadians are explicitly supporting the same bunch of failed of ideas which brought us the original, disastrous invasion of Iraq. The worst strategic blunder since Napoleon invaded Russia.

    It might not be true and doesn’t really matter at this late stage, but Seymour Hersh has reported (London Review of Books, V36#8), that it was Turkey who supplied the Sarin used in Syria. The intention was to ‘trick’ Obama that Assad had crossed a ‘red line’. According to Hersh’s reporting, Obama confronted Erdoğan and the respected Turkish Minister accompanying him during a state dinner at the White House, telling them he knew what they had done. Hersh further reported it was a “Russian who delivered the sample to the UK, ‘a good source – someone with access, knowledge and a record of being trustworthy’”. MI6 then figured out the Sarin did not originate from Assad and warned the Americans who cancelled a planned attack on Syrian infrastructure. The Russians, of course, support Assad. This story is representative of the multi-sided, convoluted, back-stabbing nature of the present Middle East.

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

    Therefore: It is not just usual asshole parade of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iran who have been meddling. Turkey has also been actively making things worse, giving its support to jihadi groups financed by Gulf monarchies. These groups include al-Nursa, al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, and Isis. Isis!!! Most of the estimated 20,000 foreign jihadists in Syria and Iraq entered through Turkey, with Turkish contrivance. (Patrick Cockburn LRB, Vol. 36 No. 21 • 6 November 2014).

    No wonder Obama was loath to directly and publically commit to intervening there. The smart money, one would think, would want to stay away. Good thing Canada jumped in with our eyes wide shut.

  16. Todd Robson says:

    Obama is a traitor? Well looks like that ungrateful bastard won’t be getting a plumb gig on the Hill once JT is elected. Poor kid that, Obama. Has no idea the great opportunity he just pissed away. Good luck, Barry. Good luck working anywhere now.

  17. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    We respectfully disagree and that’s fine. However, Justin needs to take action today to forcefully repudiate the actions of someone who should know better.

    Again, we’re talking major damage control within our own ranks. If Trudeau let’s this one go unchallenged, then both Justin and this individual will be in extremely serious political trouble.

    I can just hear Conservatives and New Democrats laughing…someone was dumb enough to make their weekend.

  18. wsam says:

    Trudeau and the Liberals should be focusing on Conservative lying. How all the Conservative’s do is lie. They couldn’t tell the truth if they wanted to. They lied about a mission Canadian’s support. With Duffy’s trail coming up I would think that might be a good way forward. That narrative might also chip away at this “Great and Fearless Leader” persona Harper is trying to construct.

    Then The Liberals should start talking about the context of Iraq, questioning Harper’s strategy. Harper did say Canada was not going to “Go Along to Get Along,” which it appears Canada is doing. La plus ça change

  19. Matt says:

    Wonder if the Liberals got a preview of this poll.

    Might explain their sudden pledge of support for the new anti-terrorism bill earlier this week, before it was even tabled.

  20. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    It’s one thing to count on Scandal-O-Rama. That didn’t work in 2008 or 2011 — now, if they misjudge where Canadians stand on policy, that could be the beginning of their undoing.

    Get it dramatically wrong where Canadians are at and they could be on the skids rather rapidly.

  21. Jerry says:

    The only terrorism expert worth listening too, because he also understands the role of American based mercenary armies like Blackwater/Academi in keeping middle east dictators in power: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/12/jeremy_scahill_on_paris_attacks_the

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