Bush is coming. Canadians should line the streets, waving U.S. flags, since the visitor will not be – as John Kerry would have been – coming up to take "outsourced" jobs away from us.
Instead, all he will want is Canadian hot air – "support" for a missile defense program that we couldn't stop no matter how hard we tried, and which won't cost us a cent. He'll want more hot air by way of "support" in Iraq – he won't ask for, since we don't have them to give, any front line troops. He'll be quite happy to get a few Canadian folks way back in the supply line, offering medical care or what have you, just so there can be another nation in the coalition of the willing.
In exchange, we get real stuff – reasonable consideration of our problems with cows, fish and lumber. Something for nothing is a deal we should grab with both hands – or at least with one hand, using the other to wave that flag.
If a simple recognition of our own self-interest isn't enough for us to be welcoming, understanding a few things about American politics and international disarray should get us to do the necessary thing.
Bush is the strongest president to take office in many years. He has no operational domestic, and little effective international, opposition. Defying him or insulting him only has the potential of angering him.
Without question, Canada has no capacity to diminish or resist his power. His popular vote margin was the largest in almost 20 years. He is the first president in over 40 years to have his own party in control of so much of the rest of government, from the Congress, to America's state houses, and soon to the courts. On the question most important to history, the war, he has a degree of support from the people of the United States unknown for generations.
Since the election, he has replaced six prominent members of his cabinet, including Colin Powell, making the corporate office of the presidency safe from internal inconsistency. The new leadership will punish leakers at the CIA and closet Democrats at the State Department.
Outside the borders of the U.S.A., opponents of every kind are losing ground. Saddam is in a jail cell, Osama is holed up in a mountain cave, Gadhafi has been tamed, Kofi Annan is likely to be removed from office by his own UN staff for allegedly covering up cases of sexual harassment, the UN itself is mired in a $20-billion "Oil for Food" fraud.
Even the Europeans, unwilling to be cut off from world events, are pretending to themselves they can take part in stabilizing the Middle East by getting Iran to talk about talking about slowing its march to membership in the nuclear club.
France's Jacques Chirac, of all people, because he does not want Britain's Tony Blair to reap the advantages that will come from "bridge building" across the Atlantic, seems able to read the election returns, even though they are written in Texan. He now says "North America and Europe are destined to work together because they share the same values, the same background…The transatlantic link is quite simply the political expression of our great and fundamental values."
During Bush's recent visit to Chile, one of his secret service bodyguards was prevented by Chilean security people from following the president into a dinner meeting. Bush himself, noticing that his bodyguard was no longer behind him, walked into the melee, grabbed the secret service man's hand, and yanked him back in the entourage. It was a telling example of Bush's self-assurance. Afterward, he merely shot his cuffs, muttered a few words in Texan, and went in to dinner.
The American commander-in-chief is riding high. We have no chance of knocking him off his horse. On the other hand, it is a time he can easily afford to be generous, to forget past (and present) insults from Canadian backbenchers. All that Martin needs to do is be civil, agreeable and accommodating.
If the Canadian left is annoyed by our saying yes to a space defence program we can't stop anyhow, or by our supplying "peacekeeping" reconstruction or medical help in Iraq, let them explain themselves to Canada's farmers, fishermen and lumber sellers first. And they also need to explain to Martin why he should allow their self-indulgent anti-Americanism to give the Tories' Stephen Harper so thick a stick with which to beat the Liberals in Parliament.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/conti ... /velk.html
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Tom Velk is chair of McGill University's North American studies program and is a member of McGill's economics department. He has published dozens of articles and edited four books on Canadian-American public policy issues. Velk has also worked for the Board of Governors of the American Federal Reserve System and the World Bank. He holds a Ph.D. in economics, with a minor in law. The questions he is currently studying are how far and by what means might governments de-regulate the money market, and whether the elimination of central banks would improve economic performance.
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I'm happy Canadians are making themselves heard in Ottawa to give a special greeting to this war criminal.
