While I've been
a bit distracted this week with
personal matters , I have been paying some attention to the non-Japan related news. Really, there seems to be no depth to which Stephen Harper will not sink. With the revelation that one of his former close advisors
did time for fraud and
is currently involved in a dubious lobbying effort to enrich his 20-something escort fiance, and the looming likelihood that his government will be found
in contempt of Parliament, Stephen Harper is feeling a bit cornered. It is doubtful that he will win his precious majority if an election is called this spring and so he has tried telling voters that
the disaster in Japan was sufficient reason to delay a vote.
When we didn't buy that, he stepped up
his campaign of parliamentary obstructionism (dropping over 1,000 pages of documents 15 minutes before the committee session ended, for example) to try to avoid having his government and
ministers found in contempt of Parliament. Tune in next week when he tells us that us that the government being found in contempt of Parliament is an example of how Michael Ignatieff hates democracy and is just some Johnny-come-lately who is playing games with the economy and
is the son of Russian aristocrats not a "real immigrant"and besides LIBYA! FREEDOM! Democracy! Whisky! Sexy! We are at War!
Don't switch horses in midstream!
And if that doesn't work, expect him to try proroguing the house again, just to "save it from itself" and delay the budget so that he can "focus on the economy and the war."
Now, having said all that, let me clarify a few things: While Stephen Harper is a lying, power-grabbing, egomaniac and he may or may not be doing it for the wrong reasons, I think he is doing the right thing on Libya.
Yes, mark the day on the calendar -- I agree with Stephen Harper on something.
I think the moral choice with regards to Libya is at this stage is intervention by the international community. Libya is not Iraq, it is not Vietnam, it is not Bahrain. The closest comparison I can think of is Spain in the 1930s. There is a brutal, corrupt, autocratic ruler. There is a viable democratic opposition engaged in a popular revolution that has shown it has the hearts and minds of the population behind it. The regime in this case is being propped up by superior military firepower. The loyalists in the Libyan armed forces are mostly mercenaries and those who have profited from their affiliation with the regime. There have been numerous defections from the military by those troops and commanders who have refused to attack their own people.
As it would have been in Spain, the moral thing to do here is to side with the people against an autocrat that would crush them and murder those who dare to dissent.
The right thing to do is to freeze all of the Colonel's assets abroad, deny him jet fuel, artillery shells and other munitions.
The right thing to do is level the playing field by arming the people in Benghazi and Tobruk and elsewhere to allow them to defend themselves.
The right thing to do is to prevent the Colonel from bombing his own people or turning his tanks and artillery on the people who seek to be free from his corrupt and brutal regime.
It isn't a matter of sending troops into a quagmire, it isn't a matter of sticking our nose in where it isn't wanted.
It is a matter of dropping a few bombs and firing a few missiles to avoid a genocide and another generation of oppressive, autocratic rule in Libya, by a man who has supported terrorism in numerous forms (the Lockerbie bombing, arming the IRA, etc etc)
Just because Stephen Harper supports it doesn't make it a bad idea.
