Canada in the Middle (East)

It's hard to know where to begin. It's hard to know where this began.

Last night, watching Canada's bungled evacuation attempt on TV was frustrating. Despite what Peter MacKay says, we've done a much worse job of evacuating our citizens than other countries. To be fair, that doesn't make anything about this easy, and I could almost give our government the benefit of the doubt if it weren't for reports today that "Sandra Buckler, Director of Communications in the Prime Minister's Office, is said to have issued an edict ordering that the Lebanon crisis be kept under wraps."

Maybe these guys should have looked up transparency and accountability in a dictionary before building a whole campaign around those words.

Even more objectionable, for me, is Harper's departure from traditional Canadian neutrality, towards something that resembles the American position. Don't get me wrong, there's a time to take sides. During elections, for example. But let's keep our eyes on the prize; the objective here is peace. And the best way for Canada to help advance that goal is to act as a voice of mediation. Taking sides is a bad strategy because it removes that possibility, hurting our ability to reach the objective.

Unfortunately, the editorial in today's Globe And Mail supported Harper, mostly because they were bored and wanted to hear something different ("Mr. Harper did something unusual and refreshing") , and because Hezbollah started it ("Hezbollah was primarily responsible for starting the fighting and must be primarily responsible for ending it"). This amounts to schoolyard "he hit me first" politics. If only it were that simple. And if only anyone could decisively say who "started it."

If only we knew where the violence began. If only we knew where peace will begin.

Where the editorial went next really surprised me. "There is a world of difference," the Globe And Mail continued, "between those who deliberately kill to make mischief and those who kill in response."

Really? Last I checked, you're dead either way. And I don't know of any Canadian law that makes a distinction between "mischief killing" and "response killing." I wonder if the Globe would apply the same logic to the streets of Toronto. I wonder if they teach their children that "two wrongs make a right."

Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Canada