Recall Parliament!

That is the essential Canadian reponse to the Levant Crisis, according to Lloyd "Soft Power" Axworthy (former Liberal foreign affairs minister).

At the Cannonball Press we're allowed to make things up. But we could never imagine anything like the excerpt below from Mr Axworthy's Globe and Mail article today. He is so soft in the head that he is demonstrably losing his mind; the Globe has a "responsibility to protect" us from such bilge (full text not officially online).

...it would be essential that Parliament be brought back into session as soon as possible to begin a serious examination of what is the scope and nature of our foreign policy in the Middle East, including the corollary issue of our muddled mission in Afghanistan. It is important that, through the medium of our elected representatives, Canadians provide wisdom and judgment to our present government so that they can get back on track toward a responsible and constructive role in the world.

I demand a cease-fire forbidding useless and fatuous debates in the Commons.

But, on the bright side, a debate might expose the divisions amongst the Liberals.

Andrew Coyne, for his part, has a column in the National Post on how the crisis is exposing the the emptiness of opposition parties' thought processes. An excerpt:

So. Israel has a right to defend itself, just so long as it does not use its army. In the face of an unprovoked rocket attack from an enemy parked on its doorstep, with thousands more where those came from, its only appropriate response is to call in the UN. The "disproportionate" use of force is the use of force.

Remember that all of this was taking place before the death toll had mounted as "high" as it is now: about 300 [perhaps somewhat low - MC], military and civilian combined, on both sides. How "high" is that? Consider that in the Six Day War of 1967 the civilian death toll is estimated to have been about 50,000. You can look through all the bloody history of warfare and not find a conflict with fewer civilian casualties.

Granted, that's to date: The coming ground war may be much worse. But the premise of the critics appears to be that any civilian casualties are too many...

While I like Mr Coyne's argument, I fear he grossly exaggerates the civilian fatalities in the Six Day War. I can find only one source giving such a very high figure--and it is for total fatalities, military and civilian. And I do not think it can be considered reliable. A better estimate of military fatalities would be about half the 50,000 figure; no source indicates large numbers of civilian deaths.

More at Mr Coyne's blog, including a good link on the laws of war.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at July 22, 2006 05:07 PM