That should read: "UN Security Council"
Socialist Utopians are having a meltdown over Afghanistan, because the new policy there is against everything they stand for. Utopians believe that multilateral discussion can solve all. Hunting down "bad guys" is completely anti-Utopian. These same globalists are also pushing for a UN rapid reaction force, but with NATO gearing up their UN love-child will be dead in the water. These guys are all global Socialists, and a revived and active NATO scares the crap out of them.
What? Did anyone think that all the world's communists just melted away when the USSR collapsed. They went somewhere.
"Charm-school graduates streaming over borders handing out bonbons?"
Heh.
Lloyd Axworthy's policy of the 'soft-head' is so astoundingly juvenile it is a wonder anyone pays attention to him at all - even being polite has its limits.
There must be a pasture for old socialists to fertilize.
Debris Trail: Oops. Corrected.
The "progressive" view seems to be that UNSC authorization of a mission is somehow inadequate. To be acceptable to them a mission must also be run by the UN. This can have the following results: Somalia, Rwanda, Srbrenica, current Congo mission, current Haiti mission. But that's OK I guess with the UN in charge rather than horrid NATO (which actually stopped the fighting in Bosnia and Kosovo).
Axworthy's interpretation of R2P (stupid little abbreviation) seems to be that Canada must be all in favour but must not accept responsibility for actually doing any protecting if someone might get hurt.
Mark
Ottawa
Re "bonbons"; wouldn't those little souvenier bottles of Maple Syrup be more appropriate?
Posted at 2006-06-17 11:59:20 [PermaLink]mark:
You could put cambodia on the list too.
"The "progressive" view seems to be that UNSC authorization of a mission is somehow inadequate. To be acceptable to them a mission must also be run by the UN."
I agree this is true to a large extent, Mark, but many dyed-in-the-wool leftists harbour an aversion to the projection of western military power in general, regardless of the nature of UN involvement. That aversion is reflexively emotive in origin, rather than driven by any case by case assessment of the pros and cons of various actual or proposed interventions.
That's what provides the impetus for the Afghanistan stance taken by Axworthy and like-minded individuals. I seriously doubt they were even open to the possibility of supporting regime change in Afghanistan by force of western arms. Instead, they kept their powder dry, knowing they'd be mercilessly flayed for voicing outright opposition to attacking the Taliban regime in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
The passage of time has emboldened Axworthy and Co. Now we're witnessing their attempt to fabricate some semblance of a passably tenable case for the withdrawal of the Canadian military from combat operations. Unfortunately for Lloyd, the hit to his reputation extends beyond the ridiculous reasoning of his argument. It's also transparently fraudulent, in the context of what motivates Axworthy et al.
Axworthy has no interest whatsoever in whether our role in Afghanistan will make the situation better or worse, in terms of net lives lost or saved, and the measure of quality of life. Canadian troops are shooting at people, and that offends him, viscerally, and if he had the final say, we'd be out of there. If that meant many more dead Afghans than if we'd stayed, he couldn't care less. Lloyd's feelings come first.