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CounterPunch
November
23, 2002
Bush and the
Canadians
by KURT NIMMO
Let's hear it for the senior Canadian official
who mustered the guts to call Dubya a moron. Unfortunately, the
Canadian who said this decided to remain anonymous. Of course,
these days, speaking the truth and then remaining incognito may
be the right thing to do -- that is if you value your political
career and earning potential. Plenty of Canadians are pissed
off because the bully to the south keeps giving them a hard time
about their paltry military spending. Forbid, the Canadians only
spend 1.1 percent of their GDP on weapons of mass and other kinds
of destruction.
Bush wants Canada and countries of likewise
stature to spend more money on military hardware -- especially
if the hardware is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, the Carlyle
Group (where Dubya's daddy works), and other US death merchants.
Dubya says the US is tired of carrying Canada's weight. Lately,
Paul Cellucci, the US ambassador to Canada, has resembled a broken
record as he repeats the same mantra over and over -- spend more
on defense, spend more on defense, less on everything else and
more on defense. Mr. Cellucci, however, has not told us what
it is the Canadians need to defend themselves against. Nuclear
submarines and B-1 bombers are not a very effective deterrent
against the likes of Osama bin Laden. Or folks like the Taliban
who happened to get in the way of an oil pipeline or two.
Canada's head honcho, Jean Chrétien,
would really like to spend more on bullets and bombs. But the
Canadian people are not interested in this -- and Chrétien
knows it. Regardless, he insists on saying stupid things, more
than likely to placate bellicose and -- as many Canadians understand
-- mentally deranged Americans, especially those who steal elections.
"The Americans always compliment when we participate with
them," the suck-up Chrétien has declared. "When
we were in Kosovo, we were the third country with the greatest
number of sorties and we were complimented by everyone there
by the effectiveness of our troops. We did the same thing in
Bosnia. In Afghanistan, our troops did very well." Except
those troops, of course, killed by the so-called friendly fire
of American pilots geeked on amphetamines.
Chrétien's foolish comments are
demonstrative of something -- the moron disease infecting Bush
and the delirious neocons is either air-borne or simply rubs
off when these folks meet and shake hands, which they invariably
do when corporate media cameras are around.
Kosovo? Bosnia? Afghanistan? Chrétien
is apparently proud to be an accessory to mass murder and wanton
destruction. Even so, he has decided to pump money from the federal
surplus into social programs and infrastructure improvements
for cities. Meanwhile, Canada's Liberal MPs on the Commons defense
committee are squawking like indignant ducks, telling the prime
minister not to sacrifice Canada's military to fund a social
agenda. So what if a few thousand more babies end up malnourished
as a result?
Since 1994, Canada has reduced defense
spending by 23 per cent. It cut military personnel from 87,600
to 57,000 in 1990. Not too shabby, even with Chrétien's
chest beating brag about how Canada helped the Americans kill
Afghan wedding party guests and bomb commuter bridges at high
noon in Kosovo. Chrétien, like any shrewd politician,
is playing both sides of the street.
It's not easy for Chrétien, though.
He has to fight off tenacious military analysts, especially those
from the Council on Canadian Security in the 21st Century and
the Atlantic Institute. Canada will be unable to defend itself,
these north of the border neocons prophesize, unless it increases
spending immediately. Again, no explanation provided on what
specifically Canada needs to protect itself against. CIA blowback
spawned terrorists attacked New York, not Halifax. Maybe Greenland
will invade, or Quebec will succeed? More than anything, it would
seem, Canada's military is suffering from a form of martial penis
envy -- the Americans have spanking new high-tech death toys,
and the Canadians don't. Sniff. It's going to be a dismal Christmas.
Chrétien's opponents in Parliament
snatched the unattributed "moron" comment and sprinted
toward political high ground with opportunistic abandon. Said
Jason Kenney of the opposition Canadian Alliance, "Sadly
this is part of a consistent pattern of knee-jerk anti-Americanism
coming from this government... does one good friend treat another
by calling its leader a moron?" Well, Jason, if the shoe
fits Dubya should wear it.
Naturally, Bush is not a moron -- at
least not in the clinical sense -- but obviously he's none too
smart, not that intelligence was ever a job requirement for the
US presidency. Bush Senior wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer,
nor was Gerald Ford. You don't have to be a card-carrying member
of Mensa to take orders from the plutocracy and titans of transnational
industry. Besides, Dick Cheney is president, not Bush. Obvious
facts hide out in the open.
Actually, there needs to be a shade more
anti-Americanism emanating from foreign capitals, especially
when Americans begin clacking about going it alone, using long-standing
international treaties to line the bottom of bird cages, and
threatening to bomb impoverished third world nations because
Bush and the neocons disapprove of their leaders or how they
use their natural resources. Is it not essentially moronic to
frame complex international issues with hackneyed and puerile
clichés -- "We're gonna hunt 'em down, smoke 'em
out, and then git 'em"?
How does America expect the world to
take it seriously when it elects -- er, excuse, has appointed
-- a president who can do no better than blather inane and jingoistic
cowboy slang -- or ask stupid and embarrassing questions of foreign
leaders? For instance, Dubya asking Brazilian president Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, "Do you have blacks, too?" Cardoso,
obviously possessing more tact and nous than Bush will have in
a century of Sundays, responded politely that Dubya was still
in his "learning phase."
Learning phase or no, Bush is the worst
US president in modern history.
Remarkably, Canadian politicians seem
to understand this better than spineless and tremulous American
Democrats do.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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