Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
You're willing to play chicken with the future of millions of Afghans for the sake of a test?
Talk about giving primacy of place to the truly peripheral. I'm beginning to believe this man is educated far beyond his intelligence. Stephane Dion hereby fails one of the fundamentals of leadership: the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
When it comes to Afghanistan, the main thing isn't creating a false crisis to determine whether NATO is effective or dysfunctional, it's bringing Afghanistan into the community of nations as a positive and productive contributor, in order to enhance the security of all.
That I should even have to explain this to a man who wishes to become Prime Minister of our country is astonishing to me, and troubling to the extreme.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says Canada should end its combat role in Afghanistan in 2009 even if no other NATO country is prepared to step in.
"We need to know if NATO works," he told The Globe and Mail's editorial board yesterday. "Because otherwise other countries will be more and more reluctant to take any responsibility, because they will be afraid to be there forever."
Talk about giving primacy of place to the truly peripheral. I'm beginning to believe this man is educated far beyond his intelligence. Stephane Dion hereby fails one of the fundamentals of leadership: the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
When it comes to Afghanistan, the main thing isn't creating a false crisis to determine whether NATO is effective or dysfunctional, it's bringing Afghanistan into the community of nations as a positive and productive contributor, in order to enhance the security of all.
That I should even have to explain this to a man who wishes to become Prime Minister of our country is astonishing to me, and troubling to the extreme.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 10:35 a.m.
6 Comments:
It shouldn't be too surprising. We Americans are still trying to inform President Bush how to say "nuclear."
And we Canadians suffered through a Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien) who was functionally unintelligible in both official languages.
But by all means let's use pronunciation as a test of leadership ability and personal worth, because the two are clearly inextricable. Which is why we don't let deaf people vote or exercise any civil rights in this society.
willpate:
perhaps president bush learned "new-kyew-ler" from the sainted can-do-no-wrong jimmy carter, who pronounced the word in that manner, even though he, among all presidents, should have known better, since he was an officer aboard a NEW-CLEAR submarine and surely had to spell and pronounce the word on a fairly regular basis. but of course he gets a pass, doesn't he? jerk. (carter, not you. but hey, if the shoe fits...)
ltcol p (op-for.com)
You must understand that Dion is a Liberal. That means he'll make whatever pragmatic decisions he needs to in order to re-gain power for Canada's Natural Governing Party. If that means selling out Afghanistan, so be it.
But as a Liberal, Dion must phrase his pragmatism in the most noble of terms. So he'll sell out Afghanistan while talking about making NATO stronger, collective security and dialog with all parties in Afghanistan.
Of course, being that he is who he is, Dion probably believes his own rhetoric.
I am utterly shocked that this story didn't get more play. For a "prime minister in waiting" to talk about a major policy issue with such uninformed rhetoric is extremely newsworthy. Dion is way-off base here, as I pointed out in my own blog post, and shows how un-educated he is in foreign policy and defence matters.
I think he is making a big mistake with this line of talking points.
Audio of M. Dion being questioned on Afghanistan by the Globe and Mail's editorial board. Good on Editor-in-Chief Steady Eddie Greenspson (whom I have often disparaged) for asking a series of tough questions to which the Liberal leader has no good answers.
Mark
Ottawa
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