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The latest example of this comes from Ottawa. There have been many overseas (joined by the usual suspects inside the U.S.) who have said a lot of fairly stupid things since last September, but the Canadian team led by Jean Chretien, the prime minister of Canada, is for now the hands-down winner of the race to see which Western leaders can say the most shameful and ludicrous things about 9/11. "You know," Chretien told the CBC, "you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for others." (This from a man known to be one of the most overbearing and vindictive politicians in Canada.) He added: "I do think the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world and necessarily, you know, we're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied greedy and with no limits. And September 11 is an occasion for me to realize it even more." The worst terrorist attack in history is occasion to remember how greedy and arrogant the West is? What Chretien is saying, of course, is that those bloated, swaggering Americans had it coming, and they finally got what they deserved. (When he says the "West," he means America, but it's still not polite to explicitly blame the victim just yet.) Judging from the reaction of Canadians who called the CBC to support their prime minister's remarks, a lot of people north of the border agree with him; they, like their leader, see the fight against terrorism as little more than a struggle between imperialists and the oppressed, and more importantly, something that doesn't involve Canada. Chretien told the CBC: No one "knows when to stop. There's a moment, you know, when you have to stop." What we're supposed to stop was unclear: stop being a global power? Stop being an influential culture? Stop being the most productive economy in the world? Terrorism apparently doesn't worry Canadian leaders. Chretien's transportation minister, David Collenette, is concerned that those uppity Americans are going to turn into rink bullies. He told a group of American business executives: "There will be people in the United States sort of emboldened by their new source of unfettered power to — in a hockey term — get their elbows up." To be sure, Americans are used to hearing this kind of bloviation from European intellectuals, but Canada was once a country that could boast common sense among its many virtues. In fairness, Chretien's foolishness has drawn fire from some Canadian politicians on the right, including former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who called his successor's comments "false, shocking and morally specious," and "dangerous intellectual nonsense." Canada's National Post was even more blunt, asking: "did Jean Chretien have to choose the subject of Sept. 11 as an opportunity to make a Royal Canadian ass of himself?" Still, too many Canadians are drawn to Chretien's attempts at neo-appeasement, indulging in a reflexive anti-Americanism that takes as an article of faith that the downtrodden of the world hate the United States because they have every reason to. Why is this happening? The sad answer is that many Canadians are hoping against all logic and evidence that the war on terrorism — and the terrorists themselves — will pass them by. It would be tremendous consolation to many Canadians and Europeans to believe that the terrorists have chosen America as their target because they have a gripe with Americans rather than "Westerners" in general. If this is really about America's greediness and loutishness in the international arena, the reasoning goes, then Canada (a country beloved to U.N. bureaucrats) is off the hook. This is between the Americans and the terrorists. It's not about us. To believe this requires a huge suspension of disbelief and more than a little ignorance, since it requires discounting the reality that al Qaeda and their allies have attacked German tourists in Tunisia, plotted to ram jetliners into the Eiffel Tower and the British parliament, conspired to poison entire neighborhoods in Rome, and tried to plant bombs in Montreal. (Yes, Prime Minister Chretien, that's in Canada.) It also demands that we believe that the September 11 attacks were about poverty, of all things, and not the desperate efforts of demented extremists to destroy a culture and a way of life they cannot abide. The stubborn liberal faith that there are "root causes" of acts that are plainly evil dies hard, if at all. It is to some degree understandable that ordinary people who just want to live their lives in peace and quiet would cling to this reed in such a stormy time: It is a salve to think that the terrorists want to kill just a select few, rather than all of us. During the Cold War, too, there were Canadians and Europeans who similarly tried to portray the struggle between the superpowers as just a street fight between two large countries and therefore not something involving other nations, but the Soviets, bless them, were too ideologically consistent and aggressive for that nonsense to stick. In any case, whatever the fears of the man in the street, it is inexcusable for a national leader to encourage and support this kind of anxiety-induced state of denial, and it is little wonder that America seems to be sidestepping the Canadians in pursuing the war on terrorism. Unfortunately, there isn't much to be done about this kind of cynical pandering to fear except to move and leave people like Jean Chretien behind. This seems to be happening already, marking another stage in Canada's slide in international influence. When the president visited Canada in early September, he didn't bother showing Chretien any evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, apparently reserving that kind of sensitive sharing for more steady allies like Great Britain. Given Chretien's inane comments prior to the meeting, Bush can hardly be faulted for not trying to lay out a case to his Canadian colleague. Indeed, given the lack of substance in their meeting and the clear Canadian aversion to shouldering the burden of the fight against terror — an aversion, by the way, that does not seem to be shared by the brave and able men and women of the Canadian armed forces — September 2002 might well be the date affixed by future historians to Canada's last days as a world power. But there is something we must still do in the face of comments like Chretien's. No matter what jittery and ill-considered comments some of our allies might make, it's up to the Americans to remind them: It is about you. It's about all of us. We must, at every opportunity, reiterate that this is not a skirmish between poor, malnourished Arabs and their American oppressors but instead the common fight of all civilized states against barbarism. If we allow our friends to falter in this war, al Qaeda will sooner or later provide them with a more brutal and horrific reminder when a chemical or nuclear bomb goes off in Paris or Berlin is attacked…or perhaps even in Montreal or Ottawa. — Tom Nichols is the chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College, and the author of Winning the World: Lessons for America's Future from the Cold War. (The opinions are those of the writer and not of the U.S. government.) |
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he war on terror is now moving into a phase that will test America's commitment
to prosecuting it, as some among our allies begin to take counsel of their
fears and search for explanations of 9/11 that will both excuse them from
the war and reassure them that they are not at risk.
