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PPCLI Guy said:What do you consider to be our vital national interests?
The million dollar question.
PPCLI Guy said:What do you consider to be our vital national interests?
PPCLI Guy said:For an interesting view on the topic of interests and values, see Michael Ignatieff's 2004 Skelton Lecture here:
http://www.international.gc.ca/odskelton/ignatieff.aspx?lang=eng
The rest of the lectures are available here:
http://www.international.gc.ca/odskelton/lectures-conferences.aspx?lang=eng&menu_id=8&menu=R
E.R. Campbell said:...
Ignatieff came to the (Canadian political) fore after a barn-burner of a speech at the 2005 Liberal convention. He can be engaged and passionate, as he (evidently) was in Toronto in 2005. Perhaps his problem, in the intervening five years, is that he really doesn’t believe in what he’s selling. The Liberal brain trust is looking for another Trudeau. I do not thinkIggyIffyIcarus is that – not in his heart and mind, anyway. He is, I guess, a classical liberal pragmatist, in the mould of St Laurent and Pearson, not an ideologue like Trudeau or Harper, nor a retail politician like Mulroney or Chrétien. But I doubt the core of the Liberal Party ofCanadaToronto has room for any classical liberal pragmatists.
Big L Liberal and liberal have been at odds since 1967.
E.R. Campbell said:And see here.
It is interesting to try to tie the current Michael Ignatieff, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, with the Ignatieff of 2004/05 who could say …
PPCLI Guy said:And that guy is the one that I believe the country needs right now - just wish I could find him!
E.R. Campbell said:Too true ... because we aren't allowed to say +1 any more.
In a story he clearly worked hard to create, ace agenda-ist Geoffrey York in Johannesburg singles out Canada for not helping the UN peacekeeping force with helicopters. What about the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden etc., etc., etc.? Then there’s Portugal, eh? None of them seems to want to anwer the call either...
goalie_66@hotmail.com said:Why is it the CF only sees fit to put in four officers?
It has become a grim Christmas ritual: hundreds of innocent civilians massacred in remote corners of Africa by the Lord’s Resistance Army, one of the world’s cruellest and bloodiest guerrilla forces.
Now, fearing a Christmas attack for the third consecutive year, the United Nations is mobilizing 900 peacekeepers to protect villages in Congo, and the United States has promised its own action against the LRA.
It has become a grim Christmas ritual: hundreds of innocent civilians massacred in remote corners of Africa by the Lord’s Resistance Army, one of the world’s cruellest and bloodiest guerrilla forces.
Now, fearing a Christmas attack for the third consecutive year, the United Nations is mobilizing 900 peacekeepers to protect villages in Congo, and the United States has promised its own action against the LRA.
(....)
“It is unbelievable that world leaders continue to tolerate brutal violence against some of the most isolated villages in central Africa, and that this has been allowed to continue for more than 20 years,” said Marcel Stoessel, head of the Congo office of Oxfam, one of 19 humanitarian and human-rights groups that issued a report this month calling for tougher action against the LRA.
“This Christmas, families in northeastern Congo will live in fear of yet another massacre, despite the presence of the world’s largest peacekeeping mission,” he said.
The LRA has emerged as a classic test of the “right to protect” doctrine, championed by former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy and others. The concept of “right to protect” suggests that the international community has the right to intervene in sovereign states to prevent atrocities and protect civilians. Canada took a leading role in pushing the concept and getting it adopted at a world summit in 2005 after the furor over the UN’s failure to act during massacres in Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990s. But the concept was dropped when Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006 ....
With the end of Canada’s involvement in combat operations in Afghanistan now in sight, the media have begun to publish articles speculating on where the Canadian Forces might next be deployed. Without saying so explicitly, these articles seem to suggest that because Canada now has a well-trained, well equipped and battle hardened army, that army should be sent abroad somewhere once it has finished its Afghan mission. This is rather curious reasoning. It tends to ignore the fact that the Canadian Forces exist to protect and promote the security and interests of Canada and Canadians. In the absence of any threat to that security or those interests, the Canadian Forces should remain in their barracks against the day when such a threat may emerge. To deploy them abroad simply because of their capabilities is sheer nonsense.
This line of argument is, of course, totally lost on proponents of the so-called human security agenda who advocate using the Canadian Forces to defend civilian populations at risk in civil war situations around the world, even in the absence of any discernible Canadian interest. The main focus of these proponents at the moment seems to be the Democratic Republic of the Congo [with the Globe and Mail in the lead],
http://unambig.com/why-the-globe-and-mail-is-not-a-newspaper-part-2-congo-section/
where fifteen years of civil wars have produced some five million dead and hundreds of thousands of rape victims. It is undeniable that the situation in the Congo represents a humanitarian tragedy of epic proportions. This is not, however, sufficient reason to dispatch a Canadian contingent to join the United Nations (UN) force now thrashing around more or less hopelessly in the eastern regions of the Congo.
Any decision by the Canadian government on whether or not to deploy forces to the Congo should be informed by a cool and reasoned analysis of some historical facts and contemporary realities…
What the Canadian government should not do is consider sending a contingent of the Canadian Forces to join MONUC [actually now MONUSCO].
http://monusco.unmissions.org/
What advocates of this course of action seem to believe is that the addition of some well-trained Canadian troops, equipped with armoured vehicle and helicopters, will be sufficient to transform MONUC into a force capable of protecting all civilians and restoring peace, law and order in the Congo. This belief is at best naïve, at worst hubristic. It totally ignores the dimensions and complexities of the conflicts in the Congo.
By sending a contingent to the Congo, the Canadian government would be exposing its troops to an endlessly frustrating and thankless mission with no end in sight, and this in a country replete with dangers, corruption and disease. Coming on top of a ten-year involvement in an Afghan mission whose outcome is anything but certain, new commitments could sap the morale of the Canadian Forces involved. This would not be in the best interests of the Forces or of the country.
Louis Delvoie is Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Relations, Queen’s University.
http://www.queensu.ca/cir/?q=node/14
He is a former Canadian high commissioner to Pakistan.