Canada's Gone!
On cue and as predicted, the Harper Tories are blaming the Liberals for Canada losing the election for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This is the same old song and dance for the Harper Conservatives in that something doesn't go their way, it's obviously the Liberal's fault. The big difference here is that the right wing media isn't buying it this time. Both the National Post and the Globe and Mail have come down squarely on the side of this is all Harper's failure. The Calgary Herald who never met a Tory they didn't like has the wire service article on the topic buried good and deep and no comment while the Sun media chain also has an article and no comment, no doubt awaiting orders from the PMO. Of course the usual crowd of Conservative war room con-bots are out in full force defending the actions of the Harper government by also attacking Ignatieff and crying sour grapes in the "we didn't want that seat anyways" way. What I find disturbing is that in a couple of the articles (the Sun and the National Post) stated that the Harper government had bottles of maple syrup distributed to the delegates of the General Assembly just before the vote. Why does this disturb me? Well quite simple. For about 12 years I helped out in various capacities at the University of Calgary's high school Model UN simulation. The Harper government's action reminded me of those heady days. That's right, it would seem like the Harper Conservatives think their participating in a HSMUN at the world level, in the actual United Nations. This leads me to believe that the Harper government is basically acting like high school students in foreign relations. Not a comforting though at the least. Also explains in great detail one of the reasons we actually did lose.
Of course the reasons we did lose are many, and virtually all point directly at the Harper government. Michael Ignatieff had nothing to do with the loss, the proof being that if you asked the delegates at the vote who Ignatieff was, most of them would have no idea. Same with their leaders back home. The more likely reasons are very obvious for anyone who hasn't drunk the Harper kool-aid. Harper's decision to pursue a US Republican style unilateral foreign policy as well as coming down strongly in polarized conflicts such as the Israel-Palestinian conflict, screwing over Africa all has a part to play in our defeat. The icing on the defeat cake, of course, is the amateur hour diplomacy at the UN itself.
Basically, you can't go around pissing off the vast majority of nations to keep your writhing base happy and then look surprised when those very same sovereign states turn on you. In fact, the Harper Conservatives have managed to destroy in a few short years what has taken Canadian diplomats and previous Liberal and Conservative governments decades to develop. Basically until the Harper Conservatives, Canada used to punch well above it's weight in the international community. Years of hard work to build up our reputation on the world stage (and in international relations, reputation is about 90% of everything) gone in the blink of an eye due to some ham-fisted teenager wannabes. To quote Harper, "Canada's Back", back in the 1900's when no-one listened to us.