Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Canucki Foreign Policy Rag Blasts Stephen Harper's "Morality"

His "immorality," really. Because as far as the left is concerned, it has a monopoly on morality and anyone who strays from their worldview/playbook is ipso facto evil:
Following the May 2011 election, some thought that the longed-for majority would allow Mr. Harper to free foreign policy from its domestic political ties and focus more on the Canadian values of which he so often speaks.
But Conservative foreign policy continues to be driven by a mix of electoral politics, narrow Canadian interests, Stephen Harper’s personal worldview and a desire to rid all things Liberal.
The Harper government’s foreign policy has become little more than an extension of Conservative electoral politics. Between 2006 and 2011, Mr. Harper was looking for ways to push his party to a majority; to do that he needed to preserve his base and reach out to new constituencies.
His “gunslinger” style plays well with his core supporters—Westerners, especially Albertans, the Christian right and other social conservatives—and he has catered to them, flirting with the abortion issue and pumping up the volume on crime and prisons, while coming down hard on women’s rights organizations, the gun registry and environmental “radicals.”
It has also allowed him to reach out to new constituencies such as diaspora communities that may share socially conservative views. Foreign policy has become a useful domestic tool.
The prime minister has threatened to boycott the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka if there isn’t progress in that country on human rights and reconciliation for the Tamil minority. He would throw Canada’s role in the Commonwealth to the wind because of the venue for a meeting.
But count the numbers: In Canada, there are between two and three hundred thousand Tamils, while our Sinhalese-speaking population is about 6000.
Although there are twice as many Muslims as Jews in Canada, the Jewish community is numerically and financially significant in some key ridings. Unreserved support for Israel also plays to the Christian right, whose fundamentalist fringe believes that God promised that land to the Jewish people. Israel, many believe, is a democratic bulwark against what evangelist Pat Robertson called “an eighth-century religion” of “Muslim vandals.”...
So as I understand it, it is "a numbers game" vis-a-vis the Tamils but not the Muslims (due to undue "Jewish" influence). I won't weigh in on the morality (or lack thereof) of that observation, but I will comment on its logic--it's absent--and its Zionhass--it's present.

No comments: