"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a
man's character, give him power." (Abraham Lincoln)
Some
feel that the Americans are failing in this test of their use of power.
I don't. I think the US is a beacon of light and a grand experiment in
the history of the world.
Canadians (including our national broadcasting company the CBC) have
adopted a smug "told you so" position vis a vis the US. Don't know why
but seems to be latent in Canada and comes out at times like
these.
The
war is not going well at this moment. The US made the error of believing
its myths and acting on them: That Iraqis were waiting to run into the streets
and welcome the "coaliton" forces; and so the US sent in forces at lower than
necessary numbers to get the job done.
The
carping at the US would have not happened had the myth been realized.
Now that the giant is apparently running into trouble there are lots of "told
you so" armchair generals who are all too ready to speak
out.
arthur
During recent months, reflecting events at the Security Council and
more recently in the Iraq war, Canadians, including those in positions of
power and publicity, have said some nasty things about Americans.
It's made me wonder how that might come back to haunt us.
Well, there's trade. As many of our businessmen are reminding us,
we are enormously dependent on the US. Over 90% of our exports go
there, and our trade surplus with the US approaches $150 billion per
year. A cut of any significance in cross border trade could do a lot
of damage.
There are also shared values, and here I don't mean Democracy with a
capital D, but shared values at the ordinary individual level. This
morning's paper contains an article about a US soldier trying to rescue an
elderly woman caught in cross-fire while crossing a bridge over the
Euphrates. I would like to think that a Canadian soldier would do that
too.
And ever so much of our history is shared. Though the Americans
did it long before we did and did it more violently, we too had to get out
from under "old Europe" and find our own path. We too had to deal with
established nations that were here long before us. I like to
think we did it better than the Americans, but I'm not sure of that.
We read American literature, watch American movies, and greatly admire
the American stage. Our cultures may not be common, but they greatly
overlap. When I was younger, I toured large parts of the US by
motorbike, living on the strip, immersing myself in that unique ground-level
cultural soup that is common to the US and Canada.
And many of the great battles of the past two hundred years have been
fought in America: a constitution that championed the rights of the
individual; the freeing of the slaves; the New Deal; the rebuilding of
Europe, the war on poverty, and the civil rights movement.
Yet, as a Canadian, I don't like what America is doing now. I
feel that its values and its inherent greatness are
being betrayed. America has been taken over by a cabal that
Time Magazine refers to as "Neo-Reaganites" and by a President who was not
elected by popular vote but by the rather strange and fanciful electoral
college system, and even then elected very questionably. These people
are also Americans, but of another kind, an aggressive, bullying,
expansionist kind, a kind that I personally will never buy
into.
But that doesn't make me want to be nasty to Americans. I makes
me feel rather sad for them and makes me want to give them what little
comfort I can by letting them know that among Canadians I, for one,
value them and will never give up on them. It makes me want to believe
that what is happening to America now will pass, and that the country will
soon resume its greatness.
Ed Weick
