With Friends Like These...

"We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals."
- Stephen Harper

What an incredible piece of bullshit.

Guess what Steve. National Defence Headquarters knew there was a Canadian in that interim force and had the authority to withdraw him at any time. So, since you seem to know so much about such things, why didn't you order all Canadian members of UNIFIL out of Lebanon?

...

Think for a minute what Harper would have said if Hezbollah had hit a UN observation post, accidentally or otherwise. Imagine Harper's response, even if, after the event, Hezbollah stated that they had no intention of hitting a UN post and apologized. Do you think you would hear Harper saying, "I doubt it was intentional."?

Yeah right.

My only real problem with this Galloping Beaver post is that the author derides Harper for taking sides with Israel again. It's fine, you can take sides with countries. Especially one of our free trade partners. You should take sides in many cases. I did think of two notable exceptions:

• Your country typically positions itself as a mediator; or


• Your citizens are dying as a result of your "trading partner's" assaults.

With both of those scenarios, Canada should not be taking the stance that Harper is currently maintaining.

As an aside, I had a question. By all accounts this current conflict can be traced back to Hezbollah^* kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Since when are attacks on military targets "acts of terrorism"?

I've also updated the Independent's cover from July 21 to reflect current situation. [via kottke]



In trying to establish the consensus on the spelling of Hezbollah, I ran a quick comparison through Google Trends.