IP: [Canada] didn't mess up, [America] did

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: David Akin <dakin () ctv ca>
> To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> Hi Dave - I thought IPers might find this opinion piece interesting. It is
> from the Dec 18 edition of The Globe and Mail.
>
> David Akin
> ----------
> National Business and Technology Correspondent, CTV News
> Contributing Writer, The Globe and Mail
> ----------
> Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
> ----------
> VOX: 416.313.2503 / CELL: 416.528.3819
> dakin () ctv ca / dakin () globeandmail ca
>
>
> ---------------
>
> The following is an article from the globeandmail.com Web Centre.
> This article from http://www.globeandmail.com
>
>
> We didn't mess up, they did
> SECURITY: Canada has put its house in order. It's time to ask the U.S. hard
> questions about how Sept. 11 was allowed to happen, says LAWRENCE MARTIN
>
> Lawrence Martin
>
> On budget day, I bumped into Justice Minister Anne McLellan in the House of
> Commons. She was in a buoyant mood. The government's handling of the whole
> security file, she thought, had turned out quite nicely.
>
> Some have found it curious, I pointed out, that our security and
> intelligence systems have been put through the ringer over Sept. 11, while
> the culpable parties, the CIA and FBI, have hardly suffered criticism.
>
> I had in mind a statement from Wesley Wark, one of Canada's foremost
> intelligence experts and a consultant to the Privy Council on such matters.
> "What is happening in the United States took me by surprise," he said. "I
> anticipated that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, there would be an enormous
> hue and cry to find out what went wrong. There has been no hue and cry in
> the United States. No recriminations, nothing even similar to what happened
> after Pearl Harbor in 1941. . . . The United States has drawn a veil of
> silence over the issue of intelligence failure."
>
> Did our Justice Minister find it interesting that Canada was put on the
> defensive, when, in fact, it was the American security infrastructure that
> faltered? Ms. McLellan didn't dispute the point. No question, she said,
> there was a major collapse of American security and intelligence on that
> day. In private, she noted, American authorities admit to it.
>
> But because of the staggering nature of the event, the minister added,
> Canada has been cutting the United States a lot of slack. No tough questions
> about what went wrong. No asking for accountability.
>
> Indeed, after some initial stalling, it's been mainly just a big rollover.
> Like, what can we do to please you, master, in light of your enormous
> blunder?
>
> To do otherwise, of course, would have been politically incorrect. And,
> curiously, about the only person who has dared strike that chord is the one
> who is supposed to be the most politically correct of all --
> Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson.
>
> This month, U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft came to Ottawa. Most
> everyone fell at his feet. In the Commons, they pounded the benches for him.
> Though he has amended his words a bit since, this is the same man who had
> the gall, given the sieve-like performance of his FBI, to talk about our
> borders being "porous." Jean Chretien and his Foreign Minister, John Manley,
> deserved the admirable-restraint award of the year for not calling Mr.
> Ashcroft one of the biggest hypocrites of all time.
>
> As for our own security forces, how must they feel about taking the heat
> while the more guilty parties ride in the criticism-free zone? A senior RCMP
> official I encountered didn't seem overly annoyed by it. But he felt there
> should be accountability from the CIA and FBI and that, indeed, a day of
> reckoning would probably come. They just haven't gotten around to it, he
> said.
>
> But it has been three months since that catastrophe. Might the period of
> grace last forever? Logic sometimes has a funny way of working. One of the
> biggest defence failures in American history has resulted in one of the
> biggest bonanzas of favourable publicity in American history.
>
> Credit the American media for much of it. They've been pussycat patriots,
> Mary Poppins on the beat, since the story broke. Would they dare ask of the
> guy at the top, "What happened, Mr. President, to our CIA and FBI -- and
> when are you going to fire those responsible?"
>
> Not likely. The world's strongest country takes out a tribe in the world's
> weakest, Afghanistan -- which is like the NHL champions defeating a Junior C
> team without skates -- and the media talks of a glorious military victory.
> And how's this for magic? Washington is praised for bombing a country to
> pieces to "prevent" a refugee crisis in Kosovo, and is now praised for
> bombing a country to pieces to "create" a refugee crisis in Afghanistan.
> Different circumstances, of course, but cool nonetheless.
>
> Though nothing happened in this country on Sept. 11, Paul Martin has just
> put up $7.7-billion of Canadian taxpayer money to address our security
> situation. It is probably a wise investment and it has been coupled with
> well-deserved expressions of sympathy and love by the multitude for our
> American friends and neighbours.
>
> That done, it's now time -- political correctness has limits -- for some
> explanations from their side. It's time the veil of silence, as Wesley Wark
> describes it, is lifted.
>
>     Lawrence Martin, author of two books on Canada-U.S. relations, is
> working on the second volume of his biography of Jean Chretien.
>
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>
>
> Copyright (C) 2001 Globe Interactive, a division of Bell Globemedia
> Publishing Inc.

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