Politicana

The American coalition in Iraq suffered a major setback with a statement from a major Iraqi Mullah, calling for his followers to stop supporting American troops.  This really just breaks down to a change in official positioning for Muqtada El-Sadr, who has likely been supporting the resistance effort for years, albeit quietly.  Even so, this change to outright defiance is a pretty bad sign.

It’s also just the latest nail in the coffin of U.S. efforts in Iraq.  The British are leaving, domestic support is plummeting, and the little support they once had inside Iraq is disappearing.  One really has to question the logic of America staying in the Iraq war.  Even if the Bush Administration is right, and pulling out of Iraq is going to trigger a terrorist surge, staying the course will only prolong the inevitable.

America didn’t have sufficient control of the region to win the war two years ago, and their support has only eroded since that time.  Unless the Americans are willing to commit a more significant force, like 120,000 troops (and they will never commit to that), then the war is already lost.  I would say it’s time for the Americans to cut their losses and move on.

A poll published today in the Sunday Telegraph questioned the British public about their opinion on the hostage crisis.  Now, despite disagreeing with Blair’s policies, I think he’s generally a pretty apt politician and leader.  66% of the British public seems to agree, trusting Blair to solve the situation peacefully.

The surprising number in the poll is that only 7 percent of Britons think that the government should use force to retrieve the hostages.  This is a number that stands in stark contrast to what I imagine the American reaction would be, and really outlines the subtle and often overlooked cultural differences between the two countries.

With guerilla warfare on the rise and conventional warfare becoming less and less common, American military supremacy is no longer a sure bet.  Increasingly, the West is going to have to adopt a less reactionary demeanor, lest we find ourselves constantly wading into wars that can’t be won.

So now it’s come out that the British sailors abducted by Iran last Friday were never in Iranian water at all. Of course Iran still claims they were, but the evidence to the contrary is now overwhelming. The British have produced GPS imaging showing that the sailors were still 1.7 km inside Iraqi waters. Even the coordinates that Iran originally produced as evidence that the abduction happened in Iranian water turned out to be on the Iraqi side of the Gulf. Iran has since made a correction and claimed the original coordinates they produced where a result of human error. Yeah, right.

Frankly, I’m surprised that Iran could be both so bold and so stupid. The logic behind the kidnapping seems to be that Iran should feel free to respond to the recent detention of Iranian military personnel with an abduction of their own, because Bush and Blair both have their hands full with Iraq. It’s true that neither the American President nor the British Prime Minister need another war. Tony Blair’s popularity has plummeted because of the war, and British failures in Iraq now seem destined to be his legacy. Bush is in an even worse spot, with the now Democrat controlled Congress threatening impeachment if he starts war in Iran. But that being said, if Iran keeps taking advantage of the public’s anti-war sentiment, that sentiment is going to turn against him.

Iran has already built up more opposition on the international political stage than Iraq had before the Second Gulf War began. If Iran keeps pushing their advantage for no good reason, both the people and leaders of the world are going to realize that a misguided invasion of Iraq does not justify giving Iran a free ticket to do as they please. As things are, Iran does have some leeway, but if they don’t play their cards right, they are going to end up bust.

So apparently this morning, 15 British sailors were taken hostage and brought under Iranian custody.  Iran says the Brits were in their water, the British say they were in Iraqi water.  I figure it’s a coin toss as to who’s lying.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover that Britain had been secretly patrolling Iran’s waters.  On the other hand it would be right up Iran’s alley to kidnap British soldiers, even if they weren’t in Iranian waters.  My guess is that it was likely the former though.  Iran would have to be really stupid to take British soldiers hostage without just cause.  That would just be tempting fate.

The U.S. is backing out of a program that would find and track asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. Apparently there just isn’t any available funding.

Now despite the fact that tracking potentially dangerous asteroids seems a worthy cause (after all, we do theorize that the last wave of mass extinction on this planet was when the dinosaurs were wiped out by an enormous asteroid) you really can’t place all the blame on the Americans for not funding it. After all, they are the only country in the world that actually funded an asteroid tracking program.

As the world’s richest nation, America does have the responsibility to take a lead in international efforts, but we can’t dump everything on their shoulders. If the Americans say they can’t come up with the money to fund the program, other countries should step up and bear some of the burden. After all, it’s a service that benefits the whole world.

I really can’t believe that Bush is trying to put a good face on Britain withdrawing from Iraq.  It really takes balls to say that the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq is a sign of success while you advocate upping American troop levels to combat sectarian violence.  If it was a sign of success instead of a sign of defeat, the British troops would simply be moving north into Baghdad.  The withdrawal of British troops isn’t a sign of success, it’s a testament to the fact that the war was lost over a year ago.

Canada scored 12th among 21 countries in a recent UN Children’s Fund report on kid’s well being.  The list was of course topped mostly by Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark).  Meanwhile the U.S. and Britain found themselves at the bottom of the barrel.  All this isn’t surprising.  In social/quality of life studies the U.S. always performs dismally, while the Scandinavians do great (Finland has a literacy rate of 100 per cent for Christ sake, how do they do that?).  Here’s a look at some of the other details of the report:

There was no consistent relationship between a country’s gross domestic product per capita, and a child’s quality of life.

“The Czech Republic, for example, achieves a higher overall rank for child well-being than several much wealthier countries including France, Austria, the United States and the United Kingdom,'’ the report said.

And Canada was tied with Greece – a much poorer country — in overall ranking.

The U.S. finished last for health and safety, a ranking measured by infant mortality rates, low birth weight, immunization, and deaths from accidents and injuries and was second last in both the family and peer, and the behaviours and risks, categories.

Britain was last in the family and peer relationships category, which measured factors such as the rate of single-parent families and whether families ate the main meal of the day together more than once a week.

Britain also finished at the bottom in behaviours and risks, which considered factors such as the percentage of children who ate breakfast, consumed fruit regularly, were overweight, used drugs or alcohol or were sexually active.

The real question is whether or not the criteria of this report actually matters in reality.  The amount of meals a week that a family eats together?  I have to ask myself if that really matters.  The fact of the is, there isn’t a set list of criteria involved in determining if children are healthy and happy.  The conclusion that children in the Czech republic are better off than those in France, Britain and the U.S. is in my opinion not so much a comment on those countries involved, but in the validity of the test itself.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has been overstepping his bounds by personally criticizing American Presidential candidate Barack Obama. He really said this:

“If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March, 2008, and pray as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats,”

It’s one thing to give your opinion on other countries policies, but to personally attack a specific candidate is out of bounds. It isn’t becoming for a head of state to interfere in another country’s internal political affairs like that. See Segolene Royal for details.

There’s a lot of talk about people being disappointed in the fact that the recent summit at Mecca didn’t change the Hamas government’s stand on recognizing Israel. In actuality no one should have expected the meeting at Mecca to produce that result. The intended purpose of the summit should have been to build bridges between the Hamas and Fatah parties, because without Palestinian unity, the stance of individual factions is meaningless.

One of the most dangerous things about the Palestinian extremists - or any terrorist organization for that matter - is that there are so many opposing factions that it makes any attempt at meaningful negotiation impossible. Even if reasonable terms were to be negotiated with Hamas, it’s doubtful they would have the influence to control the aggression of more radical groups. That lesson was learned with Yasser Arafat. It’s unfortunate that this fragmentation robs the Palestinian cause of it’s power to negotiate, but leaves it with such an ability to kill. Maybe this summit in Mecca was a small step towards Palestinian unity, and towards an end to a useless war.

French presidential candidate Sagolene Royal (a surname you wouldn’t think would be terribly common after the French revolution), recently withdrew comments she had made supporting Quebec sovereignty. During a radio interview with Andre Boisclair, she declared that she supported the “freedom and independence of Quebec”. Boisclair, the head of the Parti Quebecois, lauded those comments as evidence that France was both in touch and sympathetic to Quebec’s independence movement. Needless to say this set off a firestorm among Canadian federalist politicians, and for the next week the Canadian media was filled with criticisms about both her credibility and her competence.

The jabs at her credibility are likely just for revenge (by and large, most of France would probably like to see an independent Quebec, and polls show that Royal is in fact a serious contender for the French Presidency) but the comments about her lack of competence hit the nail right on the head. French support for Quebec sovereignty is usually veiled behind ambiguous phrasing. Her candor on the issue was unusual and frankly inappropriate. As Stephane Dion said, one “does not wish for the dismantling of a friendly country”. It’s simply not her place.

Now Royal is coming out and saying she didn’t break France’s policy of “neither interference nor indifference”, and she merely intended to say that “in any democracy the people who vote are sovereign and free”. Really. That’s a pretty ridiculous denial. Firstly, she didn’t say she supported the independence of Quebeckers, she said she supported the independence of Quebec. Secondly, no one sits through an entire meeting with the head of the Parti Quebecois and then fails to understand the implications of wishing for an independent Quebec. I tend to think that if Royal can’t stand her ground on an issue like supporting Quebec independence, where most of her country is either indifferent or in agreement, then people shouldn’t count on her to stand by anything when the going gets tough.

HamiltonSpectator.com - Canada owed an apology