Strategy - Tactics - Guesswork?

As of this morning, Friday the 8th of February, we start a daily analysis of “what’s going on with the macabre dance in Ottawa”. I liken the present push and shove contest to three (male?) dancers on a small table top. They are each shoving a tiny bit while desperately holding on to each other for fear of being ejected out onto the floor and out of the dance..

Or maybe it is more like a schoolyard squabble about “my Daddy is bigger than your daddy”. None of them wants a fight at this moment, and neither of them has a hope in hell of winning one outright, and after all it is the bewildered spectators (you and me) who will decide the outcome anyway (and pay for it).

And all three are trying to make our participation in the Afghan War the key issue when it clearly is not. In Afghanistan we are “in for a penny, in for a pound” whether we like it or not. Only if the Taliban physically eject us (as the Viet Cong ejected the Yanks) can we pack up and leave, albeit with our tails between our legs. That is exactly why the other whimpy NATO nations will not “get stuck in”. Getting in is as easy as walking through an open door, getting out is not quite as simple. Or maybe Jack Layton can advise us what to tell the little girls of Afghanistan as we cut and run, and send them back into the Middle Ages of ignorance, suppression, slavery and circumcision. There are about twenty million Afghanis. Half of them are women.

The Liberals volunteered us in the first place, and I have wondered if they did not do that deliberately, knowing they were probably going to lose the election to the Conservatives and thereby stick them with a messy political issue that has, at present, no solution.

So what does this all mean to the Morning Glory Rebellion? It means the same to us as to every other Canadian. The NDP will have no more influence on national or international affairs than they have ever had, which is nil. The conservatives and the liberals will go to the polls hissing and spitting like a couple of half grown kittens in a yard fight. The public will not know what to do because there is such a large clump of voters who don’t want to vote Liberal or Conservative for a variety of reasons, none of which has anything to do with the Taliban.

That is precisely why Harper and Dion are going to make Afghanistan the perfect non-issue. Neither wants to make a commitment to actually solve any of Canada’s real problems.

So, as of today, we should stay the course, but increase the political uncertainty by spreading the word farther and faster. It is before the election that we have the most influence, not afterwards.

Remember, IF there is a major irreversible change of attitude by Stephen Harper, we can switch to his support in a blink of an eye. So far there has been no movement by “he who would be our Diktator” to justify our support.

This country can not be democratically governed by a central government. It is too big, too diverse and the “French Problem is a man-made cancer in our guts which cannot be eradicated. That is why the House of Lords structured the BNA Act the way they did. They knew we had to develop as a true confederation of Provinces. That is exactly why they made the Provinces solely responsible for, amongst other things, property rights. They did all of this because they had been forced to give these rights to a conquered people (the Quebecois) for fear of a subsequent rebellion, which they did not have the will nor the military and naval forces to suppress. At that time the British were very much entangled in a myriad of colonial wars in India, the East Indies and Africa. And at that time the Americans were making very loud noises about removing Great Britain totally from North America.

Once the BNA Act came into effect in 1867 there was no turning back. Just because all of our governments since then have tried to centralize control does not make it possible. But many tricks were tried. Who do you think was behind the FLQ Crisis? The “Big Daddy Trick” of creating a national emergency, then invoking emergency measures to suppress it is as old as the first dictator in history. Does it not occur that C 68 was a similar ploy? Just because it didn’t work does not mean that Chretien and Rock did not think that they could succeed. And, from their point a view, it was worth a try because to lose was merely to waste billions of dollars, none of which was theirs!

I am sure that both those gents are drawing every penny of their substantial pensions despite their major blunders. And all the bureaucrats and lawyers who put C 68 together will do the same. We can influence only those who continue to support C 68 and who seek election.

That is all we can do, so let’s do it!