More curious still is the notion that striking out at those who have already attacked will actually make countries more vulnerable to further attacks, a notion put to rest by anyone who has ever stood up to a schoolyard bully.
Miseducation, cultural malaise, ignorance or naivete--whatever the cause, these notions now are about to force the Conservative government to seriously consider pulling out of Afghanistan despite a casualty count that would have been thought a merciful visitation in previous wars:
Anyway you look at it, today's SES Research/Sun Media poll on the attitude of Canadians to our military mission in Afghanistan is bad news for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
More than half of those surveyed say neither Canada nor NATO has deployed the resources necessary for success.
More than two out of three think our presence in Afghanistan makes us more vulnerable, not less, to a terrorist attack in Canada.
More than half say if there are further casualties -- a given since we're there until 2009 -- Canada should pull out.
Finally, more Canadians (48.3%) disagree with the government's management of the mission than agree (43.9%).
Afghanistan may be the most godforsaken land on Earth, a land otherwise best left to its own strange ways, but it is now part of that no man's land running over into the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan where the sole law is the law of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their minions.
It will not a peaceful, democratic land in our lifetimes. But it cannot continue to be the staging area and proving ground for world-wide jihad.
If some sort of government can be left behind to effectively contain and then eliminate that threat, the mission will have succeeded.
Our NATO allies, mostly enervated by the general Western European cultural decline, and fearful of their small but growing and militant Islamic minorities, have been sloughing their responsibilities on to Canada as a result.
Now is the time to communicate to the people that Canada has been standing almost alone, and has accomplished great things in doing so, but must call on its NATO allies to remember that Canada once paid much of the price for their freedom.
Communicate all of that above, with conviction, and Afghanistan will not threaten to bleed the government to death.
Gordon O'Connor can't do that. Can Stephen Harper?
The opposition won't.
Source: Toronto Sun
2 comments:
The last great wars were fought overseas so that the threat to world peace could be stopped before North America became a battlefield as well.
Anyone who thinks that we are not now facing another threat to world peace, and that the extremists operating under the guise of being true Muslims will go away if we bend over further for them has their head in the sand (or somewhere else that the sun doesn't shine).
Withdrawal from Afghanistan before the task is completed will be tantamount to an open invitation to those extremists to expand their horizons and turn this side of the ocean into a quagmire of terrorism. We haven't had the suicide bombers in downtown Toronto or Montreal yet, but it's just a matter of time.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Behind Bars, Before The Bar
Believe it or not, even the Bar has some standards for joining it. Something about not bringing the profession into disrepute.
Stop snickering.
Even the Quebec Bar didn't want this guy, but may be forced to take him:
He left the country after being repeatedly denied enrolment in the Quebec bar admission course because he stabbed his mother to death when he was younger. But Sébastien Brousseau has finally prevailed in his decade-long campaign for the right to become a lawyer.
The Quebec bar says it will not appeal a decision this spring by a panel of judges who ruled that Mr. Brousseau is sufficiently rehabilitated that he can practise law without hurting the reputation of the legal profession.
....
Mr. Brousseau was 21 when he killed his mother, Micheline Sévigny, in their home near Montreal, stabbing her 40 times. According to psychiatric assessments cited in court documents, his parents had separated and he lived with his mother, often feuding with her.
The night of Nov. 16, 1990, according to his account to a psychiatrist, Mr. Brousseau got into an argument with his mother and she swung at him with a baseball bat.
He said he remembered defending himself with a kitchen knife but did not recall how often he stabbed her. He said that she was in agony when he came to his senses, so he slit her throat to end her suffering.
Despite the lurid details of the slaying, the ruling noted that the Crown changed the indictment against him from murder to manslaughter, on the advice of psychiatric experts.
After being paroled in 1992, Mr. Brousseau attended law school. By the time of his fourth attempt to register in the bar exam school in 2001, he had obtained a pardon.
A pardon may wipe away a criminal record and all of the usual consequences of having one, but it cannot undo a man's past.
The absence of a criminal record is neither sufficient nor necessary proof of good character, according to just about any Bar.
Had Brousseau's past offences been fraud or any other breach of trust, the Bar would never have given him a chance. Even if he had only faced civil judgments for same, and never any criminal indictments.
Had his crime been drunk driving, the Bar wouldn't have cared as long as he hadn't killed or maimed anyone.
In any event, his may be a hollow victory yet. The Bar can close ranks against anyone with a firmness and discipline even the Mob would envy. He may have to be admitted to bar school, but no firm is obligated to hire him for articles, without which he cannot be called.
And even if he should find and complete articles, he will still have to demonstrate that he is of good character, to the Bar's satisfaction, again.
And it will find any excuse to keep him out, now.
But even if, despite all this, he is admitted, no firm in Quebec will obligated to hire him, nor the Bar help him hang out his own shingle.
When the Bar wants you out, it will move heaven and earth to keep you out.
Source: Globe and Mail
Posted by Loyalist at 7:10 AM
67 comments:
Anonymous said...
Thanks. I will try to prove you wrong. By the way, I already did my exams and have a job.
Sebastien Brousseau.
7/11/2006 11:57 PM
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