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IP: [Canada] didn't mess up, [America] did
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 16:30:09 -0500
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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ Copyright (C) 2001 Globe Interactive, a division of Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.
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