Our Piracy & Anti-Canadianism

The ditherings and the Ditherites in the PMO simply miscalculated the public reaction on Martin's flip-flopping on Missile Defense. Polls in Canada reveal that the population in the RoC may be more agreeable to MD. If the PMO is representative of the Canadian population, perhaps they too have the occasional but influential moron who thinks that we would be spending tons of money "joining."

But the greatest miscalculation may be in the unanticipated reaction of the people and government of the United States. Plenty of editorials and news columns have noticed the Canadian volta face, and folks there are not pleased. Scott Stinson in the NP reports about a rising anti-Canadianism. Andrew Coyne writes:

It turns out there are limits to American forbearance. The President who had publicly pleaded with Canada to sign on does not like to be publicly embarrassed. Imagine that.

I am officially predicting that it will not be very long before some enterprising American comedian (who dropped out of high school when Jimmy Carter was president) starts a new TV show called "Talking to Canadians," ambush-interviewing folks up here, exposing the underbelly of touchy-feeliness and inconsistencies of the average liberal Canadian on the streets of Montreal and Toronto.

Neither sane nor mad cows are crossing the borders right now, and it may be that soon, neither will California wines if BC has its way. Look out, for we cannot win an economic war with the Americans, and there may be lots of Canadian road kill as the Hummers head for the Northern border.

In his typical incisive way, Coyne sums it up:

In sum: We weren't asked to do anything, the system doesn't depend on us doing anything, and we've already done whatever it was the Americans needed us to do. They weren't asking us to participate, they were offering to let us: for with participation comes consultation, and a role in our own defense. Yet having rejected the offer of consultation, in the name of our sovereignty, we now demand to be consulted, on grounds of sovereignty. And the result of these affirmations of our independence is to make us utterly dependent on another country for our defense.

Take that, Mr. Dithers. Reminding us of the unseemly (and seemingly unending) Canadian whining after George Bush did not "recognize" us when he forgot to mention CANADA by name in one his speeches, Coyne then points out:

But now we have achieved every Canadian's dream -- they noticed us! -- and the results may not be quite what we would have wished. It was one thing for the Americans to protect us when there was some strategic value to the relationship. The Lester Pearson invoked today as the avatar of "internationalism" was the Lester Pearson who put nuclear warheads on Canadian missiles, whose government spent nearly 4% of GDP -- a quarter of its budget -- on defence. But today? What's in it for them?

We have made ourselves become so irrelevant. The Spaniards once called us "pirates" for boarding their fishing vessels in international waters under the explicit orders of one belligerent Captain Canada. But the Spaniards don't know better (That was then...). In fact, we are more like the pirate characters in Veggie Tales' Jonah and the Whale (Oh, and if you could only hear the music) who are quite fond of singing:

We are the Pirates who don't do anything
We just stay home, and lie around
And if you ask us, if we do anything
We just tell you, we don't do anything