Kudos To Both...
How usefully illuminating to finally see that Stephane Dion and Stephen Harper are capable of stepping beyond partisan bickering, to form a tentative, albeit tenuously-single-issue alliance of co-operation. What a breath of fresh air in a stale atmosphere of shrill reproach and even-tempered contempt.
Reasonable will do it every time. Bringing dissenting opinion - born as much of stubborn dislike of one another's policies and personas and encouraging truly asinine and juvenile complaints to erupt giving no credit to the dignity of their positions and the importance of their decisions on the national scene - to its timely end.
Giving the media more than ample opportunity to mock and crow about divisiveness, lack of leadership and dereliction of parliamentary gravitas. Now, after all the pundits' disclosure of what they don't know collectively, but what they nonetheless prophesy in unwelcome election calls popping up like early springtime garden bulbs, we find mutual respect being evinced.
The prime minister and the leader of the official opposition have stepped down from their rhetorical soap-boxes replete with aggressive rhetoric on wars and non-wars to take up the mantle of statesmen. Compromise is, after all, possible. Dignity can be restored to the proceedings.
A recalcitrant Stephane Dion succumbed to the logic and reason offered him in quiet consultation with his chief policy advisers, a redoubtable trio of two seasoned politicians and an academic quick-study. Who managed, between them, to remove the blinders and the head-set from their leader's determined opposition toward Afghanistan, and invest him with the clear-headedness of reality.
They are now agreed to a two-year extension of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, however conditionally, to 2011. The very nature of the military commitment in Kandahar province is yet to be completely understood, but when Mr. Stephane can muster the courage to reverse himself to the extent that he can say that the Liberals did not intend to "micromanage" troops on the ground, it's an expression of a complete turn-about.
Yes, it most certainly should be up to Canada's politicians, its elected legislature, to determine Canada's commitment, the positioning of its troops, but it can only logically be the military hierarchy itself which can reasonably determine how best to implement the troops' purpose, mode of action, and goals while stationed there.
The prime minister states that the Conservatives and the Liberals have reached near-to-common ground on their respective positions, after a harrowing period of pertinacious dissent and verbal assassinations more in keeping with a schoolyard disagreement than proceedings in the House of Commons. He is himself open, he declared, to considering Mr. Dion's altered ideas.
For Stephane Dion now appears to admit to the necessity of some measure of combat operations by Canadian forces, though they speak specifically to the issue of training or security duties. On the other hand, what the troops are currently engaged in on an ongoing operation can most certainly be described as security duties.
It's an unfortunate but very necessary place for Canadian troops to be stationed in Afghanistan, in the most difficult-to-subdue part of the country, but we are there, and we are committed, and that is the reality.
Nice to know that Mr. Dion got the essential message. Good for him.
Reasonable will do it every time. Bringing dissenting opinion - born as much of stubborn dislike of one another's policies and personas and encouraging truly asinine and juvenile complaints to erupt giving no credit to the dignity of their positions and the importance of their decisions on the national scene - to its timely end.
Giving the media more than ample opportunity to mock and crow about divisiveness, lack of leadership and dereliction of parliamentary gravitas. Now, after all the pundits' disclosure of what they don't know collectively, but what they nonetheless prophesy in unwelcome election calls popping up like early springtime garden bulbs, we find mutual respect being evinced.
The prime minister and the leader of the official opposition have stepped down from their rhetorical soap-boxes replete with aggressive rhetoric on wars and non-wars to take up the mantle of statesmen. Compromise is, after all, possible. Dignity can be restored to the proceedings.
A recalcitrant Stephane Dion succumbed to the logic and reason offered him in quiet consultation with his chief policy advisers, a redoubtable trio of two seasoned politicians and an academic quick-study. Who managed, between them, to remove the blinders and the head-set from their leader's determined opposition toward Afghanistan, and invest him with the clear-headedness of reality.
They are now agreed to a two-year extension of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, however conditionally, to 2011. The very nature of the military commitment in Kandahar province is yet to be completely understood, but when Mr. Stephane can muster the courage to reverse himself to the extent that he can say that the Liberals did not intend to "micromanage" troops on the ground, it's an expression of a complete turn-about.
Yes, it most certainly should be up to Canada's politicians, its elected legislature, to determine Canada's commitment, the positioning of its troops, but it can only logically be the military hierarchy itself which can reasonably determine how best to implement the troops' purpose, mode of action, and goals while stationed there.
The prime minister states that the Conservatives and the Liberals have reached near-to-common ground on their respective positions, after a harrowing period of pertinacious dissent and verbal assassinations more in keeping with a schoolyard disagreement than proceedings in the House of Commons. He is himself open, he declared, to considering Mr. Dion's altered ideas.
For Stephane Dion now appears to admit to the necessity of some measure of combat operations by Canadian forces, though they speak specifically to the issue of training or security duties. On the other hand, what the troops are currently engaged in on an ongoing operation can most certainly be described as security duties.
It's an unfortunate but very necessary place for Canadian troops to be stationed in Afghanistan, in the most difficult-to-subdue part of the country, but we are there, and we are committed, and that is the reality.
Nice to know that Mr. Dion got the essential message. Good for him.
Labels: Canada, Crisis Politics, Terrorism
posted by Pieface | 5:07 PM
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