Agencies of the United States are beginning to behave as the agencies of the old Soviet Union behaved. They are destroying evidence.
Americans are learning about torture. Employees of official United States agencies are descending to the level of the autocratic and dictatorial regimes they publicly abhor.
You can read more about very sad decline in American morals here…in The New Yorker.
TROUBLING TIMES
We live in times that hearken back to the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church sought to control the world through Papal Decrees.
That’s why today, Brazil speaks Portuguese and Venezuela speaks Spanish.
In our own time we want…or at least the American administration wants the world to speak American. That’s why U.S. troops are dying in Iraq.
It won’t work.
The rest of the world will rebel big time. It’s happening now – and Canada under Harper – is siding with the criminal element. The Harper/Martin war in Afghanistan is a hoax and Canadians are suckers if they choose to support it.
In Afghanistan the people we are fighting have now gained the upper hand and we are standing back a bit. As we should. The gung ho rhetoric of General Hillier is now on the back burner. The South Koreans will negotiate with the Taliban over the Korean hostage crisis .
I think the problem is we need a mechanism to bring home the troops. Every time Canada goes to war there should be a referendom to see if the majority of Canadians agree with the war. There should also be a referendem every 3 years to see if Canadians still agree. Going to war is too big a decision for a few polititions to make.
Thanks for your comment, Roger-
I think it would be practical to require a full and free vote in parliament on any decision to go to war and that could also be extended to include peace-keeping missions. But you’re absolutely right that it’s far too big a deal to leave in the hands of a few.
In the U.S. the right to declare war is reserved for the Congress…but at least 2 presidents have gotten around that by having the Congress approve a “resolution”, authorizing the President to use force under certain circumstances.
In both of those cases…Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq…the Presidents screwed up. So yes, going to war must be decided either by referendum or at minimum and free vote in parliament.