Blind propose to lead

If Paul Cellucci could have listened during his time here, his country could have benefited

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

Surely it’s one of the most bizarre moments in Canadian diplomatic history. At a conference earlier in March in Harriman, New York, then-US ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, hectored Canadian foreign policy makers for not following US leads. In the same breath and without cracking a smirk, he then pointed out that Canadian foreign policy makers as a result now have glorious opportunities around the world because everyone still talks to us, unlike the US.

Earth to Cellucci: the planet hates American foreign policy for a reason. It’s because your foreign policy consists of going around bombing everybody. Many fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters have been literally ripped to shreds by American foreign policy. If Canadian diplomats find their counterparts in foreign countries more welcoming than what American diplomats experience, it’s precisely because Canadian foreign policy has not followed the US lead. The reason different people are willing to talk to our guys and not to your guys is because your guys, if you’ll recall, stopped talking and started shooting, while our guys kept trying to talk, like at the UN, which your guys dismissed as a “talk-shop.” Never underestimate the effect of Bush’s repeated slogan, barked while pounding his podium, pointing his finger, and grimacing: “No negotiations!” That one is sure to come back to bite you.

It is laughable the way American officials, speaking from the bottom of the big huge smoking hole that remains of American diplomacy, deign to lecture Canadian officials on how diplomacy should be done. Bush summed up American mastery of the concept of diplomacy best when he said, “I happen to think I am a pretty good diplomat, it’s just that nobody else seems to think so.” That crack was truly funny. It also points to the central flaw of America that makes it a menace among the world’s nations: it is an incorrigibly stupid country.

Consider the evidence: The Kyoto Accord is a small first step in dealing with global climate change due to excessive atmospheric pollutants generated by industry. But unlike all other industrial countries on the planet, America refuses to sign on because its political leadership doesn’t believe the science. Stupid.

Most Western nations have policies like high taxes on motor fuel and strict regulations on car manufacturing, in addition to massive investments in public transit, in response to the looming fact of the end of cheap oil. But not America, which actually has incentives that encourage the purchase of huge gas-sucking SUVs and the indiscriminate burning of oil. Stupid.

America suffers a devastating attack on its own territory for reasons that are specifically tied to its war-mongering habits around the world that have killed countless millions of innocent civilians and shocked the sensitivities of billions. In response, America launches two more unnecessary wars that claim the lives of more than 100,000 innocent civilians, using the words “shock and awe” to describe the wholly illegal wars. Very stupid.

What the world doesn’t really understand is that Americans are not kidding when they say they believe their government is only trying to deliver freedom and democracy, and that they think there must be a bunch of freedom haters out there not ready for it. Americans believe that the world shares their concept of America as a God-ordained, exceptional nation destined to bring freedom to all dark corners of the planet. They think that the reason nobody in the world will talk to them anymore—will in fact shoot them on sight in most places in the world—is because either they don’t understand America’s good intentions, or actually hate the things Americans think they have.

Americans think they have the very best economy; they simply don’t know that there are far better economies elsewhere. They think they have the best democracy, and don’t actually know that they have one of the worst. They actually think they have a good health system, a reasonable education system, a strong social infrastructure, and so on. They simply don’t know that among industrialized countries, theirs is among the poorest by almost any measure. Nobody could hate what they have because they don’t have much.

Americans also believe they have an invincible army that can protect them from all the consequences of their bad foreign policy. They simply don’t know that their army can’t even secure a short highway from Baghdad to the airport, let alone protect the American homeland from its legions of enemies. What Cellucci and all Americans had better learn fast is the Canadian lesson in foreign policy: as long as they are still talking to you, they are not shooting. Americans had better wake up to the fact they are only 5% of the world, and the other 95% are not talking to them anymore.

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