appeasement

Friday, April 19, 2013

Friday, April 19, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, April 19, 2013

Justin Trudeau: Hugs for Terrorists

Justin Trudeau answers a question raised by Peter Mansbridge in a CBC interview this week about how he would react to a situation like the Boston bombings:

“First thing you offer support and sympathy and condolences, and can we send down EMTs, as we contributed after 9/ll. I mean, is there any material, immediate support we can offer. And then at the same time, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes.

“Now, we don’t know now whether it was terrorism or a single crazy, or a domestic issue or a foreign issue. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from?

“Yes, we have to make sure that we’re promoting security and we’re keeping our borders safe, and monitoring the kinds of violent subgroups that happen around. But we also have to monitor and encourage people to not point fingers at each other and lay blame for personal ills or societal ills on a specific group, whether it be the West or the government, or Bostonians, or whatever it is.

“Because it’s that idea of dividing humans against ourselves, pointing out that they’re not like us, and in order to achieve political goals we can kill innocents here—that’s something that no society in the world that is healthy, regardless of ideology, will accept. (Source: Globe & Mail)

Saturday January 25, 2003

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 25, 2003

Waiting to Dance

Jean Chrétien has cast doubt on whether Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, a position that puts Canada at odds with the United States and Great Britain.

“I don’t know if Saddam has these weapons,” Mr. Chrétien said in a weekend interview with the Financial Times of London. In the interview, he took credit for convincing George W. Bush, the U.S. President, to win United Nations approval to dispatch weapons inspection teams to Iraq before launching military action.

”I said to Bush when we met in Detroit [last fall] after his Camp David meeting with Tony Blair –no argument, you must go to the UN Security Council. And he went to the Council.”

The Bush administration opted for weapons inspections on the insistence of France, Russia and China, three of the five permanent members of the Security Council who objected to military action unless there was evidence showing Iraq was a danger to the international community. The United States and Britain are the other permanent members. (CP)