Michael Ignatieff: Has the Egghead Fallen from the Wall

By Gary Morton – Aug.7.2006

* Aug .14.2006 - With a ceasefire now in place in Lebanon, Michael Ignatieff's foreign policy proposal looks even more outlandish. The Israeli ambassador recently proposed a similar plan to Ignatieff's, meaning that Ignatieff is about as balanced as Stephen Harper, being all pro Israel and nowhere near the solutions the real world has arrived at.

    As Liberal guru David Smith says, a small pack is out front in the Liberal Leadership race. His man, Michael Ignatieff, is perceived as the front runner.

    What front runner means is questionable. Foreign policy, especially the Lebanon question, has certainly been a dagger in the back of leadership contenders. Joe Volpe came out quickly to support the Israeli bombing of Lebanon and lost his national campaign manager Jimmy the Mechanic Karygiannis.

    Others stumbled and Michael Ignatieff waited. The only measured response, to use a Harper term, was that of Gerard Kennedy, and it went unnoticed. Kennedy called for a ceasefire and diplomacy, and is now condemning Harper for bypassing the vote for a ceasefire by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Apparently Harper is adopting George Bush’s plan opposing an immediate ceasefire, and leaving Canada governed from Washington rather than Ottawa.

    And where has Michael Ignatieff been? Bombs fell, Canadians died and fled, days passed and more civilians were crushed on both sides as Ignatieff did his homework. Now he’s finished and he’s proven that an intellectual is a person that studies and muddies the ideas of great men. Out of tune with the times and a Liberal version of Harper he is blind to the summer of 2006 and a Canadian public fed up with the hasty extension of the Afghan combat mission and Harper’s unlimited support for Israel.

    Ignatieff did come under quick fire from the other leadership hopefuls for his slow response. Bob Rae was quick to bomb Ignatieff, yet his own statement on his website is little more than a tiny rant referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists. Apparently Liberal leadership candidates don’t want to face the truth. Hamas and Hezbollah are democratically elected in Palestine and Lebanon. Both commit acts of terrorism, and those acts stand in comparison to the state terrorism of Israel. Relief workers, the Lebanese army, the UN, civilians and journalists are probably the only people in the Lebanon conflict that aren’t using terror. 

   On the Quana massacre where Israeli bombs killed a large number of women and children, Ignatieff said, "Qana was, frankly, inevitable, in a situation in which you have rocket-launchers within 100 yards of a civilian population. This is the nature of the war that's going on.” Ignatieff also said he was "not losing any sleep" over civilian deaths during the fighting.

   Apparently the great egghead failed to read independent news reports on this one. The Red Cross reports that there were no rockets fired from Quana. Other reports note that the types of rockets Hezbollah uses have a large back burn and can’t be fired from homes or dense civilian areas.

   Canada’s role should be diplomatic and for peace. Yet after long thought Michael Ignatieff has come forward with a plan that is about seven leaps above the ridiculous. Neither Lebanon nor the Arab nations would ever accept it or even consider it. He calls for a ceasefire but also for Canada to propose the deployment of a huge international naval, air and land force that would in fact act as a proxy for Israel in surrounding Lebanon. It would block any flow of arms to Hezbollah. The force would patrol Lebanon’s waters and secure its borders, including the border with Syria. This would have to be a huge fighting force and it would in effect be an extension of the war with many nations lining up behind Israel against Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. Canada of course would not provide troops due to our commitment in Afghanistan, but we would provide naval support.

   The question here is that with Canadians tired of the carnage of Afghanistan and Iraq, how many of us will vote for a Liberal leader who wants our nation to propose possible war on a grand scale through a plan that is so impractical as to be idiotic. 

   Michael Ignatieff is an intellectual who can’t grasp the nature of war and peace. Neither can he grasp the nature of ordinary Canadians. The egghead has indeed fallen from the foreign policy wall. As a man who opposes Canada as a peacekeeping nation and supports things like targeted assassinations, preemptive war, and the indefinite detention and torture of terror suspects he is more in touch with the failed policies of right wing Americans.

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