Of Boy Bands and Afghanistan
In our political pundit panel this week, consisting of Conservative insider Kevin Lacey, NDP stalwart Jim Houston, and Liberal Senator Jim Cowan, it was former Harper PMO strategic planning manager Kevin Lacey (also Premier Rodney Macdonald’s campaign manager), who let forth the best zinger: in reference to the new Liberal emphasis on the Dion “team” of Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, Scott Brison, Ken Dryden et al, versus the “one man band” approach of Stephen Harper, Lacey said “The Prime Minister’s chair is more than just a boy band”.
The Libs need to sell Canadians on the benefits of their team due to the sincere, but meeker, approach of Dion. The recent Liberal rally in Halifax this week, reported on by the national news media, is a case in point. When Bob Rae, who accompanied Dion, spoke, he pumped up the crowd. For Dion, there was kind applause.
Watching Dion speak is like cheering on your child at the school play — please Stephane, remember your lines, go the boy’s room first, make sure you don’t get too nervous — oh wait, is your fly up? Smile now.
Other revelations today included Liberal Defense Critic Brian Wilfert from Richmond Hill (poor Denis Codderre) revelations on the soon-to-be-announced cost of the Afghan war. It is a, gulp, 20 billion dollars! This includes the casualty healthcare costs of soldiers coming home with PTSD or other ailments, whoch will take years to treat.
The Liberals have no leg to stand on when it comes to Afghanistan; the Grits started the war (our combat role), they allowed Rick Hillier to make Defense policy (Rick knew we had no helicopters), and they voted for the Conservative extension of the mission to 2011 (?!)
The NDP have ludicrously suggested we just leave — now. Jock Layton told me this week it would be “orderly”, but should he be in the power chair he would know that we would not just leave. The advantage the NDP have (the Liberals are always pointing this out) is that they are not likely to form government, so they don’t have the same relationship between theoretical, populist, feel-good words and cold, real-life, hard-bitten actions.
The only time I ever saw Bob Rae lose his cool occurred during my last radio interview when I illustrated the absurdity of creating a mission re-emphasis in a combat zone: instead of cutting and running, like the NDP, or a protracted Afghan stay, like the Tories, the Libs wish to wallow in a combat zone in the south, but emphasize “reconstruction” over combat. To do that, I pointed out to Bob, you have to move out of Khandahar.
Since the vote for extension, Liberal policy on Afghanistan has been both irrelevant, and untenable.
Both the Grits and the Tories share the blame for the outrageous military and human cost of Afghanistan; where our Navy is, as a consequence, victimized by budgetary cannibalism; and where so much political water has been spilt over the Afghanistan dam.
And the boy-band of the Liberals plays on, these not-so-new-kids on the block, reunited and recriminating against the backbeat, with Stephen Harper as a modern-day Sinatra crooning My Way.
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
“Both the Grits and the Tories share the blame for the outrageous military and human cost of Afghanistan; where our Navy is, as a consequence, victimized by budgetary cannibalism; and where so much political water has been spilt over the Afghanistan dam.”
Our navy is going to get victimized by some Iranian SS-N-22 Sunburn missiles if we don’t stop kowtowing to Bush in this false-flag terror war.
Demand a new 911 investigation!