Why Iggy Mustn't Lead Canada

And why Harper should never be handed a majority

Jeffrey Simpon writes in today’s Globe and Mail:

…Put Mr. Ignatieff’s position in a wider context. The two most important issues that any prime minister or national party leader must deal with, regardless of time, circumstance and political affiliation, are war or peace and maintaining Canadian unity. All other issues, important though they be, pale beside these.

On the great question of war or peace in Iraq, a decision of immense international consequence, the reverberations of which are everywhere around us, Mr. Ignatieff chose war.

He defended the Iraq war with eloquence, urgency and persistence—and he was wrong. His judgment—not his knowledge or book learning or travel experience but his judgment—was seriously flawed.

To argue now that he did not know how badly U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration would prosecute the war and fail to plan for the peace is true—how could things have been worse?—but largely irrelevant. Knowing that administration’s general ineptitude, ignorance of the area and delusional ideological nostrums, knowing Iraq’s history, and knowing jidhadism and its roots all should have warned purportedly knowledgeable people (here we exclude right-wing ideologues) of the war’s folly.

Now, Mr. Ignatieff is using the same approach to Canadian unity, constructing an intellectual case for bold and dramatic action, albeit at some future point, unleavened by that most precious of attributes, experience leading to sound judgment. Jeffrey Simpson, The Globe and Mail, Saturday October 28, 2006

No matter how hard Harper tries to duck from his Iraq record, lets not forget that he was just as eloquently and forcefully calling upon Canada to join Bush’s disastrous, ideologically driven, war on Iraq. Canada would be at war in Iraq right now, if Harper had the opportunity to exercise his judgement back in 2002/3.