Angry in the Great White North

Consider his attempt to invoke the memory of Lester Pearson, Liberal prime minister from 1963 through 1968 (two back-to-back minority governments). Lester Pearson, as foreign minister in 1957, helped defuse the Suez Crisis using the auspices of the UN (and in doing so won the Nobel Peace Prize). Well, people seem to think that’s the whole story. Bob Rae appears to be one of those people:

The armed strife in Lebanon is sending verbal echoes through the official Opposition in Canada, as contending Liberal leadership hopefuls lay out their recipes for resolving the crisis.

Bob Rae was first off the mark Monday, arguing that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has missed a chance to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Lester Pearson by playing peacemaker.

"Canada should have used the last 72 hours to make the case for UN peacekeeping on the border between Lebanon and Israel, accompanied by a firm timetable for a ceasefire and disengagement," Rae said in a statement issued as he campaigned for leadership delegates in Quebec.

"The issue is not simply Israel’s right to defend itself - it is how to police borders, how to resolve tensions."

History will not repeat itself, because that’s not the way it happened the first time. Pearson did not wing it to New York, hold some meetings with Israel, Egypt, Britain, and France, and hey presto, there was peace.

What actually happened is that British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, one of the main players in the fighting after Egypt’s Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, was forced to resign after the US led by President Dwight Eisenhower threatened to sell off reserves of the British pound and cause the collapse of the British economy. British forces withdrew, the French had no choice except to withdraw as well, and the UN was able to move in. But the US only took such drastic action after the fighting had escalated to the point that Nasser was sinking ships in the canal in order to keep it closed despite British and French bombing to keep it open, while at the same time Israeli forces approached over the Sinai Desert. Meanwhile the Hungary crisis was happening, and the US was getting blasted for criticizing Soviet intervention in Hungary while doing nothing to rein in Britain and France.

So US established the conditions for peace, and only after making a credible and devastating threat of economic violence, and only in an environment in which events seemed to be spinning out of control everywhere. Only then did Pearson have his opening to get the peacekeepers in there to keep the sides apart.

Not that the Suez peacekeepers were all that effective. By 1967, they numbered less than 4,000 because of budget cuts. That’s when Egypt threw them out, and began to remilitarize the Sinai. The precipitated the Six Day War. That war saw Israel win control of Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem.

I doubt that was the long-term result Pearson had in mind.

And with that short summary, consider now Bob Rae’s comments that Stephen Harper should have used the last 72 hours to somehow recreate Pearson’s accomplishments.

Bob Rae -- recycling old ideas without consideration of context or current facts in a feeble attempt to look like a good Liberal.

No, scratch that. He’s looks like a fine Liberal. A bit thick.

Consider what Rae said: "Canada should have used the last 72 hours to make the case for UN peacekeeping on the border between Lebanon and Israel, accompanied by a firm timetable for a ceasefire and disengagement,"

See, the problem is that this has nothing to do with Lebanon, since despite what Bob Rae sees on a map¹, Israel does not share a border with Lebanon. Lebanon doesn’t exist in the area immediately north of the Israeli border. The Lebanese government exerts no control. The region is controlled instead by a shadowy terrorist group called Hezbollah, which in turn is controlled by Iran, and to a lesser extent by Syria. And if negotiating a ceasefire with the mullahs in Tehran or the Alawite dynasty in Damascus was not difficult enough, consider that in both cases, the territorial integrity of both Iran and Syria is not directly threatened.

In fact, that’s why these countries back terrorists. It is a strategy that has in the past shielded them from reprisals.

Without that threat to their power, both Iran and Syria can ignore calls to negotiate a ceasefire.

Calls like those from Bob Rae.

What will bring Iran or Syria to the table? In 1957, it took the US threatening to inflict economic devastation on Britain to start the peace ball rolling. Devastation that would have occurred on British soil. Perhaps Bob Rae can share with us what credible threats will push Iran to negotiate. And suggest a nation powerful enough to deliver on those threats. Is Bob Rae about to call for the United States under George W Bush to get tough on Iran in a way that would actually frighten the mullahs? I very much doubt it.

But according to Bob Rae, over the last 72 hours the UN could have made a difference had only the prime minister of Canada (someone like Bob Rae) scheduled some meetings with the delegations from Israel and Lebanon. The last time I checked, Lebanon has a seat at the UN, but Hezbollah does not. Lebanon is irrelevant, and thus so is the UN. Bob Rae makes no mention of Iran or Syria.

Bob Rae’s comments can be safely dismissed as pure posturing. He comes off as someone who seems to lack the most basic grasp of the situation, and only a cursory understanding of history. Actually, my understanding is cursory. He just seems ignorant. Sort of surprising for a Rhodes Scholar. You’d think with the time he spent in England from 1969 to 1970, he might have learned a thing or two about British history.

Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar in 1968, so he would have overlapped Bob Rae’s stay in Oxford by one year. Maybe Bob Rae was too busy learning not to inhale from Bill Clinton to learn about some of these things. Come to think of it, Bill Clinton did some remarkably stupid things too. It doesn’t seem like smarts has much to do with winning the Rhodes Scholarship. Perhaps it’s awarded after a bean toss competition.

Stephen Harper went to the University of Calgary, by the way. Master’s Degree. No fancy scholarships to Europe.

’Nuff said.

[¹Not that I should make too much noise about looking at maps. In a poorly phrased sentence in an earlier post, I ended up saying that Lebanon borders on Iran, which is clearly not true. Oops.]