Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Your Excellency, If You Really Want to Apologize...

Our soon-to-be-lapsed Governor General is in Rwanda where she got all gushy and apologized for Canada's failure to intervene during the 1994 genocide there. Ms. Jean needs to think straight. You can only fail to intervene if you have the means to intervene and the authority to intervene.

We long ago vested the power to decide when to act militarily to the United Nations Security Council. Call it an "end to Armageddon" thing. Unfortunately both Britain and the United States saw to it that the Security Council did nothing for Rwanda. Clinton later apologized for his country turning its back on Rwanda and he had some real atoning to do.

Canada? Hardly. Just like they have been in Afghanistan for the past eight years, the Canadian military was largely overcommitted back in 1994 in other hellholes that we call the Balkans. Even if we'd been asked to intervene we lacked the means. So maybe Her Excellency should apologize for the United Nations - except she lacks the authority.

But wait, there's more. Ms. Jean just whipped through the Democratic Republic of Congo where she asked the authorities to stop raping the womenfolk. If she had a hankering for apologizing maybe she could have dropped a mea culpa or two there because the West has sat on its hands for a decade while five million Congolese were butchered. Yeah, that's right, 5,000,000 (don't worry, they're mainly zeroes) while we sat in Afghanistan with our fingers up our arses propping up a thug named Hamid Karzai, babysitting their unresolved civil war and keeping Afghanistan safe for the corrupt government, brutal warlords and opium kingpins.

I just cannot stomach that woman much longer. The sooner she's out of Rideau Hall the better.

3 comments:

LeDaro said...

MoS, I agree with you on other issues but as far as GG is concerned apology was written by Foreign Affairs and was done with the full knowledge of PMO. It was on CBC evening news. Go figure.

The Mound of Sound said...

Well LD, if Harper's people wrote the apology I stand corrected. That said it seems to be point scoring for a guy who's sat on his fat ass these past four years while doing nothing for the Congo. Just a tad of hypocrisy there on Harper's part?

LeDaro said...

MoS, I am no fan of GG or Queen but to be fair to them they have no powers other than ceremonial. If British Parliament passes a resolution and issues an order that Queen should be hanged then she has not much choice but to sign such an order. However, public outcry may save her. Same goes for GG.

“Just a tad of hypocrisy there on Harper's part?” You’re being very generous when you say “a tad” hypocrisy. Hypocrisy rules.