{"id":1008,"date":"2006-07-19T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-19T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2006-07-19T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-19T05:05:00","slug":"measured-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1008","title":{"rendered":"Measured Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve taken some time before commenting on the Middle East situation because it’s not my fort\u00e9 <\/em>and it’s one of those explosive topics where a single wrong word is sure to upset people. Even after reading 50 billion news stories on the topic today, I probably know more about the relationship between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline than about the relationship between Syria and Hezbollah. So here are some very crude observations on the conflict:<\/p>\n

1. Given that the Tories were relentless in criticizing the Liberals for perceived slow response on everything from the Tsunami to the NHL lockout, I certainly believe it’s fair to say that the Conservative Government’s response <\/a>to this has been pretty lethargic. Canadians are dying<\/em> in Lebanon and there’s no excuse for Canada trailing behind every other Western country’s evacuation timeline.<\/p>\n

2. Harper’s response has been a lot more pro-Israel than I’d like to see from our Prime Minister. I know Steve wants to look decisive but a position slightly more nuanced than all out support for Israel <\/a>would likely have been better under the circumstances.<\/p>\n

3. There will certainly be some political fallout <\/a>from Harper’s handling of this.<\/p>\n

4. With respect to the Liberal leadership race, Warren Kinsella will be filing a column <\/a>on that topic tonight. He says he’s heard back from Brison, Rae, Volpe, Dion, and Findlay. We certainly all heard from Rae and Brison yesterday <\/a>as they clashed hard, prompting Lloyd Axworthy to say Brison “doesn’t really understand what Liberal foreign policy is about<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Gerard Kennedy also released a very sound statement today<\/a>. I think he stakes out a very reasonable middle ground on the conflict and there’s actually some meat in there, unlike other candidates who have just expressed regret over the death of the Canadians.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly quiet on this topic has been Michael Ignatieff. I know there are aprons to sell<\/a> but I would expect the Liberal leadership frontrunner who is a world renowned expert on international conflict, ethnic relations, and war, and who has visited the Middle East on many occasions, to have some<\/em> sort of opinion on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve taken some time before commenting on the Middle East situation because it’s not my fort\u00e9 and it’s one of those explosive topics where a single wrong word is sure to upset people. Even after reading 50 billion news stories on the topic today, I probably know more about the relationship between Britney Spears and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}