I've been thinking a lot about the middle east of late - what with everything that has happened and I have some thoughts on Canada's response.
1) Mr. Harper is wrong, and so far Isreal's response has not "measured". As a Canadian I have more sympathy for Isreal than many other people (Europeans) but c'mon... measured?! Apparently his rhetoric shifted yesterday which I think was a political inevitability.
2) The Canadian governnment is doing a shockingly bad job of evacuating Canadian citizens from Lebanon. Thousands of people showing up to board a ship that could only a few hundred? fistfights breaking out? I obviously have no idea what is involved logistically with evacuating thousands of Canadians, but that is why I alone am not the government of Canada. As someone who think Beruit would be an awesome place to visit I can only imagine myself being there and my absolute sense of entitlement for my government to help me leave in the event of a war.
As well, I think this is an important/interesting example for all of us who imagine that we as a species or as individuals are reasonable or rational or have this amazing ability to always do the right thing. We cannot even maintain our civility trying to escape what is only a moderately unstable situation. This is not directly related, but I always wonder what I would have done had I been 15 or 20 or 25 (etc) able bodied person in Nazi Germany. In some of my reading on just war theory it is obvious that those who do nothing are still morally culpable, and honestly, I don't believe that I would be either a hero or a sympathizer, just a regular person who is still morally culapable. There is this phenomeon of children born to French woman by German soilders during the war who are forgotten/shunned because they do not fit with how France chooses to remember themselves in the second world war. Would I have been in the resitance? would I have been in the bed of a German soilder?
I think the thing with these questions is that you can never really know until you are in that situation - and I think the other thing is that tell yourself there will never be any more situations like that. But it's not true. Look at soilders in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq. Our standards of humanity are not nearly what I like to imagine they are before I go to sleep at night. Every night I fall asleep thinking that I am fundamentally a good person, content in the knowledge that I am only passively culpalable and not actively culpable in the horrors of the 21st century. Right now, an entire subcontinent is dying of a communicable disease which is slowly making its way into India, Russia, and SEAsia. It's a genocide of indifference that we are all implacated in. As we push and scream and claw our way onto boats to return to Canada to escape the harsh realities of most of the world.
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2 comments:
I definetly think the amount of work to evacuate the Canadian people living in Lebanon is by no means small, but that certainly it should be manageable by the government, however I don't understand this feeling of obligation the people expect the government to have. Harper can barely look after the people that actually on the soil of Canada, let alone be expected to have a plan of attack the moment something goes wrong in another country. Perhaps, yes, this sort of thing was to be expected because these people are in the middle east and not in say greenland, but I just think the constant sentiment for every diaster that if the government doesnt repsond within a moment's notice for every crisis that somehow they have failed us all.
Anyway, I dont in any respect mean to praise Harper, his recent photo op spree is annoying to me (ie. flying his own jet in, visiting his wife great uncle's grave and feigning grief), much like his refusal to attend the world AIDS conference coming up this year.. the list could go on, his hair as another example....
Alex
I completely agree with you on the world AIDS thing, though I belief his wife's grief in France was legit (I am not that cynical). His, maybe not.
I think the problem with Lebanon was how unorganized the Canadian embassy seemed to be - I mean it's one thing to not be able to get people out - it's another thing to call them and tell them to come down nd then be like "whoops, sorry, not today".
I think the other problem is that since Isreal bombed the airport it became impossbile for people to evacuate themselves (as it were). It's not like civillians can charter a boat themselves (although if they had the money you would think they go into Syria to escape - though I don't know how safe/practical that would be).
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