I'm tired of hearing about the Lebanese evacuation, and the 'failure' of the Canadian government. The media is having a field day, airing stories of inconvenience and incompetence and personal helI. t's not hard to find someone to bitch when they are stuck out in the sun and under a lot of stress. I really can't tell much difference between these people's stories and the usual sob stories the media love to publish about stranded travellers griping with Air Canada at Christmas. But try and find the story about the person who understands how difficult the situation is, and cuts the government and Foreign Affairs some slack.
Some opinion pieces are starting to trickle down, finally, defending the government's response, and asking who exactly these 40,000 Canadians are (among 500,000 others), and why they expect the Western governments to achieve overnight what 700 ships took over a week to accomplish at Dunkirk in WWII.
Margaret Wente takes a stab at it. And although he's a right-wing bastard, Terence Corcoran nails the issue in today's National Post.
There's a slightly uncomfortable tone to their commentary on the issue of who it is holding the Canadian passport, with a suggestion that dual citizenship is somehow of less quality than a single citizenship. But it is worth discussing the obligations of government to their citizens, especialling when citizenship is blurry.
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5 comments:
Great post I'm a Con supporter But this is just common sense.
It is good to see som libs posting this kind of stuff. It will make you more respectable when you bash the cons.
Down with the MSM
What is the MSM?
Main stream media...I think it's a conservative term :)
Canada has embassies and foreign affairs officials who are trained in this kind of thing.
However, as today's Globe and Mail points out the PMO took this operation out of their hands and placed in the hands of the political hacks in the PMO.
That is a huge contributing factor to why this evacuation is such a mess.
Read the MSM in the US and in the UK. There are much fewer "sob stories" in them, despite the fact they have to evacuate similar numbers, because they let the professional handle it.
Personally, my experience with the Canadian embassy has always been great. But they´re not there to do mass evacuations or to save the world. I lost my passport two days before going on vacation -- they got me a new one. But to suggest that somehow any time there´s a crisis anywhere in the world, the government has to move heaven and earth to get Canadian citizens out of harms way is ridiculous. Mike is right, and I´ll add that we landed fewer people on D-Day, with its massive use of resources and organization over months, than the whiners now demand we instantly evacuate. The govermnet does´t have 50 cruise ships just lying around at the drop of a hat.
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