Urban Ontario’s Poster Boy, Jeffrey Simpson, isn’t very happy with Stephen Harper and John Baird these days. He’s incredibly annoyed they’re standing up against Hamas and Putin … or something like that:
This new diplomacy is supposed to be based on “principles,” the accusation being that previous Canadian foreign policy was not. Rather, foreign policy had been based, Conservatives like to say, on “go along to get along,” or a lot of mushy pronouncements lacking purpose or direction, especially the full-throttle defence of Canada’s “interests.”
Lo and behold, Simpson is a Canadian pundit without principles. In other words, a perfect Liberal!
Unbelievably anti-Semitic. Why do we continue to financially support this thing?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/31/UN-Condemns-Israel-s-Latest-War-Crime-Not-Sharing-Iron-Dome-with-Hamas
May I respectfully (or perhaps not) point out that the entire article is a plea that we should “go along to get along”?
What the hell is it with these urban western elites? Is there some edginess missing from their day-to-day lives that they’re supporting blatant evil? Some flash back to younger years when they were bullied – as I’m sure Jeffery Simpson was?
It’s like some rural bumpkin flashing gang signs.
Solidarity with the bad asses – although I like a hint of peppermint in my chardonnay.
“The Harper government is so peeved with Barack Obama’s refusal to agree to the Keystone XL pipeline that it was forcing senior U.S. diplomats to clear meetings with Canadian ministers through Mr. Harper’s office, an obvious (and childish) effort to express displeasure.”
Imagine the indignity to senior US Diplomats: Hmm that sounds like a typical Harvard diplomatic complaint that would come from an American POV. Is this clown an American Marxist claiming to be Canadian?
Geoffery’s only problem is that the Liberals ever got booted out of government.
I read all columnists,left,right,center,and insane, and have never found one of Geoff Simpson’s columns to contain anything of value,or wisdom, just a liberal psuedo-intellectual’s perceptions of how it should be.
Breath the Toronto air, act like a Toronto “journalist”.
We should feel sorry for Jeffy. He has been slowly losing the plot, failing in his grasp of reality since he jumped into the Global Warming swamp with that book he wrote. I think it is sold in the comedy section now.
Now, as he sips his latte and munches on his tofu burger, as he basks in the glow of oh so Progressive Wynntario he helped to happen, he has determined he is a foreign policy expert.
Should we pop his bubble and tell him Santa Claus is just a story?
Fred, that didn’t work with Hitler, didn’t work with Stalin, and won’t work with Putin, Hamas, North Korea, or Iran.
By demanding Israel stop fighting back, all that’s guaranteed is an endless amount of fighting forever forward.
Or do you have a new solution that no one else has ever thought of before?
“Elections have consequences…..”
Fred, your heart may be in the right place, but in the real world intentions don’t matter and results do.
Most of us don’t excuse a paedophile “because they liked it”. Those who throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls “because they are contrary to Mohammed’s teachings on a woman’s place” (the implication being that now they will hide their faces in shame to cover up their deformity, and hence be “properly” covered according to their view of Islam and women’s place) are condemned as evil by most of us. We have seen that those who promise equality for all will usually live like kings while everyone else in their nations get bread lines. There is nothing new here.
A large part of mature conservatism is reading and knowing history. It has a lot to teach us. The modern left has done its best to make history into a fractured mess that cannot be followed or made to tie together in a coherent fashion. To me, this represents their world-view. Reporters have noted that Hamas killed over 100 “Palestinian” children digging the tunnels under Gaza. There have been less than 75 Israelis killed by the Hamas missiles and kidnappings. Hamas are willing to kill their own children for a chance to get at the Jews. Do you honestly think they want peace with people they are trying so hard to kill? Hizb-Allah has publicly pledged fraternity with Hamas on this matter. When Iran develops a nuclear weapon, do you think that Hamas would have any hesitation in setting it off in Gaza, knowing how many Jews there are on the other side of the wall?
Historically Islam has seen a “cease-fire” as a time to reload. Those who recognize this argue against letting them continue to shoot. There cannot be a peace in Gaza until Hamas gives up their weapons. That’s not going to happen.
The left is telling the rape victim (Israel) to lay back and enjoy it as the pack circles around her late at night. Israel is quite conservative. She will defend herself. The gun is out but she hasn’t shot to kill. Yet. Telling both sides to stand down only encourages the attackers because the attackers have a criminal history of not understanding that sometimes no means no.
Do any of those put things in terms you can agree with?
Simpson is just another fossil from the Laurentian Consensus. Fuddle-duddle him.
Harpers support for Israel is driving the left insane. Delicious.
I don’t believe that Fred Hansford, way up at the top, is agreeing with Jeffrey Simpson. Hansford is mocking him.
How old is the dotty Mr Simpson? Did he personally assist the sainted Lester Pearson tie his bow tie? is he too senile to recognize that sometimes it is important to stand up for the right thing rather than get you foreign policy advice from Jon Stewart.
Surely even the Globe and Mail realized Simpson is past his retirement date.
Where do all these Jew hater liberals keep coming from. Their parents would have drowned them as children if they caught the little goose stepping bastards talking like that.
Not only was Simpson lionized by the urban left and the environmentalists, but he began to think of himself as a “public” intellectual when he was hired as a “Fellow” of School of Public Policy and International Affairs at the University of Alan Rock. He is the sort of person who thinks we could sort out affairs quite nicely if we would just defer to “Eminent Persons”, i.e., people he would like to have invite him to lunch.
One does not have to be a member of the Liberal Party of Ontario/Canada to be Librano. Simpson has been a Librano longer than it has been possible to discuss Liberal Party of Canada/Many Provinces corruption. Phillip, I guess addressing you as Phil would make you uncomfortable.
Anyway Phil, I am self-educated high school drop-out, so I just do not know better run along to your library or your Librano handler and avoid this place. Drlve-by smears of the apparently only principled World leader P.M. Harper put you in the same class as Geoffery (whoops), Jeffery. Cheers;
Impotent. Old. Man.
Jeffy needs to go overseas and search for the root causes.
Maybe when he’s hanging from his feet in a hot dark cell with the Hamas terrorists, he will “see a light”.
Simpson’s perturbation appears to stem from the fact that Harper isn’t sucking up to His Holiness, Barak Obama. Harper has the cheek to decide a different course from that laid out by The One.
Previously, if I recall aright, Mr. Simpson’s main complaint about Harper was that he did suck up to George Bush.
‘Nuff said.
Given that American “diplomats” make a practice of seeking out the most troublemaking “dissidents”, asking permission is a small thing. I notice that John Kerry and staff were required to go through a metal detector before meeting the President of Egypt.
I am surprised that anyone connected to this blog bothers to read anything which Jeffrey Simpson writes. He is ignorant and without much intelligence. And, of course, his historical knowledge is ZERO.
“Geoffery’s only problem is that the Liberals ever got booted out of government.”
Exactly.
Jeffrey is adrift thinking about how the Laurentian Elite are loosing their grip on Canada.
scar, ” Their parents would have drowned them as children if they caught the little goose stepping bastards talking like that.” I am not sure about that as I seem to recall from Canadian history studies that in the late thirties Canada, under a Liberal government, refused to give Jews trying to get out of Germany any refuge here. Simpson is probably from an old Liberal anti-Semite family.
Went to high school in Toronto (UTS) with Jeff Simpson – he was a pompous, insufferably idealistic dork back then and time has not improved him. ALL of us were ‘peace & love’ lefties at that age, but some of us outgrew that stage of silly, naive unreality. Not Jeff.
I liked your comment better than the article. I applaud the Harper government’s unabashed approach to reality. Unlike the liberals unfettered relativism with no morality, or ethics peace keepers charade. The UN is on the side of Hamas . So much for neutrality from that quarter.
Simpson is entirely irrelevant. It is a bit like listening to a urine soaked drunk sitting babbling on a curb. Nothing more needs to be said.
Simpson: “… ‘quiet diplomacy,’ … had its strengths and weaknesses …”
Its major “strength”, to those who advocate and practice it, is that they can do absolutely nothing and still pretend to be doing something. It sure didn’t work wonders for the late Bill Sampson in Saudi Arabia.
Simpson: “This new diplomacy is supposed to be based on ‘principles,’ the accusation being that previous Canadian foreign policy was not.”
If choosing a side between good and evil is a principled position, where does that leave failing to take a side? Simpson gives no evidence that previous Canadian policy was principled.
Simpson: “For example, every country with which Canada has been traditionally allied has been calling for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas ‘conflict’ (or ‘war’ if you prefer). The Obama administration has been using whatever diplomatic leverage it could to bring one about.”
If a schoolyard bully starts beating up another student and the latter defends himself, is “ceasefire”, which implies both sides are equally culpable, the correct word?
As for the incompetent Obama administration, it’s anyone’s guess what they’re up to.
It may be true that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and it’s certainly true that you can’t tell someone what you think they ought to do without communicating with them. Many on the left claim Canada’s place in the world has somehow been reduced under Stephen Harper, but what they really hate is the concept of having to choose between good and evil. I will add a caveat that this does not automatically give Israel carte blanche, and it doesn’t mean every single person on the other side is evil, but most of their governments and “representatives” certainly are.
What you said, and what nv53 said, among others.
Caroline Glick (linked at Mark Steyn a day or two ago) offers us this:
http://carolineglick.com/israel-hamas-and-obamas-foreign-policy-2/
Read it all, of course, but the money bit, inter alia, is:
“The fact that the US’s current preference for genocidal, Jew-hating jihadists over the only liberal, pro-American, stable US ally in the Middle East is a White House position…
The discovery that the Obama administration is entirely in Hamas’s corner hit all of Israel hard. But it hit the [Isreali] Left the hardest. Few on the Right, which recognized Obama’s hostility from the outset of his presidency, were surprised.
As for political leaders, the government cannot risk giving the administration justification for its anti-Israel policies, so senior ministers have all said nothing.”
Which begs a couple of questions of the pretzel-ized Mr. Simpson:
1. Who moved, really? Canada, or the United States? Ms. Glick’s answer to this question is pretty straight-forward: “Under Obama, America has switched sides.”
and,
2. Does Mr. Simpson also think that senior Isreali ministers hewing to a no-comment policy on Obama is, as he calls it, “an obvious (and childish) effort to express displeasure”? It rather seems to me that in for both Mr. Harper and Mr. Netanyahu, circumspection in the face of Mr. Obama’s perfidy is more a case of seeking to protect their respective national interests than it is a case of being childish.
I’d only add one other thing: the myth of Pearsonian internationalism grew out of the alleged “honest broker” role that Canada played in proposing a UN peacekeeping force during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Which is richly ironic, in both historical and current terms, really, when you consider that the whole idea was given to Mr. Pearson by Henry Cabot Lodge, the (Republican) US ambassador to the UN. As Conrad Black describes it (“Flight of the Eagle: A Strategic History of the United States”, p. 534):
“Eisenhower…said that the UN peacekeepers would be led by Canadians, as he didn’t want any of the permanent Security Council members involved, because that would put Russian soldiers on the Suez Canal. (It was a White House plan that Lodge gave to Canadian external affairs minister Lester Pearson in the corridors of the UN, as Canada was a reliable ally that would be more acceptable to the neutral nations. Pearson happily ran with it, won the Nobel Peace Prize and the leadership of his party in 1958, and was elected prime minister of Canada in 1963).”
Some wickedly good riposte in this thread. Nothing more to add, other than popcorn futures are up. Carry on!
I never read him unless I’m in bed and have a bout of insomnia.
But even then, a paragraph or two of Rick Salutin is generally a more efficacious cure for sleeplessness.
Good summary. I would add only that Pearson’s little plan went directly over the heads of our British allies, effectively stabbing them in the back.
Simpson’s a joke. So is the Glob & Snail. I thank God Harper is running this country. If it fall to Young Master Turdo in the next election, we need to start thinking about separation and financial firewalls out west again – and probably acting on it.
People as dumb as Simpson are not fit to be countrymen of ours; they need their own country to live in.
“I would add only that Pearson’s little plan went directly over the heads of our British allies, effectively stabbing them in the back.”
Not really. The Brits and the French understood fully that the anti-colonial Yanks and the Soviet mole, Pearson were stabbing them in the back.
The Israeli’s divined that there would be a 1948 redus….and with no nation willing to supply modern weapon systems, set about acquiring used cast offs…usually from Britain and France. eg M4 Shermans were readily available and Israel refurbed them with the French hi-vel 90mm…producing the “Super=Sherman”. Early marks of Brit Centurian were upgraded with the L7 Vickers 105mm. Used French Oregans and Mirage were readily available.
The Suez resolution is the main reason for French animus towards the US, to this very day..In fact most French have probably forgotten why they dislike yanks…Compris?
I long ago stopped reading the Globe’s editorial page, mainly because Simpson’s bloviating became too tiresome, especially his inane tendency to blame absolutely everything on Stephen Harper. A typical Simpson headline could be something like, “Earthquake levels Tokyo -it’s Harper’s fault.” I see nothing has changed.