Ignatieff Spouts Bush Talking Points - Again

The more I hear from Michael Ignatieff, the more I oppose his candidacy for the Liberal Party Leadership.

Now that Romeo Dallaire is backing Ignatieff, the candidate is using Dallaire's situation in Rwanda to offer a false equivalency with what's happening in Afghanistan.

"Traditional Canadian peacekeeping met its Waterloo in Rwanda," Mr. Ignatieff said in a text for a speech in Saint John, N.B.

"For weeks, brave Canadians watched without being able to intervene while 800,000 people were massacred. Dallaire sought to stop this massacre. But he lacked the equipment, weapons, and rules of engagement needed to act. The Liberal government, all Canadians even, promised it would never happen again. We are in Afghanistan to keep that promise."

Wrong.

Canadian troops are in Afghanistan because Canadians were killed on 9/11 and the Liberal government decided to join the coalition to wage war on Afghanistan because the Taliban supported al Quaeda.

Ignatieff's fearmongering is way off the mark.

Mr. Ignatieff responded to suggestions that his position is too conservative by noting that the troops were sent to Afghanistan by a Liberal government under Jean Chrétien in 2001, moved to the southern province of Kandahar in 2005 by Paul Martin's government, and that their mission has not changed.

The mission has changed. It is now being handed over to NATO because the US wants to pull out its troops - refusing to clean up the mess they've made of the place by supporting warlords and ignoring the thriving poppy cultivation in order to pursue the bigger mess they've caused in Iraq.

Leadership means standing firm. It means remembering who we are.

In other words, 'stay the course'.

Some insist Canada must re-focus on more traditional peacekeeping roles, such as policing and smoothing the delivery of aid. Others, such as Mr. Ignatieff, insist that the world now needs more robust peace-building missions that can involve fighting insurgents and warlords.

Peace-building? Let's call it what it is: nation-building. And that is right out of the neocon playbook.

And if Ignatieff is so concerned with massacres and peacekeeping, perhaps he'd like to explain to Canadians how our troops, who are now so stretched, will be able to respond to Darfur - where people are being eliminated on a broad scale.

If Ignatieff wins the leadership campaign, Canada's Liberal party will become Conservative party 2. Is that what Liberals want? I certainly hope not.