Mark Steyn, the great writer/thinker/columnist and Canadian, writes this week in the Chicago Sun-Times about President Bush’s nomination for U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton. (Hat tip: Friend of USA.) And he mentions, in a not-so-good light (but the only light he could find?) Canada and our Prime Minister, Paul Martin.
He does it not as an example of how well things work, but as a prime example of how ridiculous things are.
… Thus, Bolton would have no problem getting nominated as U.N. ambassador if he were more like Paul Martin.
Who? Well, he’s prime minister of Canada. And in January, after the tsunami hit, he flew into Sri Lanka to pledge millions and millions and millions in aid. Not like that heartless George W. Bush back at the ranch in Texas. Why, Prime Minister Martin walked along the ravaged coast of Kalumnai and was, reported Canada’s CTV network, “visibly shaken.” President Bush might well have been shaken, but he wasn’t visible, and in the international compassion league, that’s what counts. So Martin boldly committed Canada to giving $425 million to tsunami relief. “Mr. Paul Martin Has Set A Great Example For The Rest Of The World Leaders!” raved the LankaWeb news service.
You know how much of that $425 million has been spent so far? Fifty thousand dollars—Canadian. That’s about 40 grand in U.S. dollars. The rest isn’t tied up in Indonesian bureaucracy, it’s back in Ottawa. But, unlike horrible “unilateralist” America, Canada enjoys a reputation as the perfect global citizen, renowned for its commitment to the U.N. and multilateralism. And on the beaches of Sri Lanka, that and a buck’ll get you a strawberry daiquiri. Canada’s contribution to tsunami relief is objectively useless and rhetorically fraudulent.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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