The Maple Leaf Stands Tall

(Water wet, sky blue, Blogger photo upload hosed again – this is a recording…)

I swear, I don’t know why anyone pays a lick of attention to what National Review Online “columnist” Jonah Goldberg says, but apparently, some people do. He once wrote that Rachel Carson, in her landmark book “Silent Spring,” was incorrect in stating that DDT was a known cause of cancer, but it was so easy to go to the Center for Disease Control’s web site and prove him wrong that I had to laugh.

Now, apparently, he recently insulted Canada, even though the country has recently broken up an al Qaeda cell that was planning an assortment of typically heinous activities. The only reason I know of this, aside from the fact that the Philadelphia Inquirer published one of his columns that I immediately ignored, is because of this great rebuttal that appeared this morning:

Jonah Goldberg's June 12 commentary, "Canada out of touch on terror," is out of touch with Canada as well as "off" on terror. Delusion is in the mind of Goldberg, not Canadians, who on 9/11 accepted planes en route to the United States from Asia and Europe, hosted the passengers debarked for the nine days it took the United States to respond, and who suffered the largest number of foreign fatalities at ground zero.

Canada has been, and is, America's first ally. Goldberg's charge that Canada is "sucking up to the United Nations" and ranks 50th in the number of United Nations peacekeeping troops is careless and insensitive. Canada contributes troops disproportionately higher to its population than the 49 other nations do. Canada was the first to volunteer in Afghanistan under the U.N. mandate. Canada did not refuse to serve in Iraq but, rather, did not because it was not a U.N.-sanctioned action. These decisions were made as a sovereign country and had nothing to do with assuaging jihadists.

Worse, Goldberg proffers the propaganda that in Canada there's "a profoundly evil, homegrown Islamist terrorist cell" that has "provoked a lot of soul-searching." This is disinformation. The 17 people rounded up did buy three times the fertilizer of Timothy McVeigh and his cohorts, but it was part of a sting operation! It was the mistake of the media to make so much of a politicized event, when the reality was that those arrested were a gang who couldn't shoot straight.

Canada is an independent country despite being in the shadow of the United States. Its role internationally is as an alter-ego to the United States, daily ameliorating the crude indispositions of the present administration.

We just buried the first female Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. Canadians, like Americans, are conflicted over the collective presence in the Middle East. We reject, however, that we are "nice" and "appeasing." Canada should be applauded for its diligence in tracking and prosecuting terrorists. It is as vigilant as the United States in immigration and border protection. Remember, it was the United States that failed to recognize the 9/11 terrorists. No one came from Canada, and, with the continued good work of our collective security forces, no one ever will.

Vincent Mallardi
Canadian-American Chamber of Commerce
Philadelphia

In spite of this, I’m still rooting for Carolina to wrap up the Finals and win the Cup in Edmonton Saturday night (go ‘Canes!).