Bush pledges to wage unending war (to Canadian elites)

[IndianaGreen]

To fawning applause from Canada’s elite
Bush pledges to wage unending war
By Keith Jones
3 December 2004

Bush’s speech—which was delivered to a hand-picked audience in the provincial town of Halifax, because Bush’s handlers feared that the massive popular hostility toward him might find an echo in Canada’s parliament—was the highlight of the first state visit Bush has made to Canada in his four years as president.

The US and Canada are the world’s largest trading partners and for more than 60 years close military allies. Incoming US presidents have frequently made Ottawa the site of their first foreign foray. But relations between Canada and the US deteriorated during Bush’s first term. Jean Chrétien, Canada’s Liberal Prime Minster from 1993 to last December, was scorned by Bush and his entourage as an ally of Bill Clinton. But what enraged the Bush administration was Chrétien’s eleventh-hour decision to cancel plans to have Canada’s military join the US-led invasion of Iraq. Chrétien, who headed the most right-wing Canadian government since the Great Depression, meanwhile, found it politically useful to distance himself from a US president rightfully loathed by much of the Canadian population as a bully and militarist, beholden to big business and a patron of the Christian fundamentalist right.

Paul Martin, who succeeded Chrétien as Canada’s prime minister a year ago this month, won the backing of Canada’s corporate elite for his campaign to push Chrétien into retirement, at least in part because of a promise to mend fences with Washington. (Chrétien’s anti-American-tinged Canadian nationalism had come to be seen by Canadian big business as imperilling Canada’s all-important trade relationship with the US.)

True to his word, Martin has moved on a series of issues to demonstrate to the Bush administration that his government is eager for closer cooperation. He established a new ministry modelled after the US Homeland Security Department, worked with the US to force Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile, announced plans to beef up Canada’s military, and has pledged Canada’s readiness to help in “state-building” in Iraq. Last month, Martin threw an MP out of the Liberal caucus after she defied his specific orders that Liberal parliamentarians refrain from publicly criticizing the US president.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/bush-d03.shtml

[rodeodance]

1. Canada's Martin sounds like Australia's Howard-both are lappie to Bush

...Canada, said Martin, will be working with the Bush administration to promote “democracy” in such places as Iraq and the Ukraine, because “democracies” support “free markets.”

“This is going to open the world up to you...I think it’s going to open opportunities to us that we have rarely seen.”
...

[IndianaGreen]

2. Bush's goal is to close the Canadian border

not to protect us from "terrorists" but to prevent us from escaping Jesusland.