Oh, for the days when U.S. diplomatic intrigue meant drugs-for-arms-for-hostages. Today, apparently, it’s all logs-for-cows-for-Star Wars.
It’s all linked, says Frank McKenna. Canada rejected participation in missile defence as a cunning strategy to press our case on softwood lumber and mad cow disease.
Color me skeptical.
There’s an old logical principle called Occam’s Razor, which says that when you have several explanations for something, the simplest one is the best. Or, in Isaac Newton’s words, “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.”
What seems more likely? That Canada rejected participation in missile defence because:
- Paul Martin decided to link two completely unrelated issues in the oblique hope that somehow Americans would draw the connection? … or …
- Paul Martin – possibly the most poll-driven Prime Minister in Canadian history – saw a slew of surveys that said Canadians think Star Wars is the dumbest idea to hit the arms race since thermonuclear throwing knives?
Maybe all of this was just Ambassador McKenna’s hamfisted attempt to spin the BMD decision in a way that would appeal to cattle farmers and loggers. Given the alternative, I hope it was. What would it say if Martin decided whether to support a weapons system that is either a. insanely destabilizing or b. our one hope for preventing nuclear terrorism based on how many trees and cows the U.S. is prepared to buy from us?
Remember that old saw about the early astronauts being nothing more than ‘Spam in a Can’?
In fact, if you can believe Tom Wolfe, it was supposed to be a perjorative from the real thrill seekers like Chuck Yeager.
Anyway, your post got me to wondering….is there ‘pork and or chicken and or fish and or tostitos and or BEEF’ in Spam?
And if there’s beef… would comment spam to U.S. blogs be a way of getting around the embargo?
good point, especially if it was aimed at the freepers.
Color me skeptical.
I’d rather colour you skeptical. ;)
I was going to defend myself by appealing to the rule that, when using it as a transitive verb and not a noun, you spell it “color” – a rule as ironclad and unbending as it is non-existent. (Must have been thinking “practice”/”practise”.)
So I altered course, destination: the CP Style Guide, which requires the spelling “color”. Whoops… make that required. They changed it in 1998.
So colour me colour-corrected.