Dueling over Dualing

There was a good bit of laughing and sneering in my newsroom at the American evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon when the war began, over the issue that the U.S. was making them pay up front for the trip home. Oh, how typically cold-hearted, capitalistic, and socially irresponsible of us to dun refugees! The same folks tend to hold Canada in high regard. So here's how it looked from the Canadian perspective:

Maybe it was the complaining that did it. Here was the Canadian government spending a yet-untold sum to evacuate Lebanese Canadians from a war zone, while most Canadians were coming to terms with the fact that there were enough dual citizens living in Lebanon -- around 40,000 -- to fill a small city. Then came the complaints of some evacuees about disorganization and nauseating conditions on the boat ride out. One evacuee said she would have preferred to stay under the bombs, another said she was ashamed to be Canadian. Although most evacuees said they were grateful, well, some Canadians finally snapped.

"If they don't live here and don't pay taxes, and may never be coming back, what is the responsibility of the government of Canada supported by the Canadian taxpayer?" asks Garth Turner, Tory MP for Halton, Ont. His website became one of numerous forums for the outpouring of passions around the country, where critics disparaged "Canadians of convenience" and "dualies" who use their passports as "insurance." The outraged calls streaming into his office "became an overwhelming chorus of concern," says Turner.

Canada's Decline

Clifford Krauss, while painting a panoramic view of modern Canada's "malaise," gives an overview of the decline of the Canadian military (and this was written before the submarine debacle off the coast of Ireland).

It once built great railroads, conquered the Arctic, and had the world's fourth largest armed forces at the end of World War II, pioneering peacekeeping in distant trouble spots. But today, they argue, Canada outfits its peacekeepers with 40-year-old helicopters and decrepit jeeps akin to dune buggies.

The country, they say, has seemingly come to define greatness by how much money it sinks into health care or day care. Even so, education budgets are shrinking and there is brain drain of doctors and other professionals to the United States.

Such themes run through two widely sold recent books by two of Canada's most distinguished authors, "Who killed the Canadian Military?" by J. L. Granatstein and "While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World" by Andrew Cohen, which earlier in the year was on the Canadian best-seller lists for 10 weeks.

The two books hark back to the days when Canada lifted far more than its weight to win World Wars I and II and when Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1956 for his role in establishing a U.N. peacekeeping force that settled the Suez Crisis.

"What has happened to that sense, that impulse for excellence, that sense of ambition that gives life to a nation?" asked Cohen in an interview. "We're a country with a strange attitude toward success."

Granatstein had a similar critique. "We're not soft so much as softheaded," he lamented. "A country is not just a health system."

Canadian intellectuals note that if there is an Eeyore lurking in their midst, they are not alone. The chronically depressed can also be found inhabiting other intellectual traditions. Danish and Swedish intellectuals, too, tend to have an overcast view of their country, from time to time, Bliss noted, "and they go through long winters, too."

Desmond Morton, a McGill University historian who has written jointly with members of the school of thought but is not a member himself, said that nations that sit next to countries with far more power and confidence — like, say, Belgium beside France — share "these envy problems."

But pooh-poohing his colleagues, he said, "They would love to be greater, but being great has a cost — usually to the foot soldier."

Within a lifetime, Canada was a crucial "ally" of the United States, an all-but-indispensible partner in any global military endeavor. And now? Along with most of Europe, it has fallen into "default" mode on defense, counting on America's enthusiasm for the job and putting its resources elsewhere.

When John Kerry talks about "allies," meaning not the ones we already have, I do wonder who he's talking about. Who has the capacity to fight, on a large scale, anywhere in the world? The Chinese and the Russians, but I don't really want the Russians on the battlefield when we're trying to win Muslim hearts and minds. And I don't want the Chinese anywhere we're going to have to share secrets with them.