When I heard Canada had failed to get a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, I was initially disappointed. After all, was it not Stephen Harper's ambition to regain the international prestige so badly diminished under the Liberals?
Predictably we are hearing the shrill, if not jubilant, voices of the opposition and other critics that Canada has suffered a horrible humiliation and slap in the face because of our bad foreign policy. The fact is Canada, under Harper and the Conservatives, have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of with respect to foreign policy. Support for Israel, our G8 initiative on maternal and child health care, continued peacekeeping initiatives and other principled human rights and democratic initiatives by this government are quite in keeping with our long history of making principle intrinsic in our foreign policy.
The critics would be far more objective in criticizing the abysmal failure of the United Nations in Rwanda, Kuwait, Srebrenica,Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iran, the Congo and Gaza.
The reality is the U.N. has become an incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy with little power to enforce anything remotely resembling justice which makes temporary membership on its Security Council akin to meaningless.
Canada has nothing to be ashamed of nor do the Tories need to apologize. It is the U.N. that should be blushing.
