Bush en Canadá

DEC. 2, 2004: TRIUMPH

The Washington Post’s always imaginative White House correspondent Dana Milbank and its dour front-page caption writers would have you believe that President Bush’s Canadian visit occurred in an atmosphere of tight-lipped circumspection. “During his two-day visit to Canada,” the caption writer opined, “Bush outlined a second-term foreign policy that would make international cooperation his administration’s top priority, but the president made clear that such cooperation must occur on his terms.”

Meanwhile, I spent yesterday afternoon fielding calls from Canadians and especially Canadian journalists by no means friendly to the president who just could not stop enthusing about the wit, charm, warmth, and understanding of the president’sspeech.

Bush’s visit was a diplomatic triumph, from the failure of Canada’s small but vociferous anti-American minority to turn out in the cold streets of Ottawa to the new tone taken by prime minister Paul Martin – and perhaps above all to the laughter and cheers of the president’s audiences.

The usually anti-Bush Toronto Star has a short article here delightedly explaining the Canadian references in the president’s jokes.

(The eastern Canadian Star missed one line that would resonate with Western Canada’s conservative and pro-American ranchers, now unfairly locked out of the US market because of a hysterical over-reaction to a single BSE-infected cow: “I proudly ate some Alberta beef last night, and I’m still standing.”)

More important even than the shared humor was the lovely tribute the president paid to those Canadian families who took in the 33,000 American passengers stranded on 9/11. There’s a widespread belief in Canada that President Bush slighted Canada in his great speech to Congress on Sept. 20, 2001. As Canadians remember it, the president thanked a long list of nations for their aid – but neglected people like those Prime Minister Martin cited in his introduction of the president:

“Innkeepers threw open their doors; rooms were free of charge. Residents stayed up all night to cook for their guests. They went door-to-door to find spare bedding. They put hand-written signs in their windows: ‘Come in for a shower.’

“In St. John’s [Newfoundland], Linda Moyles turned her own bed over to Jeannette DeCamp, a U.S. Army specialist from Florida who was eight months pregnant and had spent her first night on a church floor. ‘Come and go as you like,’ she told her. ‘The door’s never locked.’”

As you can see by rereading the president’s 2001 speech, Canadians' aggrieved memory of it is not quite accurate. There was no list of thank yous from which Canada was omitted. The president cited instead a series of scenes from around the world that symbolized the global response to 9/11.

But it is true that one of those scenes that could and should have been mentioned was the warm welcome extended by Canadians and especially Atlantic Canadians: in terms of practical impact on the lives of Americans in need, that welcome was the single most dramatic act of fellow-feeling to occur anywhere on the planet. Seeming not to acknowledge it bruised Canadian feelings terribly – and alas bruised most the feelings of the most conservative and pro-American Canadians, while gratifying the anti-Americans who were able to exult, “See – the Americans don’t care a whit for your friendship and support.”

Well nobody can say that now.

The president’s thanks could not have been delivered in a better place or in better spirit. And there was more.

Past American presidential visitors have paid tribute – as say Bill Clinton did on his official visit in 1995 – to Canada’s softer, gentler side: its healthcare programs, its social welfare, its gun control, its multiculturalism. Well they all exist, and they are popular with many Canadians, although less so now perhaps than they were a decade ago.

But there is another Canada: the Canada that sacrified three times as many people as the US (in proportion to population) in two world wars; the Canada whose forces led the great drive of August 9, 1918, the “black day” of the German army; the Canada that took responsibility for one of the beaches at D-Day while an America that then had almost 15 times Canada’s population took two; the Canada that fought in Korea, the Gulf War, now in Afghanistan – and, as many Halifax naval families know well, that helps even today to patrol the Persian Gulf.

This Canada was the Canada that President Bush singled out for praise – even acknowledging (a fact that Canadians do not forget), “In the early days of World War II, when the United States was still wrestling with isolationism, Canadian forces were already engaging the enemies of freedom across the Atlantic.”

The president’s powerful words were preceded by a possibly even more surprising introduction from Paul Martin. Martin too paid tribute to martial Canada in language that has not been heard from a prime minister since Brian Mulroney left office:

“We are in a war against terrorism, and we are in it together: Americans and Canadians. From this harbour, families and loved ones have watched as Canadian military personnel departed for service in Afghanistan and points overseas.

“There have been tests at home, too. There has been enormous pressure on our shared border. We are concerned with domestic security. We must defend this continent, secure its borders, guard its ports -- and Canada is absolutely committed to doing whatever needs to be done.”

Some critics of the president have in recent years endorsed the strange conceit that the United States is responsible for everything that happens in the Western alliance. If things go well, it’s solely to America’s credit; if things go ill – as they have often done since 9/11 – then it is America’s fault. But other countries have motives and purposes too. France for example has chosen bad relations with the United States for ideological purposes of its own. Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder chose a bad relationship for short-term electoral advantage. And Canada’s Jean Chretien chose a bad relationship in order to appease left-wing members of his governing Liberal party affronted by his relatively non-left economic policies.

Chretien’s departure from politics – and George Bush’s stunning re-election victory – have changed that political calculus. Canada’s new leaders feel that they stand much more to lose than to gain, even in domestic political terms, from Chretien’s cold war against the US. Martin’s invitation to Bush, Bush’s acceptance, the president’s superb speech and the warm reception it received, all indicate a decision by Canada that it is time for a new approach. That’s the foreign-policy headline from this trip – and if it it portends a similar change of heart for similar kinds of reasons by governments in Europe, then it’s a very, very big headline indeed. If the Washington Post were less eager to score points off this president, they might even have printed it.

National Review Online