Kat,
I believe Rosie DiManno, columnist for the Toronto Star, summed it up well, in her editorial published in today's Toronto Star.

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Our Moral Ambiguity Disturbing
Rosie DiManno - Toronto Star - September 22, 2001


EVERYTHING WAS SO much clearer in New York City.

Despite the sulphurous cloud that still hovered over the remains of the World Trade Center, there was a clarity of purpose and public resolve that distinguishes the American character.

No moral ambiguity, no collective angst over the propriety of a military response against terrorists, no cowardice.

I envy Americans their simple sense of right and wrong.

I am appalled that some of my fellow Canadians - and several of my fellow commentators - have such a shaky grasp of moral imperatives. I am ashamed of a Canadian government that drags its feet on political and military commitment to a global war against the purveyors of terrorism. I am enraged by the barely concealed gloating, in some quarters, that the U.S. ``got what it deserved,'' as if any errors of foreign policy could ever justify the murders of thousands and thousands of civilians.

It turns my stomach that some Canadians have no stomach at all for the self-sacrifice that Americans accept without question, in their defence of righteous principles. It chills my blood, listening to the litany of grievances from America-haters who are busily rationalizing the hateful attacks of fanatics, exculpating the actions of evil-doers as if there were some logic to it, if we'd only stop to connect the geopolitical dots.

This is the posturing of apologists and fifth columnists. Not, I don't believe for a minute (or as has been shown by recent opinion polls), that this attitude is a reflection of the Canadian majority. But there is a minority, whose views enjoy a disproportionate presence in the Canadian media, that insists on mitigating the horrors inflicted on our American neighbours - not to mention the nationals from some 62 other countries, including Canada, who were among the victims in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania.

Why is it that, in Canada, some seem more preoccupied with a backlash against Arabs and Muslims - verbal unkindnesses, for the most part, rather than physical confrontations, but unacceptable in any form - than the fate of more than 6,000 ordinary people, of all faiths and ethnicity, who were incinerated, dismembered, crushed, or jumped to their deaths?

There are those who lecture on the beautiful qualities of Islam, and how these terrorist cabals have perverted a loving faith. This isn't about Islam. And to hijack such horrific events, to misappropriate them, transform them into an intellectual debate about long-standing political and cultural grievances, is a grotesque disservice to those who died. It invests the heinous acts of murderers with a moral dimension they do not merit.

Surely, it was no mere oversight that President George Bush - in his admirable Thursday night address to the nation - neglected to include Canada in the list of brother-nations that have rallied to the American initiative against terrorism, one that will undoubtedly include a combat element. In a time of crisis, you judge your friends by the robustness of their support. And while ordinary Canadians rallied commendably to Americans under siege - whether opening their homes to stranded airline passengers, sending messages of goodwill, even helping in the search and rescue efforts - the response from Ottawa has been pitifully meek. Small wonder Bush considers Great Britain its strongest ally. There was no shilly-shallying from Prime Minister Tony Blair. Of course, the Brits have a muscular military to attach to any pan-global mobilization and we've cannibalized our own army, navy, air force. But even a symbolic solidarity - pledging Canadian fighter pilots, our pathetic naval fleet, our few special ops units - would have been preferable to the indecision, the hand-wringing, the pitifully self-absorbed response of Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

I'm told that Canadians should not sacrifice our sovereignty to the American agenda, that we should safeguard our own distinct values.

I thought I knew what those values were, that we hold so dear. I no longer do.

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