Souring on Afghanistan will leave Liberal hopefuls anxiously testing the wind
ROY MacGREGOR
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
It is the simplest rule in both politics and column writing.
Wet a finger and hold it up.
Politicians go with the wind; columnists go against it.
In politics, the notion that a leader must chase the people has been attributed to so many -- French revolutionaries, various British prime ministers including Canadian-born Andrew Bonar Law -- that no one can really claim ownership.
Which, of course, leaves it wide open for any one of the 11 (and counting) candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.
The Liberal 11 gathered this past weekend in the ballroom of the Sheraton Centre in Toronto and underlined, once again, why Canadians are increasingly seeing this as a regional party of very little imagination.
When those who had come to listen shouted out "Shame!" it was not, as might be expected, to express their disenchantment with the current government's increasingly American way of looking at things or even the government's dismal showing on protecting the environment.
No, they called out "Shame!" to show how they felt when Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative, came to Toronto to say hello to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, a Liberal, and then hurried off to a dinner to introduce provincial Conservative Leader John Tory as "the next premier of Ontario."
Strange, isn't it, that such people would show up at a political gathering knowing absolutely nothing about politics . . .
But so be it. The Liberals are caught up these days in finding their feet, not their hands. And any leadership candidate wetting a finger would be just as likely to stick it in his or her own ear as any prevailing wind.
But what is most curious about this weekend gathering is that the likely issue of the coming seven months before the leadership convention was barely even broached.
One candidate, Michael Ignatieff -- the only identifiable hawk in this flock of rare birds -- did mention Afghanistan, but essentially to embrace the position Stephen Harper has already staked out with his Canadians don't "cut-and-run" talk.
Canada, Ignatieff said, is a country that "does the tough lifting when it has to be done." This is something Canadians take great pride in -- being there when it matters -- but the growing issue concerns the phrase "when it has to be done."
We're increasingly not so sure. Canada, it appears, is already well into that grey area so much of the United States is entering with Iraq -- support the troops, question the war -- and the reality of 16 Canadian deaths in that difficult country is only beginning to have its effect on the population at large.
Last week in tiny Erin, Ont., when the urn holding the ashes of Lieutenant William Turner was buried in the same grave that holds his father, a few locals opened up to the Guelph Mercury with some rather telling comments.
Jack Grey, who lives next door to the Legion Hall where the young soldier was remembered, said the decision to be in Afghanistan was the real "shame" here.
And Doug Richardson, a man who fits the very demographic that should be firmest in support -- 66 years old, heartland Ontario -- declared categorically: "Those boys should not be there. They didn't know what they're getting into, and now they're getting knocked off like flies.
"This is getting serious."
Very serious indeed. Others, of course, hold quite the opposite view, and deserve respect for those beliefs, but the fact that opinion is now so clearly split should be of particular note for those who would, as Bonar Law once said, hurry after the people in order to be their leader.
Last week's Strategic Counsel poll found 54 per cent of Canadians oppose or strongly oppose Canada's "peacemaking" role in Afghanistan, well up from two months previous. And support is softest in -- again no surprise -- Quebec, traditional base of Liberal support in this confusing country.
Canadians gave 116,000 lives to just cause in the last century. "You will not die but step into immortality," Sir Arthur Currie told his men before the Battle of the Somme. "Your mothers will not lament your fate but will be proud to have borne such sons. Your names will be revered forever and forever by your grateful country, and God will take you onto Himself."
There is still pride, great pride, but mothers and others do lament, greatly, and all the more so when it feels as immediate as these recent deaths in a war that is simply not seen as clear and certain as that first great one.
If, as military sources have quietly been telling those who cover such situations, this taming of Afghanistan -- something that has already eluded Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire and the Soviet Union -- will soon get even messier, those polling numbers could shift even more dramatically than they already have.
If the people begin to move, what will the Liberal 11 do?
Who among them will be first to wet a finger?
rmacgregor@globeandmail.com
