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Canada! (Less) friendly giant to the North!

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I could easily be accused of being Guardian west. Some days I think that the British Guardian is simply the most interesting paper on earth. Certainly, it shows us that all reporting doesn’t have to look like American reporting — where any feeling, any humor, any point of view on any subject of any importance has to be relegated to the op-ed page, the editorial page, or perhaps one of the throwaway “having” sections of the paper.

Below are two pieces by Matthew Engel, one of the regular correspondents the Guardian has roaming our strange land. Put these two pieces together and you get a swift sense of the obsessive, even paranoid, war fever that has gripped Imperial Washington, if not the rest of the country, and then, hilariously,
what it feels like to cross the border — the Canadian one in this case, but almost any border or ocean would certainly do — and look back at our mad, imperious, “regime change” focused regime. Tom

Canada?!
It’s no secret that the US has plenty of enemies. But who would have thought that the peace-loving nation it shares a huge unguarded border with – and a daily trade worth $1bn – was one of its fiercest opponents.

By Matthew Engel
December 16, 2002
The Guardian

Now whereabouts on the axis of evil can we be? The country’s long-reigning leader thinks the president of the US is contemptible, a sentiment heartily reciprocated. The leader’s official spokeswoman directly insulted Bush, and she was repudiated only grudgingly. Almost every day some new outrage perpetrated by the US is reported in the newspapers, whereupon the Americans are denounced by commentators and letter-writers. Academics travelling across the country on book promotion tours say they are astounded by the level of anti-American vituperation out in the hinterland. Top-level relations with Washington, it is agreed, are at their worst level in decades. Can this mean war?

Well, maybe not. This is Canada that we’re talking about.

To read more Engel click here

By Matthew Engel
December 16, 2002
The Guardian

Now whereabouts on the axis of evil can we be? The country’s long-reigning leader thinks the president of the US is contemptible, a sentiment heartily reciprocated. The leader’s official spokeswoman directly insulted Bush, and she was repudiated only grudgingly. Almost every day some new outrage perpetrated by the US is reported in the newspapers, whereupon the Americans are denounced by commentators and letter-writers. Academics travelling across the country on book promotion tours say they are astounded by the level of anti-American vituperation out in the hinterland. Top-level relations with Washington, it is agreed, are at their worst level in decades. Can this mean war?

Well, maybe not. This is Canada that we’re talking about.

To read more Engel click here

Ready for battle
By Matthew Engel
December 17, 2002
The Guardian

As a low, dishonest year nears its end, the online magazine Slate is running a daily Saddameter, complete with witty commentary, assessing the chances of a war with Iraq. In the past week it has shot up from just over 50% to 67%. Yet I don’t know anyone in Washington who hasn’t felt for some time that the odds were more like 80-90%.

The energy behind this enterprise has such power that it has long been difficult to imagine the circumstances in which it wouldn’t happen. Behind the Bushies’ enthusiasm for war, the political timetable is creating the same sense of inevitability as the railway timetable in 1914. If the US lost the winter window of climatic opportunity and waited another year, it would allow a new post-Gore Democratic frontrun ner (irrelevant whether it’s a hawk like Lieberman or a dove like Kerry) to paint Bush as indecisive.

To read more Engel click here