Canadian soliders serving in Afghanistan are not “peacekeepers”.

".. peacekeeping is done by the UN, not Canada, and we’ve pretty much pulled out of peacekeeping these days anyway - but it bothers me especially because of the emotive image of peacekeepers, and of the idea being put into people’s heads of Canadian peacekeepers as casualties."

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"Canadians need to understand that these are soldiers, and that this is a war effort. The term “peacekeeping” implies that there should in fact be a peace to keep, and the recent battle at Sangin suggests that this is not entirely the case in Afghanistan."

Farfromcanadahar » No peace to keep

'The Last Helicopter'

Mideast dictators try to "wait Bush out." They may be miscalculating.

Hassan Abbasi has a dream--a helicopter doing an arabesque in cloudy skies to avoid being shot at from the ground. On board are the last of the "fleeing Americans," forced out of the Dar al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) by "the Army of Muhammad."

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It is not only in Tehran and Damascus that the game of "waiting Bush out" is played with determination. In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere.

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Those who have based their strategy on waiting Mr. Bush out may find to their cost that they have, once again, misread not only American politics but the realities of a world far more complex than it was even a decade ago. Mr. Bush may be a uniquely decisive, some might say reckless, leader. But a visitor to the U.S. soon finds out that he represents the American mood much more than the polls suggest.

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Read the whole article..

OpinionJournal - Extra

Are You a Global Warming Skeptic?

I have been for many years, and so, I suspect, have many objective citizens.. read this Scientific American article, and re-enforce your data points to counter the 'sky is falling' tree huggers..

The two most common arguments were:

• Climate has varied naturally long before humans ever arrived on the scene, so it seems likely that the present trends are simply a continuation of that.
• The prediction of global warming is just another instance of doomsaying, which has proved so wrong in the past.

Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part II: BLOG: SciAm Observations

Yes, the US got it wrong - but it doesn't need to apologise

Worth reading...

What did they get wrong? First, says Fukuyama, they succumbed to the illusion that America's "benign hegemony" would be welcomed as such abroad. Second, they were too confident of their ability to achieve their objects by unilateral action. Third, they embraced a doctrine of pre-emption that depended on greater knowledge of the future than was possible. Above all, they failed to see the potential risks of democracy in the Greater Middle East: namely, that Iraq would fragment or radical Islamists would win elections.

Telegraph | Opinion | Yes, the US got it wrong - but it doesn't need to apologise

UNGRATEFUL PEACEMAKERS

Mr. Pritchard thanked many people for the hostages' release, as well as God. But he did not have a single word to say about the people who actually rescued them -- not the soldiers who untied their hands or the diplomats, civil servants, military personnel and intelligence experts who spent months planning the operation. Instead, Mr. Pritchard said the hostages are alive because of their "commitment to peace and justice in Iraq."

But why be surprised? The mission of the Christian Peacemakers is to bear witness to the evils committed by the imperialist warmongers. It must be awkward to owe their members' lives to them.

NORMAN'S SPECTATOR