Two related thoughts for the week, in lieu and in anticipation of more substantive ramblings...
While i sympathize with the concerns underlying it, and i genuinely enjoyed the presentation of this ad campaign from Avaaz.org, if i were to spend money sending a message to Obama concerning his meeting with Harper, it would be about Afghanistan, not climate change. Harper's regressive positions on the environment should prove a feeble obstacle for a president committed to serious action on that front. However Harper's hawkishness combined with Obama's own apparent optimism about warring for peace in Afghanistan is a troubling combination indeed.
If i had a full page ad in the Washington Post from which to advise Obama, i would invite him to read Gwynne Dyer's article "Obama's Vietnam" (the phrase itself should be familiar to him by now, having been used in at least two other noteworthy articles: here and here).
Of course most Canadians oppose Harper's environmental policies; that's pretty obvious. But Obama himself is proposing what amounts to a (further) vietnamization of Afghanistan — and especially troubling, from my vantage point, is that this time around Canada is actually more tangled up in this madness than the yanks (so far).
Demand a global carbon cap? Certainly! But, while inaction on such matters will ultimately prove truly omnicidal, the ongoing murder of Afghan civilians (along with the slowly growing death toll on "our" side[s]) remains an astonishingly clear example of bloody deaths that can be prevented today — by pursuing the possibility of negotiations with insurgent groups.
That is what i would want Obama to think about this week. And so that is what i'll be thinking about...
Dear Mr. President:
a little less killing, please.
(Both immediately and in the long term.)
Thank you.
PS: on a lighter and more local note, the 9th annual People's Prom was the best one yet!
Hope you all can make it next year.
xo
