I'm a bit upset that several of our candidates, as well as Joe Clark, are supporting the American invasion of Iraq. The international soap opera that has characterized the past year, from the time that the rumours began to fly around that George Bush had his eye on Iraq, has done serious damage to the bonds of trust and friendship between the countries of Western Europe and North America.

Regarding Canada's non-role in the Iraq war, I can understand the point that it would be nice to be standing beside our allies Britain and the US, just as we did in 1991 and many other times in the past. But we have a responsibility to ask ourselves, before sending our soldiers into harm's way (to use the American expression), whether the cause we are sending them to fight is a just one or not.

So what is the difference between a "just" cause, and an "unjust" one? What justifies starting a war? Apparently Peter MacKay believes that oft-repeated rhetoric is justification. I'm sure that as a lawyer, he must be at least a little bit impressed by the White House's ability to defeat reason and fact merely by repeating rhetoric over and over.

Scott Brison believes that the anti-war sentiment in this country is due to “poll-mongering”. Scott even goes so far as to suggest that the US should not stop at invading Iraq. He says that he sees the end game "not just in terms of regime change in Iraq but a macro approach to the entire Middle East". Stephen Harper is right; Brison is turning into a CAer.

In an article on the Torydraft website, James O'Halloran says "Apart from his rabid Anti-Americanism, why is Mr Orchard so keen to defend a regime who counts among its' top leaders rapists, murderers and thugs?".
Readers of my web log know that I'm no fan of David Orchard, and I haven't heard any of his individual statements on the current Iraq war. But I do need to point out that while a dictatorship is not necessarily the best form of government, either for guaranteeing the rights of its citizens or for ensuring liberal economic policies, still a dictatorship is a perfectly valid and legal form of government. And the Treaty of Westphalia, which is considered to be the basis for all international law, provides for all countries to be able to manage themselves as they see fit, and one country's internal affairs are not the business of another country. So the rapist, murderer and thug theory is not a valid justification for the current American invasion either.

As conservatives, we believe that other people have the right to govern themselves as they see fit, even if we disagree with it. The current doctrine that seems to have been adopted especially by Mr. Brison, is that other people have the right to govern themselves as we see fit, even if they aren't asking for our opinion.

Something tells me this isn't the way for me to make friends in the party.