After years of domination and subjugation to the whims of Chretien and the wishy-washy rudderless stylings of Paul Martin, I can’t believe a Liberal leadership candidate said the following (Source: Yahoo! News):

Canadians have an obligation to keep their “moral promise” to Afghans despite a mounting death toll, Liberal leadership contender Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday as the bodies of five more soldiers returned home from the battlefield. “This is an agonizing mission for Canadians but it’s a mission that amounts to a moral promise,” Ignatieff said following a rally in downtown Toronto where he unveiled a new campaign platform. “It’s a promise in which Canada said ‘We’re going to help Afghans get their country back on its feet.’ And the Canada I love and the Canada I respect always keeps its promises.”

It’s like a breath of fresh air…a potential Liberal leader who is willing to take a stand. It’s not necessarily a popular one, and might hurt his credibility with a large portion of his party members, but he’s made his views known for good or evil. The line has been drawn in the sand. We know which side Ignatieff stands on on this issue.

Just don’t scroll down the article too far or you’ll bump into the following statement:

The former academic said that the Liberals need to be strong, bold leaders because the country is tired of being “manipulated” by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

I know I’m young (only been voting for just over a decade) and blonde – so I have two strikes against me – but I just can’t get over the audacity of Ignatieff’s statement. Harper’s Conservatives have yet to hold power for 12 consecutive months and hold a minority government at that. They can’t manipulate anything without the support – overt or tacit – of the other sitting party members. For example, the government could have easily been brought down over the budget vote, but weren’t. Canada assumed command of the Kandahar Province Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) before the Conservatives took the reins (August 2005). All the Conservatives did was extended the pre-existing Liberal committment (from 2007 to 2009).

Now, read the highlighted statement (above) from the article again. Please tell me how we’re being manipulated by the Conservatives while the Liberals are shiney, spanking clean of any manipulation related tarnish? Obviously, I’m missing something important in the nuances of Canadian politics.

It’s days like this where I’m really glad that I vote for politicians based on their personal convictions, local platforms, and past histories rather than on party affiliation. If I based decisions based on blindly following a party into the brink, I don’t think I could live with myself.

Technorati Tags: Ignatieff, moral promise, Afghanistan, Liberals, Conservatives

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.