Red Wave or Fourth Wave?
Justin Trudeau is taking a big risk by calling an election just as COVID is on the rise again.
Thanks for subscribing to Rigid Thinking. This is a free post available for all subscribers. For even more content, plus the ability to leave comments, why not check out my paid subscription plans?
I know some of you Americans have gazed wistfully at Canada’s political system these past few years, but imagine if Donald Trump or Andrew Cuomo or Greg Abbott could just dissolve the legislature and call an election at a time of his choosing. That’s what our Prime Minister, just two years into his mandate, plans to do:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to launch a federal election campaign this Sunday, with the vote set to be held as early as Sept. 20, sources have confirmed to CTV News.
After months of speculation over the prospect of a pandemic election, sources, speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, said that Trudeau is planning to visit Rideau Hall this weekend and ask Gov. Gen. Mary Simon to dissolve the 43rd Parliament and draw up the 338 writs of election. However, sources indicated that it is still possible that the prime minister could adjust his plans.
If the campaign kicks off this Sunday, with an election day on Sept. 20, the 2021 federal election would be 36 days in length, the shortest possible permitted under elections law. Triggering the election means that Canadians would be in for at least five weeks of campaigning, seeing the federal party leaders crisscrossing the country and pitching themselves, their candidates, and their platforms, under ongoing COVID-19 public health restrictions.
While the next fixed election date isn’t until October 2023, minority governments rarely last the full four years between elections. In the 2019 federal election, voters reduced the Liberal majority to a minority and since then there’s been a series of shakeups on the political scene, from the election of new opposition leaders and recent invigoration over social justice issues, to the ongoing global pandemic that has upended much of life as Canadians knew it.
Trudeau is only doing thing because he thinks his Liberal Party can win. And, well, he’s probably right:
(Note: here in Canada, as in the rest of the civilized world, the main left-leaning party is associated with the color red and the main right-leaning party blue.)
These numbers are even worse than they look for the Conservative Party, whose support is heavily concentrated in Western Canada. Running up the score in Alberta doesn’t help the Tories at all in metro Toronto. (In 2019 the Conservatives actually did beat the Liberals in the national popular vote but lost the election, in case you thought that only happened in America.)
So, it looks like smooth sailing for the Liberals. Except for, um…
I don’t expect this fourth wave to get as bad up here as it is in the southern United States - yes, we have our own anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, but not nearly as many, and ours don’t have any cable TV channels at their disposal. But we could be in a much worse place by the time early voting starts, and that could hurt the guy who called the election to begin with. And that might give the Conservatives an opening.
A few weeks ago, Canada’s vaccination rate surpassed that of the United States. I expected Trudeau to call an election right then and there, when the national mood was better. (Nothing makes Canadians happier than beating the Americans at something, whether it’s vaccination or women’s soccer.) If COVID rates are skyrocketing this time next month, many Canadians will be asking why they have to go out and vote just to satisfy Justin Trudeau’s ego.
Speaking of questionable timing: I accept that someone had to rip off the Band-Aid at some point and withdraw from Afghanistan. But did Joe Biden have to time it so that this could conceivably happen?
David French, who served in Iraq (which, ironically, may have a more promising future than Afghanistan) says the US didn’t lose the war, but the post-war occupation. And it’s by conscious choice:
Why are we losing Afghanistan? The shortest accurate answer is that we’ve chosen to lose Afghanistan. With minimal exertion of military force (relative to our immense national strength), we could have prevented—and for a long while did prevent—this collapse. In fact, America hasn’t suffered a combat casualty in Afghanistan since February 8, 2020. Our military footprint was a fraction of the footprint at the height of the Afghan surge. The Taliban were never going to defeat even a small American force so long as that force remained in the nation.
The better question is, why didn’t we win in Afghanistan? Why weren’t we able to completely rout the Taliban, stand up an effective, independent government, train and sustain a competent Afghan Army, and then leave secure in the knowledge that the Taliban would not rise again?
The Trump right believes it has the answer to that question. From Trump to Tucker, they call out the culprit: “woke generals” who are allegedly better at playing progressive political games than fighting America’s enemies.
But without defending everyone in American military leadership (as in every American war, America deployed generals who displayed wildly different levels of competence), the fundamental challenge was more a matter of mission than execution.
Or to put it another way, the military accomplished the mission (defeating the Taliban in battle) that our military could reasonably have been expected to accomplish. It did not accomplish the mission (building a competent Afghan government and military) that our military cannot reasonably be expected to accomplish.
[…]
There is a consistent theme in modern American military history, stretching all the way back to Korea. Match the United States against a deployed military force of virtually any type—whether Chinese, North Vietnamese, or Iraqi regulars or Viet Cong, ISIS, or Taliban irregulars—and we will win that fight. Our capacity to engage in force-on-force direct action is undiminished. But ask the military to go beyond direct action--to prop up a regime, train an allied army, and leave that regime and army in position to defeat its enemies independently, and our record is much less strong.
The problem, of course, is that the real world doesn’t leave a nation with the choice of conducting only the kind of operations in which it excels. Sometimes geopolitical realities relegate the military to the long, grinding fight. Defend South Vietnam without invading the North. Prop up the government in Kabul while the Taliban can rest in Pakistan.
These tasks are profoundly draining and difficult even if we have the military strength to hold off our enemies indefinitely. The tragic reality, however, is that unlike in Vietnam, if we choose to cut our losses and walk away, we are choosing to hand a victory to the very military force that sheltered, defended, and partnered with the jihadists who struck our homeland more effectively than any foreign enemy since the British burned our capital in the War of 1812.
Because of the lesser failure, we’re throwing away the greater victory. I pray that our nation does not suffer a deadly consequence.
The Taliban were emboldened by taking control of Afghanistan before 9/11. God knows how ambitious they’ll become if and when they seize the whole country after the Americans leave.
And yet: if the government of Afghanistan can’t defend itself after two decades of training, when can it ever be expected to do so?
On second thought, Twitter isn’t all bad.