Dougie93

Well Canada doesn't have the capacity to do what Sweden does, but not because Sweden is neutral, rather because Sweden replaces its military hardware on a regular basis whereas the absurdly corrupt and dysfunctional Canadian government cannot run a defense department as almost every other country on earth does, resulting in not replacing military hardware on multi generational time scales, leading to a inherent boom and bust cycle, inciting the slow motion collapse of Canada's capacity to employ armed forces above the constabulary level at all.

It's all of a piece from where I'm sitting, in that essentially with regards the GWOT in the wake of 9-11, the Canadian government went just as crazy and off the deep as the American government did with regards to throwing the rule book out the window, and to say otherwise I would submit, is what Bush-Cheney2004 has accurately ascribed to the pathological Canadian inability to take any responsibility for anything and rather blame everything on the United States, "the Canadian Disease", which I would add is all inclusive to "Fake Country" in that Canada is de facto not a sovereign state but rather a former de jure British colony which has simply converted itself into de facto colony of the United States upon collapse of the British Empire.

Except that's not actually true, IIRC, the RCMP are the ones who put Arar in harms way, because it was the RCMP who flagged him as a "terrorist", and it is also not true that the RCMP and CSIS were not aware that the Americans were going to render him, they were in on it from the beginning and in fact concocted the whole thing, it was actually the Americans who were relying on them to make sure they had the right guy not the other way round.

In fairness to the Harper government, this is not just any old military contract, this is the largest military contract in the history of Canada by orders of magnitude, and General Dynamics Land Systems Canada is not just any old company, it is actually one of Canada's very few domestic strategic assets, in that it is the go to shop to build armoured vehicles for the Canadian military, not just now, but in the future as well, which it cannot do, if it does not have any contracts, and as Canada only buys armoured vehicles once in a generation or two, cannot be kept open by Canadian contracts alone, so what the Saudi contract is actually doing is allowing us to keep our strategic asset without having to buy anything from them in the meantime. Ergo why I suggested that Canada buy the vehicles instead, knowing full well we ain't gonna do that, which brings me back to "if not us, than who?" Bearing in mind that if you let these assets go away, if you ever want to buy anything in the future, you're either going to have to buy from other countries, or go through an absurdly expensive process of rebuilding them from scratch which will likely fail under the weight of said expense, see; National Shipbuilding Procurement Boondoggle.

Who is "we"? You've seemed to have internalized the state as being indistinguishable from yourself as an autonomous individual, which, again, as a classically liberal limited government conservative, I do not do, and I would caution others from doing so as well.

I never said our military role in Afghanistan was a war crime, the war crimes Canada has committed have to do with being complicit in the kidnapping of Canadian citizens to be rendered to places like Syria or Egypt to be tortured, and in the Kadr case conspiring to keep Kadr in an extra-judicial black hole concentration camp, which, again, if they can get away with that, they can get away with pretty much anything, and if they can do it them, they can do it to me and they can do it to you.

Obvious nonsense is obvious, as the Americans are in fact aggressively selling military hardware to India right now, to include top of the line equipment like P-8 Poseidon MPA's and Apache attack helicopters.

And furthermore the Harper government in the first place did not want to bring him back, because it was very likely he would have to be freed by the Canadian courts, while at the time Canadian soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan, which is why I think the assertion of a conspiracy is probably true. But this is all political, which is why I don't really have a problem with Kadr being duly compensated, because as per my post above, Canada was not just complicit in a minor offence here, but rather the second most egregious offence on this earth, the only thing above being Crimes Against Humanity, and as a classically liberal limited government conservative, I place the rule of law over and above cynical political calculation, and furthermore, if they can operate lawlessly vis a vis Kadr, they could operate lawlessly against any of us, so I want some deterrence against that sort of thing.

The United States did not violate national/international law and the laws of armed conflict by invading Afghanistan per se, that was backed up by several international mandates, the legality issue starts with the United States giving terrorists legitimacy by arresting them and charging them as civil criminals. See, terrorists have no standing under the laws of armed conflict on the battlefield, so the United States could have charged them thusly and had them executed as unlawful combatants, but, that's a very old statute, and in this day and age, politically radioactive, so instead the United States charged them with other crimes, split the baby, at which point you have to treat them as de facto POW's under Geneva, which the United States did not do, ergo, legal jeopardy, war crime. POW's under Geneva have a lot of rights, you can't even put them in civilian jail, civilian jail is a war crime if imposed on a lawful combatant in a war, they have to put in special POW camps where they get all sorts of privileges and whatnot and can pretty much run their own affairs inside the camp as a de facto military unit, like Hogan's Heroes kind of thing. So if you invade Afghanistan under the laws of armed conflict, so be it, but then you have to operate under the laws of armed conflict, you can't go back and forth and have it both ways, US domestic criminal law cannot be imposed on combatants in a war, because war itself, is not actually illegal, thus there is only two options, you either charge them as unlawful combatants and shoot them, or you treat them as POW's with all that that entails, because under Geneva, any civilians you intern have to be treated as de facto POW's, which, yes, international law is capricious, but it is what it is. So, if you run a concentration camp like Gitmo, you're doing what the Nazis did on the Eastern Front basically "extra-judicial black hole", and whatever justifications the Americans have invoked, rest assured the Nazi's invoked all those justifications as well "new kind of war, old rules don't apply, blah, blah, blah"

Bear in mind though, I don't think we're there yet, but if we are in fact witnessing the break up of Chimerica, then yes, that would mean we are going to back to cold war, with all that that entails, to include realpoiltik by two stage fission-fusion tritium boosted critical mass.

I included the caveat of asymmetrical nuclear weapons as a nod to India, because India is actually China's primary adversary, so in extremis, India could give the Chinese pause by those means.

Well, folks these days like to say "America is no longer the leader of the free world!", which, if that is the case, they should prepare themselves to start sucking some Chinese dick, because absent the Leader of the Free World, China can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want, that's how big they are now.

The reality is, absent the asymmetrical use of nuclear weapons, the United States is the only country with the leverage to stand up to China, because the EU is not a country, and Russia, while heavily armed, is an economic pipsqueak.

And that is basically his only leverage, and as it is a PM's only leverage, should be reserved for when they really need it rather than for this.

Bottom line, people who are waiting for a Canadian Prime Minister to act tough, talk tough, or take any hard line at all, with either of the two global military and economic superpowers, simply have an inflated sense of Canada's importance and leverage, and so should not hold their breath.

That's not how the office of Prime Minister works, Trudeau is not King, he can't order people around like that. It's not an official delegation, they're traveling as private citizens, there's no Oval Office in Canada, Prime Ministers can't just go around denying people exit from Canada with no legal basis.

I don't believe the SCC ruling is why they settled, I believe they settled because Kadr's lawyers asserted that Canada had entered into a conspiracy with the United States to keep Kadr in Gitmo indefinitely, that's why they amended their submission to up the damages sought to $20 million, apparently the government did not want this conspiracy case to go to court at all, for whatever reason, so they quickly settled to make it go away.

Back in the 80's when I joined, we still had a lot of the WWII vets around, and the ones who served in my regiment tended to agree that they were just bored sick of the Depression and desperate to get out of Canada to have some adventures, so, kind of war enthusiasts in a way.

"The issue will have little resonance outside of the London area and could actually help Trudeau elsewhere." I just looked it up, it's not just 1850 jobs in London, the supply chain supports 13,500 jobs, 240 suppliers in London, 500 suppliers nation wide. And it's not just losing jobs by the vagaries of the market, this would be families, right across the country, losing their jobs, by direct and deliberate government intervention, to send those jobs to Trumpland instead, just to appease a bunch of far left virtue signalling kooks, having absolutely no impact on the Saudis whatsoever.

Obvious bullshit is obvious, whatever the penalties are, they are going to be insignificant in comparison to the $30 billion and rising deficit the Liberals are running now, and nobody who would vote for these Liberals gives a rats ass about fiscal discipline, unless there was an inflation crisis, Canadians never vote against waste, if you say that sending 1800 jobs from Ontario down to the other GDLS factory in Toledo Ohio is going to have no effect, I'm not buying he's going to suffer any consequences for a few hundred million in cancellation penalties. Fiscal discipline is not Trudeau's brand and Trudeau lefties don't care about wasting vast amounts of money, Trudeau's brand is good paying jobs for the middle class, and like I said, it's not just that London is going to lose those jobs, the Americans are going to move them to America and build the vehicles for the Saudis there. This is why cancelling the contract is virtue signalling, because the Saudis are getting the vehicles, it's just a question as to whether American workers build them or Canadian workers build them, so other than purity spiraling, cancelling the contract has no practical effect except driving Canadian jobs to America.

What are you blabbering on about? What do the Americans have to do with the Republic of Quebec?

In the post industrial information age, there's no reason to join the Americans, the whole you need to be a big country thing is going away, you don't need to join a big country, just be a Singapore of your very own, what I'm selling is you can have your cake and eat it too, the Dominion of Nova Scotia; just write your own rules, if you want American style rules, nobody can stop you anymore once de-Confederation frees you from Ottawa and the rest of us.

Not to mention that, strong message is a delusion, either Canada defies the Americans and releases Meng Wanzhou, or we are going to be getting the stick from the Chinese and they ain't gonna stop, strong message ain't gonna do shit, the Chinese will just send that right back at'chas ten times over.

The delegation that went to China were not sent by the Government, those are MP's not under the control of Trudeau deciding to go on their own, so I can't hold him nor the Government responsible for that.

Well, Peacekeeping has already been examined, and as a result and for all intents and purposes, we don't do it anymore. Not even in Mali., because that's not Peacekeeping what they are doing there, the African Union forces are doing the UN Chapter 6 Peacekeeping mission, and even the small casevac unit we have there now is actually being pulled out early.