Can't really say it any better than this guy here. "Our" government has just decided on three more years of war and it isn't even debated in Parliament, supposedly the people's central deliberative council. A more direct refutation of bourgeois democracy I can't imagine. I wouldn't expect anything less from Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff, but Bob Rae's disgusting display makes me even more bewildered as to how he ever became leader of the NDP. Rae's entire political career has been little more than a warning to future generations of idealists.
A very close relative of mine is currently deployed in Afghanistan for a one-year mission. The idea that the war would be ending in 2011, near the end of his deployment, had helped blunt more blatant antiwar sentiment on my part. But the sneaky, deceitful way this war has been extended without any deliberation by the people's main legislative body (a farce to think of it that way, I know, but I'm just humouring popular Canadian mythology here) is a devastating indictment of any claim we might have to be a "democracy". I might level a lot of criticism at the NDP leadership, but in this case Jack Layton is absolutely right. While I would prefer that he advance the possibility of total withdrawal immediately, the fact that arguing for this to be debated in Parliament comes across as a radical "protest" point of view is a damning critique of our entire political system.
When the majority of a nation's people do not support a war, and that nation's government continues to prosecute that war against the will of the population, you cannot credibly claim to be a democracy. "Democracy" = "rule of the people". Good one.
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