Thanks to Andrew Coyne putting up some more of Kevin Potvin's filth, we can now have an insight into the Green Party's perspectives about the world around us, a foreign policy that Stephane Dion is giving a free pass in the riding of Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs. The following italicized quotes all come from articles written by Potvin that Coyne has linked to, if you want to read them in full, I suggest visiting Coyne's place. My comments in regular text follow . . .

We share common cause with the Islamist terrorists
Far from being unreasonable fanatics, the terrorists fight for the same things we do. We have a common enemy.

The London subway bombings were not cowardly, despicable and unspeakable acts; they were acts of war, and civilians for a century have been regarded as legitimate targets in war, even if our own warriors don’t admit it.

[I]n fact there is a real and serious war on and that the other side does have great and noble, and compellingly existential, reasons to fight.

I think there's enough suspicion about the origins of 9-11 to make it an issue since it has so much to do with Canadian foreign policy.

Osama bin Laden does not fight for the same things that the Canadian Forces or Canada's allies fight for. To suggest that is the case is the most despicable form of moral equivalency and completely ignorant of basic facts, such as, but not limited to: Osama bin Laden used Afghanistan for the purpose of establishing a base to conduct terrorist acts and used his proxy, the Taliban, to institute a ruthless dictatorship over the people of Afghanistan that denied them basic human rights and freedoms. Canada and its NATO partners are there to undo the damage done to Afghanistan's civil society, and help build democratic institutions, the rule of law, and provide security and defend the rights of the country's people from the attempts of the Taliban insurgency to retake the country. Canada has not a single common cause with Osama bin Laden and his ilk.

Targeting civilians, as was the case in the despicable act of the London subway bombing, is not a legitimate tactic in 21st century warfare. That is the basic reason that Canadian Forces, the Israeli Defence Forces, NATO, and other states and alliances do not condone, and indeed strongly condemn, the deliberate targeting of civilians in military theatres. Those who do intentionally attack civilians are rightly defined as war criminals, and are often brought to trial in democratic states. Israel has possibly the most strict legislation of any country when it comes to inflicting civilian casualties in war, and it is the state that is under considerable duress and threat of being extinguished or, as Iran's president prefers, 'wiped off the map.' Democratic states do not target civilians, and go to great lengths to avoid civilian deaths. We gain no benefit from murdering civilians, and we inflict legal penalties upon those who are found to be guilty of doing so, even in the heat of combat. Terrorists, on the other hand, are not traditional legitimate combatants. They wear no uniform, no identifiable insignia that distinguishes them from civilians. They, unlike us, do deliberately target civilians, and they also benefit from the death of civilians that we are responsible for causing. Whereas we fight with one hand behind our back, they deliberately target those who are not involved in the military conflicts in the many theatres around the world. This is but one of many areas in which Potvin's attempt to place Canada and its democratic allies on a moral par with, as being the same as, terrorists organizations fails miserably any well-thought scrutiny.

Installing a regime of sharia law is not a particularly noble agenda when one considers the implications for the rights of women. We know what those implications are, for we see them on a regular basis in countries such as Pakistan or even some areas of Afghanistan still. The objectives of the terrorists include the destruction of Israel, the religious purification of all lands that have ever been held by Muslims, the death of four million Americans, and the utter destruction of any semblance of democracy in the Middle East. To proclaim these ends as good and noble implies that the means being used to achieve them are also good and noble. Strapping bomb belts to young children, HIV-positive people and pregnant women, and sending them off to detonate themselves in shopping malls, theatres, and public gathering areas are not noble means that will achieve a noble end. They only perpetuate violence and prevent moderate Muslims from being able to move forward on truly noble goals, such as the establishment of a viable, free, and non-threatening Palestinian state, or the building of relations between Muslim states and the West.

To suggest that 9/11 was somehow an internal operation conducted by the United States against its own citizens defies all common sense, as well as some of the more obtuse public perceptions about the administration of George W. Bush. A democratic state would never engineer the cold-blooded murder of almost 3000 of its own citizens, and it would certainly never get away with it. The 9/11 Commission Report is a thorough analysis of the events of that day and the sequence that led up to it. It is one thing to question the response of the American government to 9/11, it is entirely another to suggest that it is responsible for orchestrating it. So many nutbars out there are so insistent that Bush is a moron; wouldn't something as huge in scale as 9/11 therefore be out of his range? Or is that also one of those things that is a Dick Cheney-Donald Rumsfeld-Paul Wolfowitz-Halliburton puppet show?

People like Kevin Potvin have had the red carpet rolled out for them. Shouldn't Dion have done his research into what these people think before so eagerly embracing Elizabeth May? He is subverting his own party in Central Nova in order for there to be a supposed greater chance to knock off the Canadian Foreign Minister. Are the above statements what any of us really want to replace the common-sense, democratically-minded approach of the Conservatives? I should like to think absolutely not.