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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

more wars observation : wanna bet ?



bottom line answer : depends on how old one is ...



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6449643/

 

Canadians ask: What were you thinking?

By M.L. LYKE

The Seattle Post Intelligencer

USA - VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Jamal Saad is gay. And Middle Eastern. And 
disappointed in his U.S. neighbors. "We hate Bush. We despise Bush," said the 
17-year-old film student with hair bleached sunny yellow and thoughts of 
someday having a same-sex spouse. He hails from Lebanon and has roots in 
Russia. "People there hate Bush, too."

How, he asked, could Americans have been so politically unaware on Election 
Day '04? What's up with the U.S. of A., eh?

It's a question making the rounds in this cosmopolitan city of fused cuisines 
and cultures, where radio stations mix it up with Norwegian avant-garde, 
French chansons, Afro-pop and traditional Persian. On crowded downtown 
streets, diners down gyros and curry and souvlaki, watching the faces of 
China and India and Ireland pass by.

It's a miniature world at large, largely at odds with President Bush's 
policies. Polls indicate that six out of 10 British Columbians rooted for 
Sen. John Kerry on Nov. 2.

"Bush is still in the crazy foreign policy days of 'conquer the world,' " 
said Dave Trent, a 27-year-old software developer and glass importer whose 
business has been dinged by harsh U.S. tariffs. 

Trent and friends concluded that the election, with its dated low-tech 
polling system, must be rigged. How else to explain the inexplicable? 

"I've traveled extensively in Europe, and I haven't talked to one European 
who has a fond opinion of the man," Trent said.

Postelection polls indicate that a sizable majority of Canadians are unhappy 
with Bush's re-election. Count Leslie Leemet, 55, in the slim -- and quiet -- 
minority. She has family in the States. She is concerned about their safety. 

"The war in Iraq was needed. This enemy is a very determined enemy," said 
Leemet, who worries that Canada is next on terrorists' lists. Best for Bush 
to stay the course, Leemet said, echoing sentiments of many risk-aversive 
Republicans. "Sometimes it's better just to leave things as they are." 

"Things as they are" did not sit well with students interviewed at the 
University of British Columbia. Some believe that the American public has 
been "brainwashed" by a swaggering despot in cowboy boots.

"Bush said after 9/11, if you're not with us, you're against us. That makes 
the rest of the world terrorists," said Alex Tribunov, a nursing student who 
moved to British Columbia from Russia.

UBC students took the superpower president to task for his stances on gay 
marriage and abortion and his track record on the environment. Sorest subject 
was the war in Iraq -- aka "the mess." 

"I was really surprised at the election because of the whole Iraq situation," 
said Laura Laverdure, a senior in English and history. "People are dying left 
and right -- more than 1,000 soldiers have been killed over there. What for? 
There are no weapons of mass destruction. And now they can't leave, because 
the radicals will take over."

If Bush got bashed in Canada -- a country where a top governmental adviser 
made headlines in 2002 by labeling him a "moron" -- so did the American news 
media, characterized as "hysterical" and "sensational."

"Every time Bush came out with a lie, no one said, 'Excuse me, Mr. President. 
...' There was a big buy-in. No one challenged him," said Sarah Bjorknas, a 
peace activist and library clerk in the suburb of Burnaby.

Surveys of citizens have shown strong concern that a Bush victory could 
negatively influence Canada -- concerns that Bjorknas shares. 

"I feel fearful, and powerless," she said. "Here we are sitting next to the 
U.S., and whatever these people decide to do can have a huge effect on us."

Some who cut Americans slack in the disputed 2000 election weren't about to 
do it again in 2004 -- not after Bush swept to victory with more votes than 
any president in U.S. history.

"In 2000, the U.S. election results left us with doubts about the American 
electoral system; this one leaves us with doubts about the American 
electorate," Marc Coderre wrote in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen.

At the Metro Town Mall in Burnaby, Shokhi Hossain said Americans will get 
exactly what they deserve. 

"I came from a brown country -- my dad is from Bangladesh -- and I wanted 
anybody but Bush," said the 18-year-old, who works at Urban Behaviour, a 
clothing store. "If Americans want to get screwed -- go ahead. They're the 
ones who are going to be crying to come up here."

Those cries have, indeed, begun. The prospect of "Bush dodgers" fleeing the 
United States has become a hot post-election topic. Last Wednesday, hours 
after Bush's acceptance speech, the Canadian immigration Web site hit a 
record 180,241 visits -- 115,628 of them from the United States. The pace 
kept up over the weekend, with 71,014 U.S. visits on Saturday alone.

Some Canadian officials issued sobering warnings that incoming Americans 
would have to wait in line with the other 250,000 immigrants expected in 
2005, facing up to a year's wait and forking over $500 in application fees 
and a $975 landing tax.

Other Canadians greeted the idea of a " 'Merkin" influx with good-natured 
Great White Northern humor. On the heavily trafficked Web site 
marryanamerican.ca, some offered refuge and wedding bands to "hot, 
disenfranchised American chicks," even throwing a free flu shot into the 
bargain. 

Internet sites ran a map of "The United States of Canada," incorporating blue 
Democratic states, and "Jesusland," embracing Republican red. And two 
Canadian writers ran in Slate magazine a tongue-in-cheek test for Americans 
to see whether they would make good candidates for immigration to the kinder, 
gentler nation up north. 

Among the questions: "Do you like to shoot people?" (bad) and "Are you 
covered in vast quantities of coarse black fur?" (good).

Andrew Gray, a math and computer science major at UBC, said he doubts that 
many Americans would actually make the one-way trip north. He wouldn't, if 
roles were switched. "If I lived in the U.S., I would want to stay and fight 
-- not abandon my country."

Gray said he is disappointed, but not surprised, by Election '04. And he had 
a glumly philosophical view of the outcome, seen from the other side of the 
border, and the other end of an ideological gap. "There probably won't be any 
more wars, because the U.S. is already so overextended," he said. "And I 
don't think things will get a whole lot worse -- except for America's 
reputation."

Gray shrugged, then set back to studying numbers. "It's not the end of the 
world," he said.


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P-I reporter M.L. Lyke can be reached at 206-448-8344 or 
m.l.lyke AT seattlepi.com