POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
I must say it is a bit delusional to draw conclusions about Harper's character from the Haiti disaster.
The fact is, and has always been, the United States works hard to keep Haiti at arm's length from American shores, and there's no compassion or humane sympathies involved.
Now if Stephen Harper is one thing it the most spineless of leaders towards the United States.
He is, by all reckoning, a card-carrying affiliate of the Right Wing of the Republican Party, a Gingrichite with a darker, less expansive personality.
So when he speaks about long term commitments to Haiti, he's just doing what the U.S. State Department expects, just as we're doing what the Pentagon expects in Afghanistan.
In the sense about which Jeffrey Simpson is talking, he actually is not two-faced. He is absolutely consistent.
Harper is very much two-faced in another sense. His is a deeply flawed character, taking no direction from anything other than his desire for power. That means his ethics in all things remain completely flexible, so much so as to be meaningless. His smiles are all deeply phony as are his compassionate words.
We have seen this quality expressed in him countless times now, and his proroguing Parliament to cover up his human-rights failings in Afghanistan is utterly devoid of ethics. The Sponsorship scandal, involving money misused out of patriotic motives, almost looks good compared to Harper’s disgusting ways with human beings.
