Independent Goa Observer

The issues for Canadians regarding the US election are trade-centric. It didn't really matter to Canadians if George W. Bush is re-elected president or John Kerry, the Democratic senator, made it to the White House. The difference in approach to trade will be one of degree, never of kind, writes BEN ANTAO.

THE USA TODAY is a polarized society. Not since the mid-1960s when Americans were churning in the cauldron of Vietnam abroad and civil rights agitation at home have Canada's neighbours to the south faced and are facing such volatile pains and perils to their accustomed sense of security of life and limb. Why does the world hate us so, they continue to ask. In the 1960s it was communism; today it's terrorism.

Thus every four years, the nation that Abraham Lincoln had freed from another kind of internal turmoil stemming from slavery goes into political navel-gazing, a ritualized exercise of electing a president, a game orchestrated with numbing hype and maddening noise, whose outcome the world awaits with interest.

For most Canadians, of course, the election of the US president is not an earth-shaking event. Being neighbours, they are well aware of Uncle Sam's predilection for hoopla, parades, and chest-thumping nationalism. They understand the deep-seated need of Americans to be liked and loved by the entire globe.

For most Canadians, the election was not about who ultimately won the White House; nor was it about Republicans or Democrats who have been engaged in an eight-month tug-of-war to secure the key to the executive suite of the US administration and Congress. It's about business and trade and, of course, border security in the aftermath of 9/11.

With slightly over 32 million people compared to 300 million down south, Canada's trade with the US amounts to 82% of its GDP; interestingly enough, about 80% of all corporations doing business in Canada are owned by Americans. And the American national interest has always been Business .

Forget about securing democracy and freedom that the US administration glibly talks about. The American people are brainwashed by politicians and corporate interests to think they're entitled to ravage the resources of the world to make themselves rich and richer. And they will not hesitate to go to WAR with anyone if there's a buck in it. Indeed, the US economy needs to stir up conflicts in the rest of the world in order to oil and grease its industrial-military complex. And the people being inward-looking buy into this propaganda since they do not know any better because their general knowledge of other countries is pathetic.

Canadians make a running joke about the Americans' abysmal knowledge of geography, let alone history, of their closest ally and trading partner. Cars after cars with skis on their roof racks are reported to be crossing the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls every summer, to good-natured ribbing at the hands of Canadian immigration officials at the border.

“Where are you going in Canada?” asks the immigration officer.

“To see my Canadian friend,” says the American.

“But where?”

“He lives in Ontario.”

“Where in Ontario?”

“Honey, where does our friend live in Canada?” he asks his wife.

“Why, in Ontario, for Christ sake,” she says.

At this point, the immigration officer smiles knowingly for he has heard it all before. “Have a nice trip,” he tells the American visitors and chuckles at the sight of the skis.

Canadians, however, for the sake of business and good relations, tolerate such inadequacies for Canada is a nation of immigrants, well-educated immigrants, most of whom come in today with loads of money. In recent years, a class of business immigrants has been arriving from the Pacific Rim region, whose knowledge of English may be limited with accents barely comprehensible, but whose suitcases swell with dollar bills. We don't complain about their English, of course, for we need their money and their enterprise; we need them to pay into the high tax structure to keep our civil servants warm and cozy in retirement. We Canadians know which side our bread is buttered and by whom. We smile and tolerate the newcomers, something that Goans will readily understand and empathize with.

So the issues for Canadians regarding the US election are trade-centric. Right now the cattle industry is suffering because of US restrictions on imports of beef; then there is the perpetual scrapping over softwood as the lumber industry across the border has imposed quotas and increased subsidies to keep out the Canadian imports. So it didn't really matter to Canadians if George W. Bush was re-elected president or even if John Kerry, the Democratic senator, made it to the White House. The difference in approach to trade will be one of degree, never of kind.

However, for Americans the change in administration would have been salutary. The Republicans are perceived to have deeply divided the nation of Lincoln in the wake of terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001. From Afghanistan to Iraq, the US administration has endured loss of face in credibility, not only in the eyes of foreigners but also among the Americans at home. At one extreme, domestically, the US is being pulled by the forces of Christian fundamentalism, of anti-abortion and anti-science; at the other end, the issue of jobs for Americans has taken on centre stage as multinational corporations have climbed on the bandwagon of outsourcing to stay in business and improve the bottom line. Yes, US politics is all about the bottom line. It's about securing their national interests (freedom from terrorism and business expansion).

The Americans, like Goan politicians, know that money talks. Incensed beyond description at Osama Bin Laden, they went after him in Afghanistan but encountered resistance from Pakistan for their warplanes had to fly over Pakistani skies. President Musharraf smelled an opportunity to make a killing and he did. The US military offered him $800 million for access—the price he demanded and got, and a grant to boot.

In Iraq it was oil they were after, not weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was alleged to possess. Nearly 30% of Americans were against the war in Iraq, but the administration, hell-bent on taking Saddam out (and possibly Bin Laden), cobbled a “coalition of the willing,” a smart phrase coined by the scared denizens of the Pentagon. But to what purpose?

The Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien correctly gauged the mood of the country and abstained from joining this coalition. He received a lot of flack over this decision but was vindicated in retrospect.

France did not join either but was made to pay. The day after the US troops marched into Iraq, American corporations stopped all imports of French perfumes, wines and cheeses. The haughty nation of De Gaulle that prides itself on its style and savoir-faire lost millions of dollars over a month. After the ceasefire, the US tried once again to bring the United Nations into the picture of peace-keeping operations. This time the Americans succeeded in securing the French nod in the UN by, you guessed it, lifting the embargo on the French imports. Yes, money talked.

And money (business) continues to be the cornerstone of the US foreign policy. We Canadians have always known it. But, apparently, a vast proportion of American people still don't get it. They don't want to understand that the Osama Bin Ladens of this world are mad at them for their foreign policy in the Middle East.

It's Israel that bugs the Arab world. While Israel has the right to exist with security, safety and peace, for half a century now the Americans have not upheld with equal sincerity the right of the Palestinians to their own homeland that is also secure and safe.

Canadians understand this right of the Palestinians to a peaceful homeland. What's more, Washington knows the Ottawa stand on this issue, but money power gets in the way of doing the right thing. So, no matter, who wins the White House, the threat of terrorism will exist for the United States as for the whole world.

How one wishes that American politicians and corporations would heed Lincoln's celebrated wisdom incorporated on top of the Lincoln Memorial, next to the log cabin, in Kentucky: As I shall not be a servant so I shall not be a master!

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