I’m obliged to pose this question after Stephen Harper made a “surprise” visit (there was, of course, nothing surprising about it) to Iraq last weekend, with select members of the parliamentary press gallery in tow.
Make no mistake: Harper’s quick side trip was made with one overarching aim in mind — to use a shooting war as a campaign prop to burnish his ‘tough guy’ image on the eve of what is certain to be a close election. Harper has a tendency to exploit the military to bolster his terrorist-fighting cred, but this was a new low even by the PM’s sorry standards — a hypocritical, cynical act of armed narcissism.
We all know why Harper has felt the need to strap on a flak jacket lately. Terrorism gave his party the polling bump it needed to be competitive again — while the prime minister himself has an image problem he desperately needs to shed. Few have forgotten how he took refuge in a closet as his caucus colleagues were barricading themselves in a room while Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was shooting it out with the RCMP and Hill security in the Commons foyer last October.
Look, I have never criticized Harper for allowing himself to be hustled away from the gunplay. He’s the leader of the federal government — and he’s got kids and a wife. But the public relations drubbing he took for hiding while others were fighting left a deep and uncharitable mark on Harper and his PR minions. (Reportedly, Harper apologized to his caucus for “leaving them behind” during the shooting.)
Harper’s televised statement the evening of the shooting showed him looking ashen and shaken — perfectly understandable, and he certainly wasn’t the only one on the Hill who felt rattled that day. But it didn’t exactly inspire comparisons to Winston Churchill. So the image of the janitor-in-chief had to be replaced by more flattering images of the commander-in-chief (though he’s not really that, since that is the Governor-General’s role).
And so … off to Iraq.
Explaining the trip doesn’t justify it, however. Why did Stephen Harper go to Iraq? I’m not talking about the real reason — I’m talking about the rationale.
Was it to gather first-hand impressions of the suffering of Iraqis at the hands of Islamic State? Unlikely: Harper has no military training and wouldn’t know what he was looking at.
Was it to bolster morale? Please. Rank and file soldiers have nothing but disdain for posturing politicians.
Harper went there to get pictures and video of himself standing near the ‘front’ (to the degree it exists) and looking resolute. He went there to dispel the lingering odour from the Hill attack. He went there to use serving troops and military hardware as a convenient backdrop for his John Wayne act.
He did what every chickenhawk politician does to boost his political fortunes – he made a beeline for men and women in uniform with guns and made sure the folks back home saw him in khaki giving the troops a pep talk in front of a big Canadian flag.
It was a slimy thing to do … and so perfectly in character.
Given the reasons for the trip, it’s not surprising at all that the PM and his staff broke their own supposedly sacrosanct rules and exposed Canadian servicemen and women to possible retribution by showing their faces on the government’s in-house propaganda TV network, 24/7.
There was a lot of huffing and puffing in Opposition and media circles about that sloppy security breach. But to my mind, the photos weren’t the only problem, or even the most important one. Harper’s costly vanity visit was an irresponsible thing for any government leader to do.
Harper never should have gone to Iraq. There’s a war going on and Canada is part of it. The prime minister is a high-value target. His presence in Iraq ramped up the threat to everyone around him — including the military, security and civilian staff he brought along with him so he could deliver a cliché-riddled speech while posing in front of a couple of CF-18s.
Harper needed an audience, so his people corralled a bunch of soldiers — who presumably had other stuff to do — to stand in one place for a long time to listen to him drone on about evil, service and sacrifice.
I’m no military expert, but that doesn’t strike me as a particularly wise act in a country rife with warring religious factions and extremists who use people and trucks as anti-personnel bombs. But, hey, when the possible political dividends outweigh the real risks to Canadian troops … you know the choice Harper is going to make every time.
After first insisting it had done nothing wrong, the PMO — through Harper’s new communications director, Rob Nichol — issued a statement saying it had ordered that the videos and images showing the faces of Canadian special forces be removed from 24/7.
“We regret the error,” Nichol said. The “safety of our troops is our number-one priority.”
Of course it is.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Andrew Mitrovica
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