Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Is Tom Flanagan Simple?

Last night, on CBC's amusingly titled "Power Panel" Tom Flanagan tried to make himself out as something other than a "harper stooge" by trashing harper's inarguably ridiculous excuse for prorogation (to deal with the awesome task of winding down the response to the great recession) and wishing that harper would come clean about the real reason he did it.

There's no question in Flanagan's mind that harper prorogued in order to take the heat off from the parliamentary committee inquiry into detainee abuse in Afghanistan. Obstructing this investigation is a good thing, Flanagan argues, because foreign policy is constitutionally the executive branch's balliwick and you can't conduct foreign policy with interfering backbench and opposition MPs.

Really Tom? Are you that simple? So, in our system of government the prime minister can do anything he or she wants overseas and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it? (We can dismiss out of hand Flanagan's silly notion that parliament is trying to actually run the Afghan conflict. They're simply trying to keep an eye on what happened.) According to Flanagan, harper could order the Canadian Forces to launch a scorched earth policy anywhere that insurgents hit them. Slaughter every man, woman, or child in the area as a lesson to others who would side with (or even acquiesce to) the insurgency. And if parliament tried to find out what was going on (let alone stop it) Flanagan would support shutting it down.

No?

Really Tom? harper couldn't impose a policy of "Kill All. Rape All. Loot All." Why not? You just said he's constitutionally empowered to conduct foreign policy with no legislative oversight.

Or were you just blabbering on at the mouth like a fucking moron?

3 comments:

Sir Francis said...

Hmm. I think I'll put my dollar on "you [were] just blabbering on at the mouth like a fucking moron".

And the moron in question actually seems to think that the prime minister is the only component of the executive branch. What a tool.

no_blah_blah_blah said...

Is it just me, or do people just start mixing traits of the American system of government with that of Canada... and still get the American "traits" wrong? For example, the U.S. President is the Commander-in-Chief, but he/she still requires approval of Congress before going to war.

In any case, Tom Flanagan (had he just thought about the implications of what he said for more than a second) should have realized how nonsensical he was being.

Mike said...

I think some people are confusing "prime minister" with "president." But then even the U.S. president is subject to some oversight.