War: Remembrance: Victory in Europe commemorations, and the peripatetic diplomacy of President Bush

During the continent-wide European commemorations of the victory and losses of World War II, commemorations that observed 60 years of peace, recovery, and mourning, the relationship between the war-active states of North America and those of Europe was celebrated and re-sorted by diplomatic sorties, some painfully public, some more deft and inter-personal.

Of the North Americans, the Canadian government almost made, or didn't quite make, the main event scheduled for it. But thousands of Canadian veterans of the key battle for the liberation of the Netherlands did. And the love of the Dutch was signified to the entire Canadian community by television, where the CBC, Global and other networks competed to outdo one another for English-speaking viewers. Young Canadians at home seemed bewildered that young Dutch should bestow so much praise, honour, and joy on the Canadian old-timers visiting across the Atlantic. As Canadian historians noted over the weeekend, young Canadians have little sense of sacrifice for freedom, little knowledge of war history, and little knowledge of history whatsoever. The substitute for all this is the pervasive anti-Americanism exuded by teachers in the government schools and shapers of their curricula.

As to the Canadian government, it almost missed the events entirely, if we look at the Prime Minister and leaders of the other political parties. For the events of Canada's greatest scandal--"le scandal des commandites" or "Adscam"-- finally began to touch the Prime Minister's Office itself, even His Nibs, Paul Martin, the Liberal Party leader and the minority government's Prime Minister in the House of Commons. All sorts of rumours surfaced because of the closeness of the projected parliamentary vote on a motion of No Confidence in the Government! A few opposition members claimed they were offered patronage bribes in the form sinecures and otherwise plush posts abroad. Every absent opposition vote would count in favour of the govt! The two parties remaining in opposition, the Conservatives and the Bloc Québecois counted their ill members, calculating the likelihood of getting them into the Chamber of the Commons even if in wheelchairs. The New Democratic Party, on the other hand, deserted the opposition and negotiated a major change of the Liberal govt's forthcoming Budget; whereas the Conservatives had supported the previous Budget tabled in February, as passable. The NDP's realignment would thus cause the Conservatives to reject the revised Budget of the the new NDP-Liberal coalition. But the Conservatives with the Bloc Québecois had other very good reasons to welcome the realignment, because the financial scandal had turned off the citizenry--except in the major province of Ontario and much of the Atlantic Provinces.

All this complexity brawt the nose-counting to the point where no leader was prepared to be absent from the Commons day by day, even if it meant they and the Prime Minister himself would miss the transatlantic communal commemorations of WWII, the dead, and the surviving Vets, which all centered for Canada in the Netherlands. It seemed the Vets and their friends would have to do it, with the help of Canada's honourific but actual Head of State, the Governor General Adrienne Clarkson herself. Martin arrived a day late, and seemed quite superfluous, just as previously the Canadian Ministers to represent the Dominion at the funeral of Yasser Arafat, made it there ... a day late, in all their robust superfluity.

America's President Bush, on the other hand, kept strictly to his packed itinerary and accomplished much on the diplomatic front, from the American viewpoint. He joined in commemorations in the Netherlands along with the Dutch Queen and Prime Minister Peter Jan Balkende of the Christian Democratic party, an ally of the USA and the democratic governtment of Iraq. He visited the Baltic States, where he joined the lament over the Soviet takeover of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia before WWII, the Nazi occupation during WWII, and the Soviet re-establishment in the painful "peace" of Communism and religous persecution that followed. Bush's public statements in respect of this commiseration with the Baltic peoples, came promptly to the attention of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin back in Moscow, who fired off his own volley of words in the media, that the Soviet's had never "taken over" the Baltics but those countries had embraced the Communist cause all on their own.

But, by the time the two leaders were face to face in Moscow among the gathering Heads of State from almost everywhere, and the aging Veterans of the Red Army paraded by, with the counts of their losses in the war against Hitler, and the counts of the civilian deaths and the mass murder of Soviet Jews all coming to remembrance in one massive communal conceptualization and hive of feelings, the two leaders joined in facing the huge legacy that the Soviets and now the Russians face together with the North Americans. I'm only guessing, because I've lost track of him, but I think Canada's Paul Martin showed up on time for this one. - Owlb

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