Editorial: Will Canada Join The Bush League?

Founded in early 1998, Bush Watch served as an early warning system, then as a critic of the Bush administration, commenting upon the toxic character and wrongheaded policies of George W. Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush. I have been its editor throughout this period.

While I'm a U.S. citizen, I'm concerned that Prime Minister Harper is not only taking plays from the Bush playbook, but he's also being coached by many of the same people who have put the United States on a fast track to being a hawkish nation of greedy corporate plunderers, irrational theocrats, and thoughtless citizens who care little about the common good or the traditions of freedom and citizens' rights, presently under assult by the Bush administration. Under Bush, the United States has become an embarrassment to a majority of its citizens and to concerned people and nations throughout the world.

Canadian friends tell me that Mr. Harper is not nearly as bad as Bush, and if he were, the citizens of Canada would not stand for it. I would suggest that the majority of U.S. citizens felt the same way about Bush in 1998. But history has played a bitter trick on us. News and opinion from Canada and elsewhere (see below) suggests the beginnings of a Bush-like movement in Canada, and that does not give me comfort.