Look Out, Radioactive Man! It Looks Like the Liberals Are Exploding Again!

If the "Eugene Forsey Liberal" is anything to go by, it would appear that the Canadian Liberals are right back to the sort of bitter acrimony that the Ignatieff victory was supposed to end for good.

Conniving, lying, anti-democratic traitors to Canada who send young Canadians to die in hopeless wars for their own political ends and to please their perceived colonial masters.

I have worked in aid of Bob Rae. Many of my friends and family have. Over many years. Never again.

Even knowing politicians, I never thought Rae & Iggy were the treacherous lying scum we now know to be. Bob Rae is right about one thing. I and many others, after all these years, remain naïve, by comparison. Thankfully.

Harper must go. Ignatieff must go. Rae must go.

That is all.

This is a shocking story. Canadians want out of Afghanistan, even more so than Americans do. They believe that they've done their part, and know that their country has sacrificed more lives—as a proportion of their population—to this mission than any other in the world. While all the other countries in NATO are bailing out, leaving Afghanistan to the Americans, it looks like Canada is going to stay as "trainers".

(Of course, Vietnam was originally about "training" as well. I don't put too much stock in that, and neither should any of you.)

If this had been some ill-conceived political move by the Liberals, that would be different. Sure, it would be stupid, since you can't outflank Republican-style conservatives like the Canadian Conservatives on the right. But that's not what happened here. What happened is that the Liberal leadership negotiated an extension to the mission that neither the Liberal caucus nor the Liberal party as a whole had any appetite for. The Liberals clearly want their soldiers to come home. But the leadership doesn't.

And Bob Rae? BOB RAE? Seriously? I'll admit that I don't know as much about the man and his history as some, but everything I've seen suggests that this is not his sort of game. He's always been the relatively honest, relatively progressive leadership figure in the Liberal party. What the hell is progressive about secret negotiations with the Conservatives? Did he look at what happened with Obama on health care and shout "ME TOO!", charging into the fray without a thought to the consequences?

Is he just getting tired of being in opposition and decided he wanted to contribute to government policy SOMEHOW, even if the government is odious and the method of contribution suspect?

In any case, we're (again) seeing the value of pseudonymity here. "Eugene Forsey Liberal" would probably be risking his association with the Liberal party if he said any of this openly. Even Whatzisname Kinsella is getting with the program, which may be even more surprising than the Rae thing. (Though Jason Cherniak's unfortunately "snotty" response to Kinsella's rage over this decision may have something to do with that.)

I suspect we'll see more "Forsey"-style posts as the days go by. Anonymous sources are already leaking how unhappy the Liberal caucus is about this. Forsey's post is all over twitter, too, linked by angry Liberals and jubilant New Democrats alike.

Unless Rae and Ignatieff can convince their party otherwise, this is only going to get worse.