Angry in the Great White North

From Jason Cherniak's polemic on the need for party discipline and the importance of keeping feuds private and out of the public eye:

Unfortunately, the people fighting back put themselves before the party. They did not privately call for people to be fired. They did not publicly claim to have no idea who was responsible. They did not use their internal party positions to effect the organizational changes that they were elected to use. Instead, they convinced themselves that it is their responsibility to be the public face of the Liberal Party and they went public. They were wrong.

And now just days before a critical Throne Speech vote, and on the heels of a poll showing that the Conservatives continue to pull ahead in the polls and the Liberals continue to fall behind, former prime minister Jean Chretien is going very public with his view on the most debilitating Liberal feud of all:

Former prime minister Paul Martin is responsible for Canadian troops ending up in the "killing fields" around Kandahar because he took too long to make a decision, former prime minister Jean Chretien charges in a new book.

In a memoir likely to rip open old Liberal wounds and exacerbate divisions within the party only days before a possible plunge into a federal election, the former Liberal leader attacks Martin on several fronts, from his scheming to force Chretien out of office to Martin's handling of Canada's Kyoto environmental protocol commitments. He also argues that Martin has only himself to blame for the grief he suffered as a result of the sponsorship scandal.

The environmental bit is going to be brutal. Even if Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is not mentioned by name, Dion was the environment minister for Paul Martin:

Chretien says when he left office, Canada was on track to meet its commitments under the Kyoto accord.

"Unfortunately, whether for political or ideological reasons, my successors succumbed to the fears and threats of the anti-Kyoto forces and did serious damage to Canada's progress and our reputation in the process."

I wonder how Stephane Dion will spin this as having nothing to do with him when people ask him whether it was political reasons or ideological reasons that the Liberal Party jumped off the Kyoto bus during Dion's tenure as environment minister. Paul Martin did serious damage? And what was his environment minister, Stephane Dion, doing at the time?

Probably just trying to set priorities. Should we fail because of political reasons or because of ideiological reasons? Oh, it is so hard to set priorities!

Besides the environment though, there is the question of Afghanistan. Yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Liberal John Manley to head a panel to make recommendations on the future of the Afganistant mission. Manley served under Jean Chreitien under several important portfolios, but left politics soon after Paul Martin completed his takeover of the Liberal Party. This is interesting, because Chretien is alleging that he had set up the Canadian mission to keep soldiers out of the danger zone, but that Paul Martin allowed them to take on the work in dangerous Kandahar province.

Not because of an affirmative decision based on strategic interests or a sense of moral need, but because of Paul Martin's dithering:

Chretien also recounts that after the Taliban government of Afghanistan was overthrown, he carefully engineered things so Canada's soldiers were stationed around the safer area of Kabul, helping to rebuild the Afghan capital.

"Later, unfortunately, when my successor took too long to make up his mind about whether Canada should extend our term with the International Security Assistance Force, our soldiers were moved out of Kabul and sent south again to battle the Taliban in the killing fields around Kandahar," Chretien writes.

So according to Jean Chretien, Paul Martin allowed Canada to stumble into the Kandahar mission?

Wow, I guess it is really hard to set priorities in politics, and not just for Stephane Dion.

Now did we really need to know this? Is the Liberal Party served by airing this sort of thing? Does this not stand to undermine Stephane Dion ever further, either because of the environment revelations in particular, or because of the massive body blow aimed at Paul Martin and the people around him in general?

Couldn't Jean Chretien have waited another year before writing this book?

I leave it to Jason Cherniak to answer these questions:

In December, the Presidents of the Liberal Party will gather in Ottawa for our first President's Council. At that time, the National Executive is going to have a hell of a lot of questions to answer. We support the leader; not the stupid fucking idiots (i.e. "Whoever leaked Jamie Carroll's memo") who can't do their jobs.

Happy birthday to me. The advantage of swearing is that nobody can quote me.

Now Jason Cherniak was speaking of the Jamie Carroll memo leak in particular, but in general his fury was aimed at anyone in the Liberal Party who put their own interests ahead of the party's interests, and then go public in an attempt to enhance their image at the expense of the party's image.

Does Jean Chretien fall into that category now? Is Jean Chretien a "stupid f*cking idiot"?

Oh, and as for not quoting someone who uses the f-word, really, it doesn't stop at that, does it? I mean, think of what Jason Cherniak is capable of saying to someone who really gets under his skin. And he puts it in print, making it eminently quotable:

However, Wulf, I am sick and tired of you feigning superiority while you sit in Kingston sucking donkey dick and filching little boys. Please just do us all a favour and shove a hot poker up your ass!

Nobody can quote you? That's a direct quote from Jason Cherniak, aimed at someone who made a comment about his weight. So who is worse? The person who makes a comment about his weight, or a person who is hurting, indeed crippling, the Liberal Party? Based on this quote, I hope the person who makes the insensitive comment about weight is worse in Jason Cherniak's hierarchy of villainy. If not, you have to wonder just what Jason Cherniak really thinks of the people who leaked the Jamie Carroll material.

It makes you wonder what Jason Cherniak will think of Jean Chretien.

It makes me wonder just what other Liberals are thinking too. And saying. I suppose vile language might just make you quote-proof in the mass media. Jean Chretien might be benefiting from that.

Addendum: And when it comes to making pointless comments about someone's weight...