Of Persians and People Power

In politics as in so much else, talk is cheap; it is deeds that have coinage. This has been one of my key criticisms of US President Barack Obama since the spring of 2008, when the luster of his political ascendancy began to fade in my eyes as his gaseous campaign rhetoric burrowed deeper and deeper under my skin. I looked askance as his handlers and speechwriters set him up in one vainglorious set-piece after another—promising to “heal the planet” and “slow the rise of the oceans” after the last Democratic primary, speaking in front of a row of ridiculous Roman columns at the Democratic National Convention, and so on. Windy rhetoric in politics has never sat well with me, no matter how young, intelligent or charismatic the politician.

Even less am I impressed by the idea that oratory alone can move mountains; hence the skepticism with which I greeted Obama’s “race speech” in Philadelphia last year and his speech at Cairo University earlier this month. America’s perpetual “conversation on race” has not made any readily obvious progress since March 2008; and as for the claim that Obama’s address to the Muslim world has won over many hearts and minds throughout the umma, well, seeing is believing.

On the whole, eloquent oratory that is untethered to any concrete, effective action is worse than useless in my book. Highfalutin words are best backed up with meaningful deeds; when nothing meaningful can be done, silence—or careful circumspection, at any rate—is golden.

This is why I look with contempt at the flak President Obama is now taking from the Right over his refusal to openly support the Iranian opposition in its current confrontation with the mullahs in Tehran.

Iran’s clownish and hateful President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was credited with victory in the theocracy’s recent elections by an absurd margin. (According to www.someecards.com: “The unrest in Iran makes me proud to live in a country where corrupt politicians are smart enough to keep rigged elections close.”) Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, promptly demanded a revote while his supporters took to the streets of Tehran in multitudes, objecting to this naked affront to the will of the Iranian people. The country has been roiled with protest ever since, prompting widespread speculation about the potential consequences for the regime’s longevity—not to mention the more, shall we say, controversial elements of Iran’s foreign policy, namely its nascent nuclear program and its support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

President Obama has so far taken the wisest of all available tacks with regard to Iran. He has expressed his skepticism about the election results and his disapproval of the Iranian regime’s thuggish crackdown on dissidents. Yet he has been careful not to go too far in denouncing the regime or in endorsing Mousavi or his supporters—a smart strategy on both counts. The mullahs and their flunkies, after all, are still armed to the teeth, and can brutally crush this largely unarmed uprising at any time, Tiananmen-style. Mousavi, for his part, has not called for an end to the regime’s nuclear ambitions, to its sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah or to its enmity with Israel. It remains unclear whether his supporters seek to overthrow the Shi’ite theocracy altogether or merely to replace one mullah-approved marionette with another. This is not the kind of horse on which Obama would be wise to bet.

The last negotiating partner the US needs is an Iranian regime flush from the victory of flattening an internal insurrection—and incensed at the President’s endorsement of that revolt to boot. In such a scenario, Obama could no longer expect to get the mullahs to beat their uranium centrifuges into ploughshares—and forget about convincing them to rein in Israel’s terrorist tormentors. With the odds already stacked against that success even in the absence of the current strife, President Obama is in no mood for his plans to be disrupted by the events in Tehran.

Nonetheless, a growing chorus of mostly conservative critics has been braying for President Obama to bless the Iranian protestors with just a touch of his oratorical magic, in the name of democracy. It would be foolhardy for him to take their advice, for the United States has no leverage over Iran at present. Armed intervention is out of the question with American troops still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Economic sanctions would only supplement the largely ineffectual ones already in place, and it is ordinary Iranians who would probably feel the pinch. A US-sponsored coup d’état is no option; the country’s Islamist theocrats are eager enough to blame the unrest on Yankee interference as it is. In any case, the US and Iran have already gone down that road once before, in 1953—with miserable results for everyone involved.

Given the limited options available, why pillory the president for exercising caution? How can the same conservatives who, like me, were happy to deride Barack Obama’s treacly cant not so long ago demand even emptier rhetoric from him now? Why vociferously denounce the mullahs’ skullduggery when the US can do nothing to back it up? Of what use would such inspiring words be without commensurate deeds?

In August 2008, President Bush’s strong objections did not stop Russia from manhandling tiny Georgia. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s public musings that the Iraqi people should overthrow Saddam Hussein led to a bloodbath, when the Kurds and Shi’ites proved too weak to finish off Saddam and the US refused to help them get the job done. In 1989, the world watched helplessly as China’s Deng Xiaoping bloodily shattered the Tiananmen Square protestors’ dreams of democracy in a country that called itself a “People’s Republic”. Poland in 1981, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, East Germany in 1953: on goes the long, tragic list of popular uprisings that failed because tyrannical regimes had the muscle to suppress them and the will to use it—and because the US had no way of stopping them.

Displays of “people power” such as the current one in Tehran never fail to thrill and inspire; but their chances of success depend on how well organized and well armed—and how ruthless—both the people and their rulers are. If the latter are mightier, and neither the US nor any other outside benefactor is in a position to step in to level the playing field, the rulers will likely win out, at least in the short term. The Iron Curtain was rent in 1989 primarily because Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use Soviet might to prop up the Eastern European Communist regimes any longer. South African apartheid began to crumble the following year because the regime eventually wilted under the international community’s ostracism. These rulers caved partly because they lacked the bloody-mindedness it took to keep locking up or gunning down their opponents.

Only time will tell whether the mullahs will similarly lose their nerve. If not, then they will probably win this confrontation. It would be treacherous for President Obama to egg the protesters on if he cannot have their back if and when the crackdown begins in earnest. Fortunately, whatever his shortcomings, Barack Obama is not the treacherous type.

Comfort and Dependency

I will never forget the surprise and disappointment I felt as a child when I first discovered that the word used to describe opponents of Quebec sovereignty was “federalist”. Even at the tender age of ten, I was dismayed that as Canada teetered on the brink of dissolution, this dry, wishy-washy term was the best its principal defenders could do. “Federalist”? Nothing more stirring, such as perhaps “loyalist”? Not even merely “unionist”? “Federalist”?

What poor ammunition this made for the NO forces in the near-death experience that was the 1995 referendum! Against the YES campaign’s appeals to Quebecers’ fierce pride in their identity and heritage, against the onslaught of Lucien Bouchard’s embittered yet seductive demagoguery, against stirring separatist slogans like “solidarity” and “independence”, Canadian unity revolved around a bloodless geopolitical abstraction like “federalism”. What kind of cause was that, I asked myself. Where was the passion there? Where was the pride? Where was the patriotism?

I eventually learned with great chagrin the reason for this flaccid anti-separatism: that Canadian patriotism per se is lost on most francophone Quebecers. Several years ago, pollster Maurice Pinard found that only about 12% of Quebec francophones self-identify as “Canadians”. Approximately 30% identify as French Canadians specifically; more than half of the rest call themselves “Québécois” and nothing else. This rings a bell; my Québécois acquaintances’ attitudes towards Canada generally range from shrugging indifference to outright hostility. Whatever patriotic fervor they feel is reserved strictly for Quebec. I cannot but agree with journalist Richard Gwyn that culturally and emotionally, most of Quebec effectively separated from Canada long ago.

Hence the age-old federalist focus on Canada’s capacity to accommodate Quebec’s autonomy, while noting that one can be both a proud Quebecer and a proud Canadian. Since so little passion for Canada beats in the average Québécois breast, the federalist case of the past three decades has also included a less high-minded dimension. I refer to the essentially mercenary argument against sovereignty—that it would endanger Quebecers’ access to unemployment insurance, family allowances, old-age pensions and all the other strands of Canada’s bounteous social safety net. “You may not love Canada exactly,” the federalists tell Quebecers, “but you know where your bread is buttered.”

Sovereignists have spent three decades bemoaning the effectiveness of this cynical federalist pitch. Denys Arcand’s 1981 cinematic polemic Comfort and Indifference, for instance, blamed Quebecers’ bourgeois comforts for their reluctance to fly the Canadian coop. I used to dismiss this lament as so many sour grapes from separatist sore losers. Arcand’s footage of interviews with ordinary Quebecers during the 1980 referendum campaign made me think twice. A former Radio-Canada employee asked PQ minister Claude Morin what would happen to 5,000 CBC jobs in Quebec. A taxi driver worried that the price of gasoline might double after a Yes vote. A group of retirees fretted over the fate of their old-age pensions, and a middle-aged homemaker wondered whether the loonie’s value might plummet. “Do you bite the hand that feeds you?” asked an elderly film librarian. All of this reminded me of the dire predictions I heard as a child during the 1995 referendum campaign—e.g. then-Finance Minister Paul Martin’s warning that separation would jeopardize up to a million Quebec jobs.

Though they helped avert the separatist threat, these fears troubled me deeply. These fine folks did not resist the Péquistes’ blandishments out of love for Canada; they were simply afraid that their province could not hack it on its own. Was there no way to keep Quebec in Canada without exploiting its dependence on the Canadian social-welfare crutch? Was Canada worth preserving if the task required such Machiavellian tactics?

This cold-blooded realpolitik has elicited justifiable accusations of fearmongering from sovereignists for decades. Yet the separatists deserve little sympathy, for they have brought this on themselves. They have wrapped Quebecers in the embrace of a welfare state so generous that Quebec could never finance it alone without raising its already onerous tax burden—even now the heaviest in North America. This leaves Quebec City heavily dependent on equalization payments from Toronto, Edmonton and Victoria, relayed by the very Ottawa the separatists so despise. Small wonder, then, that Quebecers have twice balked at the sovereignist offer. Indeed, they know where their bread is buttered—with a maple leaf-engraved knife.

Given its strident insistence that Quebec can handle its own business, the Parti Québécois’ history of relying on Canada’s largesse to shower Quebecers with social programs is downright hypocritical. The Péquistes actually have more reason than anyone to try to wean Quebec off of its dependence on Ottawa’s fiscal charity. Quebec would likely suffer a punishing fiscal crisis in the aftermath of secession due to the loss of transfer payments from Ottawa—one of the main fears impeding Quebecers from taking the sovereignist plunge. To rectify this, the Péquistes must either persuade Quebecers of the need to be less dependent on government to prop them up (what a tall order!), or prepare Quebecers for the even higher taxes the province would need to finance its lavish nanny state by itself.

Otherwise put, the sovereignists have a vested interest in nudging Quebecers towards greater self-reliance, either individual or collective. Either course would require great sacrifice on Quebecers’ part; but to reject both would perpetuate their fear of striking out on their own. Many Quebecers find sovereignty appealing, in the abstract at least. They have yet to seize it because too few of them prize independence highly enough to be willing to pay a price for it. To break that logjam, the sovereignists will have to tackle the very culture of entitlement they have nurtured in this province for generations—the mentality that holds that Canada owes Quebec a living.

When the Péquistes eventually return to power, with or without the “winning conditions” for another referendum, they will be wise to begin building the substance of true independence—the willingness and ability to provide for oneself—if only to prepare Quebec for eventually acquiring its trappings.

In Comfort and Indifference, a succession of YES voters lamented the trepidation that led almost six of every ten Quebecers to reject sovereignty in 1980. A voluble carpenter from Daveluyville diagnosed the malady thus: “You want to know who screwed us? We were screwed by Quebecers—by people who don’t take their responsibilities!” Another artisan from Saint-Jérusalem lamented Quebecers’ bourgeois insecurities: “When the time comes for us to stand up and be counted, the first thing people say is, ‘What’ll it cost us? It’s too expensive!’” Retired boxer Réginald Chartrand, after soundly thrashing his federalist opponent in an exposition bout, proclaimed, “I wanted to show Quebecers that they must take risks. Nothing has ever been given to us for free.” He went on to say, “The only path in life is the difficult path. The easy path is for imbeciles. We Quebecers don’t have the right to choose the easy path, sitting in our slippers, waiting…”

If only the Parti Québécois were as hardy as these fearless militants!