The Obama administration has been weak, unfaithful to its friends, and unwilling to strike at its enemies either military or diplomatically.
The curious fact is that Canadians still believe their anti-Americanism is harmless. Alongside anti-Americanism goes the moral outrage of which Jim Judd spoke.
The time to remedy these deficiencies is now rather than after the next domestic crisis requiring the use of the Canadian Forces.
They need to understand that veterans are citizens with the same rights to privacy as everyone else and, because of their overseas service in times of war, even more entitlement to their nation's care and consideration.
If the Canadian Air Force does not mount sovereignty patrols in our airspace, who will? The answer is all too clear: the United States Air Force.
Just as it is right for Canadians to seek to help Haiti, so too should Canada work to make Mexico into a stronger, democratic North American partner. That will help both Mexicans and Canadians.
So partisan have we become, so eager to dump on the government of the day, that issues are twisted, distorted, and exploited, used to trash Canadian efforts abroad. Enough.
Until the government gives the Department of National Defence the funds to increase the Canadian Forces' numbers substantially, the strain on the country's soldiers, sailors and air personnel can only increase.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006 and 2008 held votes in Parliament on the Afghanistan mission. It's the right way to proceed.
Canadian anti-Americanism has never been a tap to be turned on and off. It's not dead today. It's only sleeping. It is moved by the age-old historic forces and remains endemic in Canada.
Money is going to be tight, the numbers of personnel will continue to be insufficient to do the required tasks, and much of the military's equipment will continue its long, slow slide into obsolescence.
The continuing Harper government will almost certainly be more constrained in its defence expenditures, coalition or not.
Barack Obama is on his Canadian honeymoon today, but tomorrow he is certain to become merely another target for those who reject America's world view.
But in the 2008 election, Canada's politicians unfortunately did not even try to do so. Elections, as Kim Campbell famously said, are no place to talk about issues. So it seems.
Nothing militarily credible will ever satisfy ideologically-committed NDPers or Bloquistes, but it ought to be possible to work out a defence modus vivendi between the Grits and Tories.
Just as for the U.S. security trumps trade, geography trumps everything else. No matter what Canadians think today about the United States, Canada is not about to become an island. For good or ill, the Canadian future is American.
Canadian policy on the war is now 'necessarily not Kandahar, but anywhere else in Afghanistan if necessary': Granatstein