Bob Rae: "Stop searching for scapegoats in Sri Lanka"- Blame Harper

On Tuesday the National Post ran an editorial placing some blame on the Liberals for their support of the Tamil Tigers and LTTE,and the resulting loss of life due to the civil war conflict. Today Bob Rae writes a rebuke to the editorial stating there are no scapegoats in Sri Lanka. Problem is Rae quickly dashes any credibility in his counter to the original editorial with this remark:

"The Liberal party stands firmly on a platform of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism. The Harper approach has done nothing to restore peace and stability in Sri Lanka."

So Rae says to stop looking for a scapegoat, yet still finds the time to lay some blame with the PM and the Conservative Party. Uh, Bob, I think you spell it H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E. what's even odder about Rae's comments is that the original editorial was actually quite favorable to the current Liberal Party, and more notably, Michael Ignatieff:

"But the Liberals let it happen, watched thousands of gallons of blood be spilled halfway around the world without doing anything about it, for no other reason than to elect more Liberals.

Michael Ignatieff represents a break from this cynical Liberal tradition: In the past, he has stood four-square behind victims of Tamil terror. And this year, while the Sri Lankan army was engaged in the necessarily messy job of finishing off the LTTE cowards who were using Tamil civilians as human shields on Sri Lanka's east coast, he refused to exude traditional Chretien/ Martin-era Tiger apologism. Perhaps the latest news will give Mr. Ignatieff occasion to address the Liberals' past sins more explicitly. Given that the man became leader of his party largely on the strength of his international stature as a champion of human rights, Canadians should expect no less. "

Of course all of this is a moot point, as Rae apparently is trying to rewrite history. There are examples of Liberal MP's openly supporting the Tigers, most notably Paul Martin attending a dinner, along with Maria Minna. Just this year Gurbax Malhi, the Liberal MP for Bramalea-Gore-Malton, attended a rally in support of the Tamil Tigers terrorist group,a rally that included LTTE flags waving in the background, and someone blaring on a bullhorn something about the LTTE. Then there is also this:

"Yet so eager were Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to placate the Tamil voting blocks in Scarborough and other urban Liberal strongholds that they refused on numerous occasions to add the Tigers to Canada's list of outlawed terror groups. This made it difficult for police and security services to move against front organizations they felt were acting as money conduits for the Tigers.

Not coincidentally, the investigations that led to last week's raids stepped up just after the Tories kept a promise from the 2005-06 election to ban the Tigers. For their part, Liberal ministers, while in office, often ignored RCMP and CSIS warnings about suspected Tiger-front groups and attended their fund-raisers and community events anyway. Most recently, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal MP for Etobicoke Centre, and Jim Karygiannis, Liberal for Scarborough-Agincourt, both made speeches at the Canadian memorial service held after the 2007 killing of a senior Tiger commander.

We hear the grumblings all the time from small-c conservatives that the government of Stephen Harper is not different enough from the Liberal governments it replaced. Well, here is one front -- one very crucial front -- on which they are very different: They take national security far more seriously, and are prepared to withstand tremendous pressure from ethnic lobbyists to make Canada safer. This month's raids are the fruits of that vigilance.

Then again, as Rae stated, we need to stop looking for a scapegoat in Sri Lanka. If only he followed his own advice.