Friday, May 25, 2007

Stephen Harper: Not First PM to Visit the Front

In newscasts this week, Canadians were treated to footage of Prime Minister Stephen Harper visiting the front in Afghanistan. We saw him stride up a hill at Ma’sum Ghar in full military gear and then watched him look out over the landscape through binoculars.

“I have a doctorate in history,” Colonel Mike Cessford, the deputy commander of the Canadian contingent in Kandahar told reporters. “No sitting prime minister, in my opinion,” he continued “has been closer to combat operations than this prime minister today.”

All day long the CBC and other media outlets trumpeted the story that Harper had done something never done before by a Canadian prime minister. Underlining the danger for the prime minister, CTV’s South Asia Bureau Chief Steve Chao reported that: “Occasionally, Ma’sum Ghar still gets rocketed---an interpreter lost his life there last week during a rocket attack---despite this, Prime Minister Harper said he felt he needed to go down there personally to see the front lines.”

The problem with the claim that Harper was the first sitting prime minister to visit the front in wartime is that it is untrue.

In July 1917, at the height of the First World War, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden sailed to England, at a time when German submarines were taking a heavy toll of allied ships in the North Atlantic. Borden then crossed to France where he visited wounded Canadian and British soldiers in hospital. Following visits to several Canadian units, Sir Robert “visited the trenches” according to The Official Story of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, written by Sir Max Aitken, M.P.

The section of the front visited by Prime Minister Borden was the scene of intense fighting in the summer of 1917.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least hes over visiting our brave troops. Is anyone from the Lieberals, NDP, Blocheads going over? Gees no, you could get killed over there!
Hmmm - I wonder who our troops support for PM.
www.languagefairness.com/Quotes.php

Undecided Voters...the majority?

Anonymous said...

The difference being Borden visited an actual existing front line.

James Bow said...

You know, it always amuses me, when people point out things like you have Mr. Laxer, that others come back with irrelevant pieces of tripe like what anonymous just did. It really highlights the intellectual bankruptcy of their position.

Unknown said...

OK Mr Laxer.
So your point is!?
I see you willing to say something..just say it..I guess you did not finish every thing you have to say..
I feel you wanna say something like the Media are misleading us..
Is that right?

James Laxer said...

Yes, the media are misleading us, and the PM and his handlers have no regard for the truth.

Unknown said...

Thanks very much.
Now I can tell you that a lot more should be said and written in this respect under the title: Where the Media are taking us?

Michael said...

I think the are a couple of issues here: why didn't the PMO, which has a huge budget for such things, research this claim properly?; OR, if they did, was this a deliberate attempt to mislead the electorate? (Another, related, question is why didn't the press do some very routine research to verify Harper's claim? - It took me 5 minutes!)

For the record, it looks as if Borden went to the Front TWICE, in 1915 and 1917.

Beat that, Steve...