Right Pulse

A recent hoo ha ha has blown up in Canada when it was discovered that the former Canadian opposition leader, Stephen Harper now PM, gave an address on the Iraq War in 2003, a few days after John Howard spoke on the same subject, which used large tracts of Howard’s speech without recognition. Harper’s speech writer has subsequently resigned for plagiarism, while the opposition leader Stephane Dion seems to be insinuating that George Bush was giving speech templates out to fellow leaders to use in their addresses in favour of the war.

“Canadians want their country to speak with its own voice on the world stage,” Dion said. “Stephen Harper plagiarized the coalition of the willing of George W. Bush about the war in Iraq. Stephen Harper should be expelled.”

A claim, if it is really being made, is ridiculous, especially since in 2003 after thirty years in politics John Howard was yet to employ a speech writer. That occurred in 2004.

Australian economist John Kunkel, who served as Howard’s speechwriter from 2004-2007, said plagiarism in speechwriting is not uncommon in any political system and said he doubts Howard was offended by the incident.

“I think he’d probably find it mildly amusing,” Kunkel said. “He’d probably have a good degree of sympathy for his good friend, Mr. Harper.”

The former prime minister often spoke off-the-cuff and Kunkel said Howard did not have a designated speechwriter before he took on the position in 2004. To help craft his speeches, Howard often tapped the knowledge of whichever adviser was specialized on the topic he was speaking to, such as foreign policy, Kunkel said.

Kunkel said any rumor that a Bush administration official wrote the speech – or part of it – and distributed it to conservative allies “sounds incredibly far-fetched and somewhat fanciful.”

Ditto. Well anyway given that both PM’sare loyal servants of the Crown, was it really plagiarism to begin with? Officials and representatives are able to lift and use each other’s words without recognition because it is all meant to come from the same source, QEII. Stephen Harper, while HRH’s loyal opposition leader was using words from another of HRH’s loyal servants, John Howard, to explain the same point. So what is the point of the matter? For the angry left this is:

Canadians didn’t want to go to war then and five years on we’re even more convinced we were right. The plagiarism case is merely a means of reminding Canadians with video about who was on the right side of history.

If being on the wrong side of history means ending the rule of a savage dictator who killed 300,000 people and replacing him with a democracy and bringing to an end useless UN sanctions that had led to the deaths of 500,000 children, as estimated by UNICEF, then I guess Howard and Harper are on the wrong side of history. Being on the right side of history, according to the angry left, is probably making statements like the one discussed below:

On May 11, 1996 this woman (Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright) was asked by a television interviewer for “60 Minutes” whether she was troubled by the fact that Clinton-supported sanctions had resulted in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. “It’s a hard choice,” she replied, “but we think it’s worth it.”

Leftists should keep Albright’s response in mind when they wail about civilian casualties as a consequence of Bush’s war in Iraq. Iraq Body Count keeps track of these casualties, and they are less than one-fifth the number of innocent civilians (mostly children) killed in the aftermath of sanctions.

And if you believe the characterisation made by the author of the above snippet, then Frankenstein might have a case to make for plagiarism against Albright.