Attack of the clone

Harper is a Conservative, leading a precarious minority government; and I suppose that from where he sits, Bush is the ultimate success story — after all, he’s been elected twice, despite having started out with the shakiest of mandates.

The fact that Bush’s feet of clay (long evident to any non-partisan with an IQ above 50) are starting to crumble, as the offensive against Iraq stumbles like a sodden drunk and new scandals arise daily, does not appear to have gotten through to Stephen Harper. Like Ella Fitzgerald singing about the Lorelei, Harper looks Bush-ward, and croons, “And I wanna be like him.”

No sooner said than done. One of the hallmarks of Dubya’s administration, from the start, has been the strict management of the media. This has long been a source of frustration to Washington journalists, who complain they have been kept in line like puppy-dogs, fed a strict diet of propaganda and required to regurgitate it to the public. If they step out of line, they are punished by being denied future access to White House press briefings and information sources.

Thus has the Bush Administration been able to mould and massage the “facts” that eventually reach the unsuspecting public - think WMDs, for example. And of course, the coverage of the Iraq war has taken this shameful manipulation of information to the logical extreme, with the process of “embedding” journalists who must then operate under a list of restrictions, in the name of “national security”. In the old days, this would have been called “censorship”.

This kind of control clearly appeals to Canada’s wannabe-supreme-leader, Stephen Harper. Not (yet) possessing the mechanisms to hold the Canadian media in check, he has sought to micro-manage the flow of information by tightening the screws on everybody under his direct (and indirect) control. Minions must stay “on message”- and guess whose message that might be?

Hence, not only are Conservative cabinet ministers and MPs under strict directives to engage in absolutely NO free-form interaction with the media, but even civil servants must cringe and be silent. This leads to a lot of “no comment” and “not available for interview” — not exactly conducive to a vigorous free press.

It is getting a little frightening, to tell the truth. Recently, a scientist who happens to work with Environment Canada felt the heavy hand of governmental censorship on his shoulder when he was warned by his ministry not to attend a Press Club luncheon, where he was carded to speak about his new book. If this had been a top-secret scientific report, that might be understandable; but it was a futuristic fictional novel — a mere flight of fancy built on his environmental expertise!

Scared of losing his job, the poor man skipped the luncheon — much to the bafflement of the guests who had brought copies of the novel for signing — and went underground to avoid media harassment. Harper’s comment? “We were elected on a particular platform…I obviously not only hope but expect (italics mine) that all elements of the bureaucracy will be working with us to achieve those objectives.” In other words, shut up or ship out. Couldn’t get much more Bush-ian than that.

Or could he? Harper’s military stance is also strangely reminiscent of the American president’s, both in actions and in words. His first follow-the-leader act on taking office was to pay a “surprise” visit to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan (yes, Canada actually has troops in Afghanistan; they were sent there — ostensibly as peace-keepers/re-constructors — after the US bombed that poor helpless country back to the Stone Age; and now they find themselves engaged in a futile and unwinnable guerilla war).

Harper popped up for a photo-op amidst the soldiers, wearing an absurd bush-jacket that could barely stretch across his growing paunch; then flew back home mouthing the tired rhetoric of the Bush Administration (“We are establishing democracy; we will not cut and run; anyone who questions Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is undermining our brave and noble soldiers.”). The inference is that many skeptics — and there are many, since about 50 percent of Canadians believe their military has no business supporting American adventurism in Afghanistan — are borderline traitors.

Does this sound familiar? George Bush used the same tactic three years ago, when he implied that anyone who disagreed with his invasion of Iraq was in effect a terrorist sympathiser. It worked for ol’ Georgie, Harper seems to be thinking; no reason why it shouldn’t work for me.

Recently, as was inevitable, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan have actually started to die in combat (most of the previous deaths have come from accidents, or one notable occasion when Canadian troops were carelessly bombed by their American allies). The flag-draped coffins are starting to arrive home. And, in yet another clone-like move, Harper’s government has attempted to prevent the media from covering that emotional arrival.

Like Bush, Harper knows the sight of these unnecessary sacrifices could ultimately turn the tide of public opinion against the war; and that would put him in a very uncomfortable position vis-?-vis his new best friend, G.W.B. Happily, his attempt at censorship was ineffectual - the media photographers simply stood outside the chain-link fence and used long-distance lenses. If the corpses continue to roll in, Harper will need to find another, more clandestine venue if he wants to keep the images from the public.