THE CANADIAN EMBASSY HAS RESPONDED to my email concerning Chretien’s remarks by sending, without comment, this extract from his interview:
Peter Mansbridge: By the end of the day, what were you thinking about in terms of how the world had changed?
Prime Minister Chrétien: But I’ve said that it is a division in the world that is building up. And I knew that it was the inspiration of it. For me, I think that the rest of the world is a bit too selfish, and that there is a lot of resentment. I felt it when I dealt with the African file for the Summit of the G8. You know, the poor, relatively, get poorer all the time. And the rich are getting richer all the time. You know, now we see the abuse of the system with problems in the United States at this moment with the corporate world, you know.
When you think that, you know, you have to let go somebody in the Cabinet because perhaps relatively very minor things…of guidelines. And there was billions of dollars that were basically stolen from the shareholders. And we have to you know solving the problems when you read history. Everybody don’t know when to stop. There is a moment, you know, when you have to stop. There is a moment when you have very powerful (inaudible).
I said that in New York one day. I said, you know talking, it was Wall Street, and it was a crowd of capitalists, of course, and they were complaining because we have a normal relation with Cuba, and this and that, and, you know, we cannot do everything we want.
And I said…if I recall, it was probably these words: ‘When you’re powerful like you are, you guys, is the time to be nice.’ And it is one of the problems. You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point that of humiliation for the others. And that is what the Western world, not only the Americans, the Western world has to realize, because they are human beings too, and there are longterm consequences if you don’t look hard at the reality in 10 or 20, or 30 years from now. And I do think that the Western world is going to be too rich in relation to the poor world. And necessarily, you know, we look upon us being arrogant, selfsatisfying, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize that it’s even more.”
Well, there is a mild effort to expand the claims of misbehavior beyond America alone, but this is — except for that one phrase – entirely about accusations of American wrongdoing when you get down to it. I’d be interested in seeing what impression the entire interview gives.
UPDATE: Lots of Canadians seem to dislike this guy:
I am a Canadian and I found Mr. Chretien’s remarks offensive. The clear message in the interview is that the US in particular and the west generally must bear responsibility for the actions of those in the third world who are angry and who are seeking revenge because of it. This line of reasoning is so empty headed and easy to refute that it is barely worth making the effort.
Americans only have to deal with Mr. Chretien’s foolish and witless conduct when he is addressing issues of mutual interest. In Canada, we live with the results of his buffoonery every day. His government is in complete disrepute-charges of corruption and cronyism are so frequent that they are rarely reported any more. He has been an embarrassment to this country on virtually every occasion. He says in the interview that he likes to keep his distance from US presidents in order to preserve Canada’s independence. I am inclined to think that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush have found it wise to keep their distance from him in order to preserve their sanity. They have enough wing nut leaders in the middle east to deal with.
Ouch. Meanwhile Porphyrogenitus blames the French.