Canada's Posturing

A day after opting out of the U.S. ballistic missile defense shield, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin reiterated Friday that Washington must get permission from Ottawa before firing on any incoming missiles over Canada.

"This is our airspace, we're a sovereign nation, and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission," Martin said.

He was responding to comments by outgoing U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci on Thursday in which Cellucci warned Canada that by not signing on to the continental missile shield, it was in effect giving up its sovereignty and would be "outside the room" when the United States made a decision on whether to use the system to shoot down an incoming missile."

Something tells me that we are not going to telephone you in advance for permission to defend ourselves.


3 comments:

Unknown said...

The problem with any missile defense system is that they may see a missile fired over their airspace as a missile fired at them. It could trigger an attack towards the US.

The Misanthrope said...

Our country is run by a bunch of neo-hawks and we continue to prove we are nation run by cowboys and blessed by conversative religious hypocrites.

Jack Steiner said...

Perhaps a better missile defense system would be a foreign policy that didn't ecourage tossing missles at you in the first placeIt would be nice if we didn't have to worry about things, but that is not reality. Not all of the problems can be blamed on foreign policy.

It is a convenient target, but not always real accurate.

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