Mr. Speaker, of course I can understand that Canadians want to distinguish themselves in fundamental ways from our friends to the south. Some of my ancestors were United Empire Loyalists who fled to this country for precisely that reason.
However, my conception of what distinguishes us from the United States is a tradition of ordered liberty, a different kind of political tradition from that of the United States. It does not mean that I take an attitude of hostility toward the role played by the United States on the international stage. The hon. member quotes approvingly from a letter criticizing the American attitude of “to hell with social programs and let's kick butt around the world”. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans have died in wars in the past century and indeed they have died in the past months to help to preserve the stability of the world order and freedom in foreign countries.
My hon. friend may think the American role in Afghanistan was some exercise in militaristic jingoism, but when I saw the faces of people in Kabul who had been liberated from one of the most oppressive regimes in the world I did not see people who felt that they were pawns in some militaristic American scheme of the military-industrial complex at the Pentagon. What I saw were people who appreciated that at least one foreign power, with the assistance of the United Kingdom, had finally taken seriously their plight and had lent its resources and indeed some American lives to liberate them. I think that is a noble role, which the United States has very often played in the past century, and I think we should be ashamed of ourselves for not participating in that role more vigorously.