Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s call on Tuesday for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was mindless, reflexive, imitative nonsense. It appears reasonable when hostilities exist between a country and another armed entity to suggest that the hostilities should stop. But this is not simply a magnification of a brawl, a public disorder or an occasion when an argument between two individuals degenerates into reciprocal efforts to inflict physical harm on each other. This was the legitimate reaction of a sovereign nation-state to a brutal sneak attack upon civilians that violated an existing ceasefire. It was even more outrageous than the Japanese attack on the United States in 1941, which was only against military targets, and which began hours before the Japanese ambassador called upon the U.S. secretary of state to say that there appeared to be no good reason to continue negotiations towards assuring peace in the Pacific. The secretary of state, Cordell Hull, on instruction from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, gave no hint that he was aware that war was already underway. U.S. President Joe Biden is waffling because that is what he does, and he has allowed his party to be undermined by woke, Americophobia fanatics; Trudeau has no such excuses, inadequate as they are.
