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03/31/2003 Archived Entry: "A letter to our friend America"
America, we've been friends a long, long time. Notwithstanding the occasional scrap (1812, but blame the brits for that), we've overall been the 'brothers' of North America.Therefore it's a shame to let our friendship fall apart. We're not quite sure when that decline began though. Maybe it was went you secretly sent nuclear subs into our northern waters to spy on the Russkies and didn't tell us, thereby making us a Cold War target when we were trying to avoid that role. Maybe it was when you arrested a Canadian for trading with Cuba while he was in Canada, even though we do not have the trade laws you have. Maybe it was the duties you've placed on our softwood lumber in violation of both the free trade agreement we have and international law, which ended up initially decimating 7% of our western economy (though since we increased production and lowered our unit cost to make up for that duty I see that your own wood producers are screaming at you). Maybe it was your general air of arrogance recently, your refusal to work with us instead of against us, or maybe your recent promotion to the 'only superpower' that increased your ego so much. Maybe it's the fact that it took international public pressure to get you to stop building powerplants right at the border so that you wouldn't have to deal with half the pollution they cause, and the acid rain that falls on much of the south-eastern region of our country.
Maybe it's the fact that after Sept 11 our citizens took in as many stranded Americans as we could into our own homes and we never got a public thank you. In fact, maybe it's the fact that afterwards GWB didn't even mention us on his list of "America's Friends". Maybe it was even before that when he didn't make his first presidential visit to Canada like every other 20th century president.
I guess it's just the fact that you haven't acted like a friend at all recently. I hope that will change so we can get back to working together.