Wonderful Multilateralism

You just can't beat Liberal politicians. Well I suppose you could but it probably wouldn't be legal. Anyways enough of the fantasizing.

Lately the Liberal Party is busy trying to minimize the damage from the murder of Zahra Kazemi. Like all issues the Liberals deal with, if tough measures are required they often end up spending most of their time trying to look good in front of the cameras. According to the G&M:

“We need an independent autopsy which will help determine precisely what happened during her custody,” said Sébastien Théberge, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew.

“Dr. Azam's story reinforces our belief that this was a murder, but the Iranian government will not listen to reasonable demands.

“Now the ball is in Iran's court.”

Mr. Pettigrew made the request for an international autopsy in a conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharazi.

Canada was hoping to take its plea directly to Mr. Khatami, the reform-minded President of the Islamic republic who was in Paris on Tuesday.

He was to speak to hundreds of foreign dignitaries at a conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Canada seemed intent on using its message and its envoy to UNESCO – Yvon Charbonneau – to put pressure on Iran.

Put pressure on Iran? Who the hell are we kidding here? Certainly not the Iranians.

And what the hell is an 'international autopsy'? Are they making this shit up as they go? A Canadian citizen has been killed in a foreign country and the best we can do is ask that they cooperate? That's the problem Pierre! Asking them to do something that they refuse to do is not really constructive to resolving this.

I have little doubt that when the Liberal cabinet is discussing this issue the vast majority of the time is spent trying to figure out how to present the issue to the Canadian public and little to no time is spent developing a real stategy to resolve this.

Multilateralism at its best. A strongly worded letter is what Canada has been reduced to... I'm sure that will accomplish a lot with a regime that tortured and murdered a middle-aged woman taking photographs.