There’s great good news in the decision of Canada’s conservative government to protect 25 million acres in its vast Northwest Territories, including considerable portions of the planet’s largest intact boreal forest. The government of Stephen Harper has created a wilderness wildlife area (3.5 million acres), a national park (6.5 million acres), and a conservation area (15 million acres) comprising extensive lands near the Great Slave Lake and along the Mackenzie River. It’s all 11 times the size of Yellowstone.
XXX
These days Iraq also offers a sanguine scene, albeit of a far different sort — though you wouldn’t know it from many of those who have opposed our Iraqi enterprise from the beginning. Barack Obama, for instance, wanted to begin withdrawing troops last May, and have them all out by this March. In August, he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “All our top military commanders recognize that there is no military solution in Iraq.” That’s all commanders.
But the incumbent commanders in Iraq didn’t recognize any such thing. And now it becomes daily more obvious that our military effort — with indigenous political, religious and cultural gains — may be notching a win for the good guys. What’s so hard about admitting it?
XXX
In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has commissioned a 12-month review of the country’s National Health Service to learn why it lags behind most other developed countries in long-term medical outcomes. For example, as an editorial notes in Britain’s leading cancer journal, the Lancet Oncology: “(A five-year EUROCARE review finds) survival for gastric, colorectal, lung, breast, ovarian, kidney, and prostate cancer in England is lower than the European average.” Maybe Brown’s commission will answer the question as to why anyone thinks government-run medicine is better than that provided by the private sector.
Ditto broadcasting: What’s the public-interest good in government running the show — as with the government-operated British Broadcasting Corp.? An internal BBC commission has found (a) widespread failure “to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff,” as well as (b) “a tendency to ‘group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.” As with medicine, so with broadcasting: Tell government to get out of the way.