Take Off for the Great White North

Ah, here's an example of what I was warning against the other day: a friend of a Facebook friend linked to this article about Canada's new Prime-Minister-Designate Justin Trudeau.  The headline: "Canada withdrawing fighter jets from Iraq, Syria, Trudeau tells Obama."  The guy who posted it remarked, "Apparently voting DOES sometimes make a difference, on some issues, in some countries, in some years."  That set off a flurry of jubilant comments: "Wow - he ain't wasting any time, is he?", "He also announced half of his cabinet will be women" (Hillary Clinton, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, and Golda Meir, perhaps), and "HELL YEAH!!!!"  

Even I was momentarily swayed, until I noticed another comment that read "He IS wasting time. Empty announcement to appease the population.  'But he gave no timeline' = They will stay there as long as the US demands them and the people wont even know it because 'their end was announced.'"  So I clicked through, read the article, and dang if he wasn't right: Trudeau gave no timeline, and "he vowed to keep military trainers in place" and "mov[e] forward with our campaign commitments in a responsible fashion."

I don't mean to jump the gun in the opposite direction.  Trudeau might still follow through.  But the time to celebrate will be after the planes are withdrawn, not before.  Maybe voting will have made a difference this time.  But it's too early to say.  Is that really such an outrageous position to take?  Not on this planet.