Confessions of an Iggy girl!

I got to know Michael Ignatieff through academic circles first and I have been a big fan, since. (you can guess the connection: Human Rights Issues)

Many of you know have been following the weblog, know that I volunteered in his campaign for the leadership race and was even a Liberal Ignatieff delegate last year (the fact that I didn't quite make it there, was a different stroy).

You also know that when my professor Ramin Jahanbegloo was jailed in Iran, Michael Ignatieff was the only one who came to the rescue and thanks to Iggy's efforts he is out now.

On December 2, 2006 when the Leadership Race came to a shocking end and Michael Ignatieff was not chosen, many of us decided not to renew our Liberal membership.

Last week's Globe and Mail discussed Where Iggy is today and what he told the New York Times Magazine this week:

“You have to see the piece [The New York Times article] in the right frame – what's different about the judgments you make in the safety of academic life from the judgments you make in politics. You have to remember I spent five years getting up every Tuesday and Thursday morning, teaching political science to bright people, and what's funny about it, looking back on it, is that I would teach it totally differently now. That's what I think the piece is saying.”

Iggy also discusses his view on Iraq:

In the article he declares flat out that he was wrong to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a U.S.-led military coalition, a position that brought widespread criticism from the U.S. academic community and travelled with him – like the black cloud over the head of Al Capp's legendary cartoon character Joe Btfsplk – when he left Harvard and returned to Canada to run for Parliament in Toronto's Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding for a party that opposed the invasion. His mistake, he writes and says now, was in failing to accurately calculate the costs to the Iraqi people of freeing them from Mr. Hussein's prison only to dump them into a nightmarish sectarian bloodbath – a calculation the Bush administration also failed to make.

I have always admired him and will do so unless he becomes "one of those" politicians that have long forgotten their sentiments!

As for me, for the same reasons Iggy mentioned, I don't think I will run for public office again. I am also very disappointed in the Liberal Party (and its leadership) that I am yet to renew my membership for 2007.

If you have time, please read Last week's Globe and Mail and also check out This week's NY Times Magazine. and this article!