A Cold Wind's A Blowing

"Wanna know why the straw broke the camel's back? Here's the secret: There were a million other straws underneath it."

-Mos Def

War never materializes out of thin air. There is always a string of provocations leading up to the Fort Sumters of history. Raised as much on Nintendo history as I was real history, as a kid I thought World War II started in 1942. I guess that's typical of Americans to assume that a world war isn't really a world war until we arrive. That could have something to do with the fact that we live in a good neighborhood of the world. We have pretty good neighbors that we get along well with, and for the most part, we don't have to deal with their kids being hooligans and corrupting our kids. Sure, they jump the fence once in awhile and raid our barbeques, but they're mostly respectful, hardworking folks. We don't need to be suspicious of their motives, right?

Wrong.

The border wars have begun to gather steam, America. The campaign against our continental dominance is under way. But not from the source you might think. We've all read the news reports of heads in duffle bags and Federal agents being kidnapped and assassinated on our southern border. But the drug war with the Mexican cartels is not what I'm talking about. In that war, we are united with the Mexican government. The new aggression I speak of, detailed in a New York Times article, comes from our northern neighbors, Canada, host of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. In an act of incitement, the Canadian Olympic Committee has severely restricted access to Olympic facilities for foreigners:

Count the American speedskater Catherine Raney among the athletes, coaches and officials of several sports surprised by Canada's approach to hosting the Winter Games in February.

Raney, who spent more than seven years living in Canada and training with the Canadian national team, was told after the 2006 Olympics that the Canadians did not want foreign athletes training with them leading to the 2010 Games in Vancouver. She and many other foreign athletes had expected to spend quite a bit of time practicing at the Olympic sites, but have been granted only minimal access.

And get a load of this double speak, eh:

Canadian officials said they were following rules of access to competition sites, as set by each sport's governing body. But they also intend to protect the Olympic host's home-field -- or home-ice, home-snow, home-track -- advantage.

At the Whistler downhill course, unfamiliar to most of the world's best skiers, several medal contenders were left watching over a fence as the Canadian team trained. "Everybody was pushing to get on that downhill," said Max Gartner, Alpine Canada's chief athletic officer. "That's an advantage we cannot give away."

[Officials] acknowledge that they are also driven to succeed at these Olympics, perhaps more than any previous host country.

"We're the only country to host two Olympic Games and never have won a gold medal at our Games," Priestner Allinger said. "It's not a record we're proud of."

To put that into shorthand for you, they're essentially saying, "We've gotten our butts kicked on our home court too many times and we're ashamed of ourselves. To remedy this we're going to handicap every other team and give ourselves as much advantage as possible to prove that ours are the best athletes in the world." You've got to be kidding me. What that means to me is they're admitting in advance that their athletes are inferior, but they just care about the gold medals, not about competing.

When the first shots in a war are fired, those who've been paying attention are never surprised. Unfortunately for us Americans, we pay sparse enough attention that when war does break out, we as a public are caught off guard. Especially shocking in this case is that it involves one of our neighbors, whom we generally think we can trust. Well let this be a warning to you, America: Canada is not the jolly, flannel-clad lumberjack nation they pretend to be. They keep their ax honed for more than chopping lumber. Be on guard.

And to Canada: thank you for hockey. And Rachel McAdams. And back bacon. I still like you. We're still friends. But you're playing a dangerous game. And I'm watching you.