Stephen Harper's logical and ethical fallacies

During the last Israeli agression on Lebanon, Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, refused to recognise the suffering of Lebanese civilians by not calling for an immediate ceasefire, despite having in his own country a sizeable Lebanese diaspora who was waiting for a word from him in this direction and who was anxious and furious about the daily killings of hundreds of lebanese civilians, mainly children, from Israeli bombings.

Recently, at the summit of the Francophonie held in Romania, Harper blocked a common offcicial declaration by the summit that mentions the suffering of Lebanese civilians arguing that it did not mention the suffering of Israeli civilians, despite the fact that the declaration was adopted by a majority of countries participating in the summit.

''Harper said Canada deplored the war but couldn't accept a resolution that didn't recognize that Israelis had also suffered.
"I hope we can all recognize the suffering of humans -- men and women -- and not just suffering based on people's nationality,'' Harper said. ''

Harper's position is logically fallacious and not only unethical but also criminal. Indeed Harper did not ask himself the following questions:

- If he did not recognise the suffering of Lebanese civilians during the height of the Israeli agression how can he logically recognise it now ?
-Moreover, Harper's position during the Israeli agression implied that not only Lebanese civilian suffering was acceptable to achieve military objectives but also Israeli civilian suffering. Was Israeli civilian suffering then acceptable to Harper ?

Harper is here guilty, not only of logical fallacies, but of moral fallacies, for recognising immediately afterward, something that if he had accepted to recognise one month ago he could have saved lives on both sides.

Another fallacy in Harper's position resides in the fact that, recognising retrospectively the moral equivalence of Israeli lives and Lebanese lives and insisting on it, no matter the numbers of civilians who died on both sides, is in contradiction with his position during the height of the war when the dying of Lebanese civilians by the hundreds every day seemed to him acceptable as long as Israeli civilian casualties did not match those of the Lebanese. One could assume, from Harper's insiting on signing the declaration only if it mentioned Israeli civilians, that if Israeli civilian lives were wasted by the hundreds and the thousands during the July war, he may have asked for an immediate ceasefire.

I remember that my professor of Logic told us that the minds of our political leaders are poor in Logic and therefore unethical. He used to give us examples of political speeches full of logical fallacies, asking us to find them and telling us that Logic was connected to Ethics because they share the same process, coherence. Logic requires from us to be coherent in our statements and discourse and Ethic requires coherence between our principles and our actions. Harper lacks both.
Harper is the leader who talked the most about Ethics in Politics and it served him well because he stole the victory from a Liberal party struggling with Ethical problems. However, after this incoherence and many others in Harper's position on the Israeli agression on Lebanon, I say: Harper has no lessons to give in Ethics, not to Canadians and not to the rest of the world. On the contrary, he seems to be desperately in need of lessons from others on these matters.