George W. Bush is frequently praised for being a man of resolve. Even though his plan for Iraq proved a disaster, based on a lie, at least he stuck to it.

I see little merit in this school of thought. Surely it’s better to flip-flop than to doggedly keep on being wrong. Which is why I have no trouble with Paul Martin changing his mind about missile defence.

Nor do I see any evidence that his rejection will compromise our relations with the United States. Washington may be signalling irritation, but we have too much that it wants — starting with our ample energy — for it to let a serious rift develop.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials can sit back and relax, as Canada’s own media commentators take up the American cause, berating Ottawa for daring to defy the U.S. colossus.

All in one column, The Globe and Mail‘s Margaret Wente branded Martin “ridiculous,” “incompetent,” “self-righteous,” and “a spineless wimp” with the “backbone of a jellyfish.” What did Martin do to deserve this tirade? According to Wente, he “read the opinion polls and caved in.”

In other words, he listened to the Canadian people, who strongly oppose the reckless missile defence scheme, rather than taking his orders from the U.S. ambassador.

Such pandering to the masses clearly annoys our elite commentators, who seem surprisingly willing to trust George W. Bush — even more willing, it appears, than the U.S. Congress.

Congress has provided only limited support for missile defence, compared to the blanket endorsement the Bush administration sought from Canada, according to Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“(T)he president asked Canada for something he probably could not get from the Republican-controlled legislature in his own country,” O’Hanlon wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last week.

So Washington was demanding more from Canada than it could expect from its own Republican Congress.

By saying no, Ottawa showed some backbone. It showed that we won’t automatically acquiesce to Washington’s demands, that we have our own priorities.

That’s a healthy signal to send, if we want to be treated as an equal.

None of this is meant to cast Martin as a hero. His first impulse was to support missile defence, for opportunistic reasons. His corporate backers wanted chummier ties with Washington and a shot at Pentagon contracts. It seemed like a cheap, painless way to suck up to the Bush administration.

But a strange thing happened. It turned out Canadians strongly opposed Bush’s aggressive stance in the world and didn’t want to endorse a scheme that seems sure to revive the arms race, and even put weapons in space.

Sensing the extent of the popular resistance — just as he’d sensed the popular resistance to the bank mergers back in 1998 — Martin realized this would likely be a deal-breaker for the Canadian people. So he decided not to deliver what his corporate friends and the Bush administration demanded.

Spineless wimp? Or a man caught in the crosshairs of democracy?

Score this one to a victory for democracy — with a message sent to Washington that popular resistance is still alive up here.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...