TO CANADA, US DIPLOMACY IS HIGH COMEDY

Those darned Canadian hopheads! That's been the White House's reaction to
the news that Premier Jean Chretien of Canada wants to decriminalize
marijuana possession north of the 49th parallel. Last week, Chretien told a
cheering audience that he would introduce legislation soon. (''Don't start
to smoke yet,'' he warned.) But he may be preempted by Canada's Supreme
Court, which plans to rule on an important marijuana test case this week.

On Friday, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter asked David Murray,
assistant to White House drug czar John Walters, what he thought of all
this. Murray fired off the rhetorical shot heard from Kitimat all the way
to Kippokok: ''We would have to respond. We would be forced to respond,''
Murray said. Why? Because pot legalization is dangerously anti-American.
Just look at the longhair maniacs who support decriminalization, wild men
like financier George Soros, Nobelist Milton Friedman, and former Secretary
of State George Shultz.

In the short term, the Canadians don't give a fig about what the White
House thinks, because the Bush administration has blown a hole a mile wide
in US-Canadian relations. A few weeks ago, ambassador Paul Cellucci
upbraided Canada for not joining the ''coalition of the willing,'' which
apparently doesn't mean exactly what its name implies. (I am wondering,
idly, what plum the current lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, will land
after faithfully serving a forceful Republican governor, as Cellucci did.
Ambassador to Talbots? But I digress.)

Cellucci told the Economic Club of Toronto that many Americans were
''disappointed and upset'' that Canada was not supporting the Bush-Rumsfeld
improvement program for Iraq. The reaction north of the border was swift
and sure. ''Yours is the only country that has ever invaded ours, and it
would do so again in a wink if it thought its interests here were seriously
threatened,'' thundered Halifax Chronicle-Herald columnist Silver Donald
Cameron. ''We need no lectures from Americans about the defence of liberty
and democracy.''

Shortly after Cellucci's tirade, President George Bush canceled a state
visit to Ottawa. The next day Bush invited Prime Minister John Howard of
Australia for a sleepover at the Crawford, Texas, Ponderosa, a diplomatic
message ''delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer,'' quoth the
Baltimore Sun. This is the message: Australia = good, brave, ''willing''
Commonwealth country; Canada = bad, stoner, un-''willing'' Commonwealth
country. In case Canada is hard of hearing, the White House slapped a
punitive tariff on its wheat exports over the weekend to make sure it's
paying attention.

The real problem with Canada is that it has become yet another troublesome
democracy, like Germany, France, and Turkey, with each nation's elected
officials answering to their constituents rather than to the voice of
America. Worse yet, the prospects for regime changes in these recalcitrant
countries seem bleak. The Third Infantry Division can do only so much, and
securing Paris, Ankara, Ottawa, and Berlin is a tall order, even for the
legendary heroes of the Marne.