Reviewing
Linda McQuaig's
"Holding The Bully's Coat"
By Stephen Lendman
29 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Linda
McQuaig is a prominent, award-winning Canadian journalist, sadly less
well known in the US because she writes about her own country. She was
a national reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail before joining the
Toronto Star where she now covers Canadian politics with her trademark
combination of solid research, keen analysis, irreverence and passion.
She's easy to read, never boring, and fearless. The National Post called
her "Canada's Michael Moore."
McQuaig is also a prolific
author with a well-deserved reputation for taking on the establishment.
In her previous seven books, she challenged Canada's deficit reduction
scheme to gut essential social services. She explained how the rich
used the country's tax system for greater riches the way it happened
in the US since Ronald Reagan, then exploded under George Bush. She
exposed the fraud of "free trade" empowering giant corporations
over sovereign states while exploiting working people everywhere.
She also showed how successive
Canadian governments waged war on equality since the 1980s, and in her
last book before her newest one she took aim at why the US invaded and
occupied Iraq. It's catchy title is "It's the Crude, Dude: war,
big oil, and the fight for the planet." It's no secret America's
wars in the Middle East and Central Asia are to control what Franklin
Roosevelt's State Department in 1945 called a "stupendous source
of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world
history - the huge amount of Middle East oil alone and veto power over
how it's disbursed and to whom.
"Holding the Bully's
Coat - Canada and the US Empire" is her eighth book. She writes
about a country slightly larger than the US in geographic size with
around one-tenth the population and one-twelfth the GDP. It also shares
the world's longest relatively open, undefended border extending 3145
miles. In her book, McQuaig explains how corporate-Canada, its elitist
"comprador class," the Department of National Defense (DND),
and mainstream commentators want Canada to be Washington's subservient
junior partner. The result is Ottawa abandoned its traditional role
in peacekeeping, supporting internationalism, as a fair-minded mediator
and conciliator, and it's continuing downhill from there.
Today Canada's allied with
the Bush administration's belligerent lawlessness in its phony "war
on terrorism." It's not part of the "coalition of the willing"
in Iraq but joined Washington's war of aggression and illegal occupation
in Afghanistan. In February, 2004, it partnered with the US and France
ousting democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, then
became part of the repressive Blue Helmet MINUSTAH paramilitary force
onslaught against his Lavalas movement and Haitian people under cover
of "peacekeeping." More on that below.
In "Holding the Bully's
Coat," McQuaig further explains how Canada lost its moorings. As
an appendage of the US empire, it abandoned its traditional commitment
to equality, inclusiveness, and rule of law. She wants her country to
disgorge this virus plaguing it - its uncharacteristic culture of militarism,
loss of sovereignty and one-sided support of privilege, returning to
its roots to reclaim its once proud status now lost. Its leaders might
recall former Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz's lament saying: "Poor
Mexico, so far from God, so close to the US." Closeness plagues
Canada, too. It can't choose neighborhoods but can still go its own
sovereign way.
This review covers McQuaig's
important book in detail so readers can learn what afflicts America
affects Canada as well. It's a cancerous disease, and all people everywhere
suffer for it.
McQuaig starts off noting
the "significant shift in how Canada (now) operates in the world
(having) moved from being a nation that has championed internationalism,
the United Nations and UN peacekeeping to being a key prop" in
George Bush's "war on terrorism." It belies Canada's now sullied
reputation "as a fair arbiter and promoter of just causes (and
as a) decent sort of country." She laments how the conservative
Harper government aids the beleaguered White House, joined its war of
aggression in Afghanistan, and continues distancing itself from its
European allies "with whom we have a great deal in common."
Canada and the continent
have "compelling similarities" shown in stronger social programs,
"aspirations for greater social equality," and wanting "a
world of peaceful co-existence among nations." In contrast, America
continues growing more unequal, focusing instead on achieving unchallengeable
economic, political and military supremacy in line with its imperial
aims for world dominance. Nations daring to step out of line, risk getting
flattened the way it's now happening to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Canada's tilt to the right
began in earnest in the 1980s under conservative prime minister Brian
Mulroney and his relationship with Ronald Reagan. Corporate American
elites fondly remember his December, 1984 appearance at the New York
Economic Club where one writer said business heavyweights were "hanging
from the rafters" to hear what he'd say. They weren't disappointed,
and it's been mostly downhill since. Back then, the order of the day
was mainly business, but it no longer would be as formerly usual with
Mulroney delighting his listeners announcing "Canada is open for
business." He meant US corporations were welcome up north, the
two countries would work for greater economic integration, and America's
sovereignty henceforth took precedence over its northern neighbor.
Before Stephen Harper took
office in February, 2006, McQuaig notes Canada's foreign policies began
tilting to the right under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin. He replaced
Jean Chretien in December, 2003, stepping down after 10 years in office
just ahead of the federal "sponsorship scandal" over improper
use of tax dollars that doomed the Martin government after an explosive
report about it was released in February, 2004. While still in office,
Martin's April, 2005 defence policy review stressed the integration
of Canada's military with the US. He also approved redeploying Canadian
Afghan troops away from "peacekeeping" in Kabul to fighting
Taliban forces in southeastern Helmand province. Based on Taliban gains,
since its resurgence to control half the country, he and Harper may
live to regret that decision.
McQuaig notes the absence
of any evidence Canadians approve. In fact, polls consistently show
they're "increasingly wary of our involvement in Afghanistan (and
too close an alignment) with the United States." Their feeling
may be heightened under Harper's "flag-pumping jingoism" aided
by the country's dominant media championing the war effort much like
their counterparts in the US. Public approval doesn't count in Canada
any more than in the America. What George Bush wants he's mostly gotten
so far, and Stephen Harper is quite willing to go along.
Anti-Canadians at Home and
Abroad
Since taking office in February,
2006, Harper's been in lockstep with Washington, even abandoning Canada's
traditional even-handedness on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One
of his first shameless acts was to cut off aid to the new democratically
elected Hamas government. Showing his pro-Israeli bona fides, he failed
to show concern for 50,000 Canadians in harm's way in Lebanon after
Israel launched its summer war of aggression last year. Instead of calling
for a ceasefire, Harper defended Israel calling their action "measured."
In fact, it flattened half the country causing vast destruction, many
hundreds of deaths, massive population displacement, and untold human
misery and desperation still afflicting those in the conflict areas.
McQuaig notes Canadian internationalism
evolved post-WW II. It showed in support for the UN, peacekeeping as
opposed to militarism, the rule of law, distaste for imperialism, and
by following a good neighbor policy toward all other countries. It was
completely contrary to American belligerence, hardened under George
Bush post-9/11, and now largely embraced by Stephen Harper just like
Britain did it under Tony Blair. The UK leader is leaving office June
27 at the end of his prime ministership with an approval rating lower
than George Bush's (at 26% in latest Newsweek poll nearly matching Richard
Nixon's record low of 23%), maybe signaling what's ahead for Mr. Harper.
His government, Canada's
elite, and its military support policies distinct from the public's.
They want tax cuts for the rich, cuts in social spending, more privatizations
and less regulation, increased military spending and closer ties to
the US and its belligerent imperial agenda. That includes its policy
of torture Canada's now complicit with as a partner in Bush's "war
on terrorism" and how it's being waged. In contrast, the public
"favours a more egalitarian agenda of public investment, universal
social programs," and maintaining Canada's identity distinct from
its southern neighbor. Most Canadians don't wish to emulate it, nor
would they tolerate living under a system denying them the kinds of
essential social benefits they now have even though they're eroding.
Their feelings are especially
strong regarding their cherished national health medicare system. It's
"founded on the principle that everyone should have access to health
care (and) be treated equally," unlike in the US where everyone
can get the best health care possible as long as they can pay for it.
If not, too bad, and for 47 million Americans without health insurance
it's really bad along with around another 40 million who are without
it some portion of every year. For Canadians, that's unthinkable and
wouldn't be tolerated.
It should be as unthinkable
that the Harper government's so-called Clean Air Act of October, 2006
meant Ottawa's effective abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol on climate
change. The Chretien government accepted and ratified it even though
little was done under Liberal rule, making it easier to do less under
Conservative leadership. That's in spite of near-universal agreement
global warming is real and threatening the planet with an Armageddon
future too grim to ignore. Canada's doing it under Harper just like
Washington ignores it under George Bush.
A large part of the problem
is both parties' support for industry efforts to triple oil sands production
by 2015 to three million barrels daily. At that level, it's impossible
meeting Kyoto targets, but Washington approves as most production is
earmarked for US markets. It will feed America's insatiable energy appetite
meaning planet earth's fate is someone else's problem, and maybe it
will go away if we stop talking about it. And maybe not after we learn
it's too late to matter. Canada's record is already disgraceful with
one of the world's highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions per person.
Unless it acts to change current policy, it risks being called an international
scofflaw, no different than its southern neighbor, except in degree.
The Harper government is
also massively ramping up Canada's military spending he plans to increase
over 50% above 2005 levels to $21.5 billion annually by 2010. That's
in spite of the nation facing no threats and a public consensus favoring
social spending. It's also contrary to Canada's traditionally eschewing
militarism unlike the US with its long history of it since the nation's
founding. It intensified post-WW II after it emerged preeminent and
chose to pursue an imperial agenda for new markets, resources and exploitable
cheap labor now endangering all planetary life by its recklessness.
That's what Canada chose to partner with making it complicit with whatever
happens henceforth.
Unsurprisingly, the Bush-Harper
"war on terrorism" partnership now focuses on the Middle East
where two-thirds of the world's proved oil reserves are located (around
675 billion barrels) and the Central Asian Caspian basin with an estimated
270 billion barrels more plus one-eighth of the world's natural gas
reserves. It doesn't matter that claimed "terrorism" is phony
and "war" on it against "Islamofascists" threatening
our freedoms unjustified. It only matters that people of both countries
believe enough of the daily media-fed fiction so their governments can
pursue what enough popular outrage never would allow. Anger and disillusionment
in both countries are growing but haven't reached critical mass.
It's the job of the dominant
media to prevent it getting there. So the beat goes on daily keeping
it in check in both countries suppressing ugly truths and preaching
notions of American exceptionalism. We're told it's unique in the world
giving the US special moral authority to make its own rules, irrespective
of long-standing international laws and norms it openly flouts as "quaint
and obsolete." Because of its privileged status, it reigns as a
self-styled "beacon of freedom" defending "democracy-US
style," empowered to wage imperial wars using humanitarian intervention
as cover for them. In the made-in-Washinton New World Order, America
answers only to itself, the law is what the administration says it is,
and, the message to all countries is "Either you are with us, or
you are with the terrorists." Thus, Spaketh a modern-day Zarathustra,
aka George Bush.
McQuaig continues explaining
how Canadians are used to their own media, academic and corporate elites
pandering to Washington rather than taking pride mostly in their own
country. She notes the National Post and C.D. Howe Institute serve as
"spiritual home(s) for neoconservatism" favoring the same
kinds of policies as the US-based bastions of conservative extremism
like the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution and Wall Street Journal
editorial page that's hard right enough to make a Nazi blush. She mentioned
C.D. Howe's sponsored lecture in late 2004 by former Canadian ambassador
to the US, Allan Gotlieb.
He stressed Canada is a faded
world power needing to accept the "transcendant (reality of) US
power" and align with it. He said Canadians have a choice between
"realism" and "romanticism." The former means accepting
US preeminence, even when it violates international law. Further, Canadians
must "liberate themselves from the belief that the UN is the sacred
foundation of our foreign policy." According to Gotlieb, international
law, embodied in the UN Charter, is obsolete and irrelevant including
what constitutes legitimate armed intervention.
The "romantic"
approach respecting international law and treaties, that are law for
signatories, are "narcissistic" and "sanctimonious."
Following this course will marginalize Canada reducing its influence.
It can only be enhanced by aligning with Washington so as its power
grows, so will Canada's opportunity to benefit from it. Advancing this
kind of tortured logic guarantees Canada only trouble in light of George
Bush's failed adventurism and US status as a world-class pariah mass
public opinion condemns nearly everywhere. McQuaig says "it's hard
(imagining) we'd be viewed with anything but contempt (for having chosen
to "hold the bully's coat" as its) unctuous little sidekick."
Not according to Gotlieb who scoffs at the idea of "remain(ing)
committed to the values we hold....advance them to the world" regardless
of what direction the US takes.
McQuaig compares her country's
government, business and military elite to the 19th century notion of
a "comprador class" serving foreign business class interests.
Modern-day Canadian compradors serve as intermediary junior partners
for corporate American giants especially as so much of Canada's economy
is foreign owned or controlled - 28% of non-financial sectors with 20%
by US companies in 2004. It's much higher in the key oil and gas sector
at 45% overall and 33% in US hands. Further, of the 150 most powerful
CEOs on the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), about one-fourth
of them are with subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies and 18% of
them are American.
McQuaig stresses these numbers
are significant but not overwhelming. What's astonishing and overwhelming
is Canada's growing dependence on the US market now accounting for 87%
of all exports. It explains why Canadian business championed its Free
Trade Agreement (FTA) "leap of faith" in 1988, NAFTA in 1994,
and the new Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP)
founded in March, 2005 by the US, Canada and Mexico. SPP aims to advance
a common security strategy veiling a scheme to destroy Canadian and
Mexican sovereignty under a broader plan for a North American Union
under US control.
The plan is to create a borderless
North America removing barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate
giants, mainly US ones. It also wants to guarantee America free and
unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, of course.
That will assure US energy security while denying Canada and Mexico
preferential access to their own resources henceforth earmarked for
US markets. Finally, it wants to create a fortress-North American security
zone encompassing the whole continent under US control. The scheme,
in short, is NAFTA on steroids combined with Pox Americana homeland
security enforcement. It's the Bush administration's notion of "deep
integration" or the "Big Idea" meaning we're boss, what
we say goes, and no outliers will be tolerated.
Stephen Harper and Canadian
business leaders endorse the plan. Canadian businesses will profit hugely
leaving the country's energy needs ahead for future leaders to worry
about. Today, it's only next quarter's earnings and political opportunism
that matters. McQuaig notes how Canada's elites want to push the envelope
further by giving more tax breaks to business and the rich while cutting
social spending for greater global competitive opportunities. It's heading
for the way it is in the US with a growing disparity between rich and
poor economist Paul Krugman calls "unprecedented."
It led to a Citigroup Global
Markets 2005 report describing the developed world divided in two blocs
- an "egalitarian" one made up of Europe and Japan and "plutonomies"
in the other one. There the US, UK and Canada are cited as members where
wealthy elites get most of the benefits and the disparity between rich
and poor keeps getting more extreme. McQuaig mentions journalists like
Murray Dobbin saying resistance to the US empire is futile and promotes
"pre-emptive surrender(ing)" to it. McQuaig thinks Canadians
in their roots have other ideas being "neither anti-American nor
self-adoring - just resistant to bullies, on both sides of the border."
But given the state of the world and how Canada today is closely aligned
with Washington, ordinary Canadians have their work cut out for themselves
standing up for their rights.
How they've been cheated
shows in a study released in March backing up Citigroup Global Markets
2005 findings. It was conducted by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
(CCPA) titled "The rich and the rest of us - The changing face
of Canada's growing gap." It documented how Canada, like the US,
is growing progressively more unequal with income and wealth gaps between
the richest Canadians and all others widening dramatically. It's happening
because all segments of Canada's political elite, even the New Democratic
Party, have been complicit since the 1980s in reducing social services,
attacking worker rights, cutting corporate taxes and supporting corporate
interests, and redistributing wealth from the public to the privileged
so that real, inflation adjusted, incomes for most Canadians have stagnated
or fallen even while they work longer hours for it.
No More Girlie-Man Peacekeeping
Canada sunk from "peacekeeper"
to partners in illegal aggression as McQuaig explains in this section.
US General Thomas Metz stated it his way sounding the alarm that Islam
was "hijacked by thugs" that could number in the millions
posing the greatest of all threats the West faces - radical Islamic
terrorism. It doesn't matter the threat is a hoax, and it's easy inventing
this or any other one out of whole cloth by just repeating it enough.
Why now? The general explains
that, too, noting America's energy security for its huge appetite. It
needs one-fourth of world oil production for 5% of its population. And,
by chance, two-thirds of proved oil reserves are in the Muslim Middle
East and three-fourths of it in all Muslim states combined worldwide.
How best to control it? McQuaig explains: by "old-style imperialism
- plundering the resources of another country" using wars of aggression
claimed for self-defense against "the scourge of (Islamic) terrorism."
McQuaig calls Canada's new
Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, a "whole new kind
of general - tough, brash, straight-talking....exuding a (new) kind
of bravado." He eschews Canada's traditional "girlie-man peacekeeping"
role opting instead for a "warrior ethic" and partnering with
Washington to do it. Stephen Harper feels the same way, and so does
defence minister Gordon O'Connor. They're on board together for ramping
up military spending and getting knee-deep in America's "war on
terrorism." All they needed was getting the Canadian public to
go along that over the years showed a 90% enthusiastic endorsement for
peacekeeping, not war-making.
McQuaig notes "Canada
(for decades) was a star international (peacekeeping) performer, participating
in virtually every UN mission (with) substantial numbers of troops."
In recent years, however, "Canada has virtually disappeared from
the UN peacekeeping scene" along with the West's declining involvement
overall, preferring aggressive intervention instead through NATO or
concocted "coalitions of the (coerced and/or bribed) willing."
Enter the dominant Western
media functioning the way they do best. Michael Parenti calls it "inventing
reality" while Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky call it "manufacturing
consent." It means manipulating public opinion to go along with
state and corporate policy, nearly always counter to the public interest.
So we've had a warrior agenda post-9/11 invented out of whole cloth
against "Islamic terrorism" threatening Western civilization
unless stopped. It turns reality on its head portraying innocent Arab
victims as victimizers and Western aggressors as targets acting only
in self-defense.
Using CIA asset Osama bin
Ladin as "Enemy Number One," illegal wars of aggression are
portrayed as liberating ones. McQuaig calls the "arrogance of this
notion stupefying" including Western indifference to the "collateral
damage" of huge numbers of innocent lives lost. Most go unreported,
while the few getting attention are dismissively called "unfortunate
mistakes." Noted Canadian law professor Michael Mandel disagrees
saying every death constitutes a grave international crime because the
Iraq and Afghan wars are illegal aggression under international law.
No connection exists between
9/11 and those wars or that Saddam Hussein or the Taliban posed a threat
to US or western security. Mandel also points out that prior to the
October, 2001 and March, 2003 invasions, the Taliban and Saddam preferred
negotiating with Washington but were rebuffed. Mandel stresses nations
have an obligation to respect Article 33 in the UN Charter stating "the
parties to any dispute shall, first of all, seek a solution by....peaceful
means (through) negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration
(or) judicial settlement."
America flouts international
law choosing imperial wars of aggression Canada chose to partner with.
Mandel explains nations doing this are guilty of "very serious
crimes, in fact, supreme international crimes." But unlike at Nuremberg,
he notes the "great big hole in the modern practice of international
criminal law: its refusal to distinguish between legal and illegal war-making,
between aggression and self-defence." It's "How America Gets
Away With Murder" (the title of Mandel's important 2004 book) with
the developed world barely blinking an eye. But then, who's brave enough
to challenge the world's only superpower ready to lash out against any
nation that dares. It's lots easier partnering in aggression, sharing
in the spoils, or just staying silently complicit in the face of overwhelming
criminality.
Canada chose the easier route,
its dominant media's on board selling it, and it's no small factor that
87% of the country's exports go to US markets. That means Canada's economic
well-being and security depends on America's willingness to accept them.
McQuaig argues if long-standing trade and security ties obligate Canada
to partner in Washington's wars, it's a "compelling argument for
loosening (them), for developing more independent economic and military
policies...." Otherwise, it amounts to committing war crimes "to
protect our trade balance."
McQuaig wants Canada to renounce
its warrior status and return to its traditional role of internationalism
and peacekeeping as a member in good standing in the world community
of nations. Her book touches on peacekeeping without going into what
this writer covered in detail in a February, 2007 article called "UN
Peacekeeping Paramilitarism." It documented how often Blue Helmet
peacekeepers end up creating more conflict than resolution or became
counterproductive or ineffective. In the first instance, they became
paramilitary enforcers or occupiers for an outside authority. In the
second, they end up causing harm because they fail to ameliorate conditions
on the ground ending up more a hindrance than a help. The record post-WW
II makes the case.
The UN's first ever peacekeeping
operation in 1948 was and still is its greatest failure and outlandish
disgrace. It's the UNTSO one undertaken during Israel's so-called "War
of Independence." The operation is still ongoing, peace was never
achieved, the UN is still there playing no active role, and Israel gets
away with mass murder with world approval by its complicity and silence.
Over five dozen peacekeeping
operations have been undertaken since the first one with far too little
or nothing to show for at least most of them, including where peacekeeping
was most needed. The article couldn't cover them all so chose five other
examples:
-- UNAMIR IN Rwanda
-- UNIMIK in Kosovo
-- MONUC in the Democratic
Republic of Congo
-- UNMIS in Sudan, and
-- MINUSTAH in Haiti the
article focused mainly on.
They all were and are dismal
failures or worse.
No country on earth suffered
more than Haiti from its unparalleled legacy of 500 years of colonial
occupation, violence and exploitation. It's still ongoing today horrifically
with Canada having an active role to its discredit and disgrace based
on the facts on the ground. It was complicit along with France and the
US in the February, 2004 coup d'etat ousting democratically elected
President Jean-Betrand Aristide. His "crime" was wishing to
serve his people, not the imperial master in Washington who engineered
his forcible removal for the second time.
The UN Security Council voted
in April, 2004 to establish MINUSTAH peacekeepers with Canada in an
active role. From inception, its mission was flawed as it had no right
being there in the first place. In principle, peacekeepers are deployed
to keep peace and stability though seldom ever achieve it, in fact.
In the case of Haiti, Blue Helmets were deployed for the first time
in UN history enforcing a coup d'etat against a democratically-elected
leader instead of staying out of it or backing his right to return to
office. Today, Haitians are still afflicted by its US neighbor and world
indifference to its suffering. Canada shares the guilt acting as a complicit
agent in America's crimes of war and against the humanity of the Haitian
people.
McQuaig stresses how Canadian
elites want to move the country away from its traditional peacekeeping
role opting instead for supporting American exceptionalism and its right
to "impose a Pax Americana on the world" that's, in fact,
a "Pox." As Washington flouts international laws and norms,
"they want us to stand by, helpfully, holding the bully's coat."
All Opposed to Nuclear Disarmament,
Please Stand Up
McQuaig highlights the difficulty
of achieving nuclear disarmament by showing how hard it is eliminating
land mines. They're mostly used as terror weapons inflicting most of
their damage after conflicts end. So in spite of a Canada-led Ottawa
Process agreement in 1997, it failed because the Clinton administration
refused to sign it. It acceded to Pentagon obstructionism in spite of
most of the world backing it including Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody
Williams and Princess Diana before her death. They both spearheaded
the effort without success.
Canada was on the right side
of this issue exercising what its lead proponent, Lloyd Axworthy, called
"soft power." His efforts led to a December, 1997 signing
ceremony accepted by two-thirds of the world's nations, an extraordinary
achievement by any measure. And as Axworthy noted: "No one was
threatened with bombing. No economic sanctions were imposed. No diplomatic
muscles were flexed....Yet a significant change was achieved in the
face of stiff opposition."
Using "soft power,"
Canada initially played a small role, Washington opposed, on nuclear
disarmament. The Bush administration was so determined to thwart any
efforts in this direction it refused even to allow any resolutions being
placed on the agenda for discussion at the May, 2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) review conference in Geneva. As a result, nothing was accomplished,
and NPT was left in shambles with nuclear disarmament derailed.
Canada then led an effort
circumventing the failed Geneva talks by going to the UN General Assembly
with voting rights but no enforcement authority. Washington's opposition
was intense enough, however, to get Ottawa to back down just hours ahead
of the October 12 deadline. The Martin government acceded to Bush administration
demands it do so, and "the moment had been lost." But it likely
didn't matter as America under George Bush claims no need to ask permission
from other nations to do whatever it wishes in the name of "national
security" that can mean anything.
For many years, Canada was
more even-handed than Washington on matters concerning Israel and Palestine.
While fully supportive initially of a Jewish homeland and the rights
of Israelis thereafter, Canadian leaders also respected Arab peoples
and their interests. McQuaig noted by 1987, Canada had tilted heavily
toward Israel, refused to support Arab UN resolutions condemning its
crimes, and was ranked by observers as "second only to the US in
support for Israel."
Now, under Stephen Harper,
Canada's Middle East stance is as hard line as Washington's. It views
everything in the region from the perspective of "Islamic terrorism"
while ignoring the plight of Palestinians and the illegal occupation
of their land. Harper also joined western nations cutting off all aid
to the democratically elected Hamas government in 2006 and supported
Israel's summer illegal aggression against Lebanon last year. He also
supports the US-Israeli coup against the democratically elected Hamas
government co-opting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to shamelessly
participate in it. Ottawa and Washington approve of his defying Palestinian
Basic Law and international law. He dissolved a duly constituted legitimate
government, and replaced it with his own headed by illegitimate new
prime minister Salam Fayyad, the pro-Western former IMF and World Bank
official chosen by Washington and Jerusalem.
The Most Dangerous Man in
the English-Speaking World
It's not George Bush, at
least not in this section of McQuaig's book. It's former Canadian statesman,
diplomat and prime minister (from 1963 - 1968) Lester Pearson, but not
because he was a menace. After being elected to Parliament, Liberal
Prime Minister St. Laurent appointed him minister of external affairs.
In that capacity, he supported an internationalist approach to foreign
policy highlighted by his determination to reduce Cold War tensions
with Moscow and Peking. That stance so irritated American cold warriors,
it got Chicago Tribune owner Colonel Robert McCormick to denounce him
in 1953 as "the most dangerous man in the English-speaking world."
It was because Pearson refused to cooperate with Senator Joe McCarthy's
witch-hunt communist hearings. They produced nothing but destroyed lives
and ruined careers, all to serve his own corrupted political agenda.
Pearson also thought NATO
should be more than a military alliance to be able to deal with economic
and social issues as well as defense. He wanted the alliance to encourage
western ideas and free market alternatives to communism. Pearson was
bold in ways unimaginable today in Ottawa or nearly anywhere in the
West. He spoke out against Truman's threat to use nuclear weapons in
Korea and challenged Washington when he thought its positions were dangerous
and provocative.
In 1955, he became the first
western prime minister to visit Moscow. He spoke out against colonialism
and the rights of Third World nations to their own sovereignty. Overall,
he supported internationalism, conciliation and peace including helping
in 1956 create the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) following the Suez crisis
that year. It was formed after Israel, Britain and France's war of aggression
in October, 1956 against Egypt following President Nasser's decision
to nationalize the Suez Canal. For his efforts, Pearson won the Nobel
Peace Prize the following year. In his Nobel lecture, he stressed nations
faced a choice - "peace or extinction." He continued saying
nations cannot "be conditioned by the force and will of a unit,
however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day
include all states" and that predatory ones can't be tolerated.
McQuaig notes Pearson's "trickiest"
relationship was with the US, even at a time Washington's footprint
was less obtrusive and aggressive than now. He supported sitting administrations
and their aim to contain communism. He even stood with Lyndon Johnson's
military aggression in Vietnam "aiding South Vietnam....resist
aggression." For that, he shares Canada's complicity in Washington's
illegal war effort that had less to do with containing communism and
more about America's imperial ambitions ramping up in those Cold War
years following the Korean stalemate. For his actions, Pearson exhibited
an "early example of Canada holding the bully's coat" even
though he later publicly challenged the US role in Vietnam in a Temple
University address.
Pearson supported peace and
peacekeeping. His Nobel lecture cited "four faces of peace"
- prosperity, power, diplomacy and people. As prime minister, peacekeeping
was one of his four top priorities that later began to erode when pitted
against the powerful Department of National Defence (DND) bureaucracy.
By the early 1980s (long after Pearson's tenure), peacekeeping amounted
to less than 0.5% of Canada's defense budget.
Earlier in the late 1970s,
DND's aim to regain a war-fighting orientation got a boost from NATO
that Canada participates in as one of its founding members. At its 1978
summit, member nations agreed to increase their military budgets 3%
annually to offset a supposed Soviet threat. The real aim was to accede
to defense contractors wanting bigger profits.
In the 1980s, Reagan administration
militarism helped Canada's defence lobby "emerge as a potent force
in Canadian politics." Most important in it is the Conference on
Defence Associations (CDA) functioning as an "umbrella group representing
military and retired military personnel as well as business, academic
and professional types with military interests." CDA has enormous
influence at the highest levels of government and key to it is the involvement
of corporate Canada, including the nation's multi-billion dollar arms
industry. CDA and weapons makers are closely tied to the Pentagon and
America's defense industry. It's a natural fit as many large Canadian
companies are US-owned including half of Canada's top 10 military contractors.
This assures Canadian government
support for and involvement in America's war agenda that keeps profits
flowing. Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney's election in 1984
provided and "energizing tonic for....Canada's defence lobby"
as he supported a strong military, wanted Canada to be "open for
business," and "accepted Canada's branch plant role in the
US military-industrial complex...."
McQuaig noted the danger
then that's now even greater. A stronger Canadian defense industry and
military establishment favors not just diverting "the country's
resources towards the military but ultimately" pressuring the country
to use it for war-making. In the 1980s, the phony "Soviet menace"
was portrayed as the threat while today it's "Islamic terrorists"
involving Canada in Washington's imperial agenda of reckless foreign
wars and occupation.
The Threat of Peace
The thought of it chills
the marrow of the defense establishment in both countries. It happened
in November, 1989 when East German authorities announced entering the
West would be permitted, and the rest is history. The "wall"
came down paving the way for German reunification, and peace broke out.
Keeping it depended on a strong UN that wouldn't take long to prove
mission impossible, but for a short interregnum, anything was possible.
In 1992, UN Secretary-General Boutras Boutras-Ghali, at the behest of
the Security Council, prepared an Agenda for Peace. It was an ambitious
plan promoting diplomacy, peacekeeping, peace-making and peace-building.
In the early years of the
nuclear arms race, there were various efforts to achieve disarmament
and promote peace, some far-reaching and anchored by strong UN enforcement
mechanisms. Despite the best efforts of peace visionaries with good
intentions, it was all for naught. Distrust and a prevailing culture
of militarism, especially in the US, trumped reason and sanity. But
with the dissolution of the Soviet empire, there was never a better
time to achieve what always failed earlier, if only the moment could
be seized.
It wasn't, as McQuaig explains
because "the opportunity (for peace) fell....to two men who....viewed
the concept of 'disarmament' through world law' with ferocious contempt."
They represented Republican extremist thinking resenting the notion
of internationalism the UN represented. That body was to be rendered
impotent under US control, even more than in the past, especially its
agenda for social progress and peace-making.
With George HW Bush president,
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and his undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz
were tasked to shape America's post-Cold War strategy. Boutras-Ghali's
Agenda for Peace was doomed with two hard line US high officials committed
to America's imperial supremacy enforced by unchallengeable military
power from the world's sole superpower. In George HW Bush's final year
in office, Paul Wolfowitz and convicted Richard Cheney aide Lewis Libby
drafted the scheme in their Defense Planning Guidance some call the
Wolfowitz doctrine. It was so extreme, it was to be kept under wraps,
but got leaked to the New York Times causing uproar enough for the elder
Bush to shelve it until his son revived it in 2001.
In the early 1990s, public
sentiment and high officials in Canada's Senate and House of Commons
supported Boutros-Ghali's agenda embracing diplomacy, peacekeeping,
peace-making and peace-building. The country's DND felt otherwise fearing
promoting peace meant marginalizing the nation's military establishment.
Wanting to remain a fighting force, the military was threatened with
good reason. Strengthened by international support, Canadian NGOs established
the Citizens' Inquiry into Peace and Security. They travelled the country
holding public hearings. They drew large supportive crowds influential
enough to get the Liberal Party to highlight peacekeeping in its Foreign
Policy Handbook in May, 1993. Liberals were backed by some prominent
academics, enlightened business leaders, and even some media commentators
in the Canada 21 Council they formed to direct Canada's defence policy
toward peace efforts.
It was a threatening time
for the military establishment closing ranks to resist change harmful
to its interests and vision of what a fighting force is for. DND fought
back with a Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies (CSIS) watered-down
counter-proposal, the Liberals bought it, and the party's 1994 defence
review ensured no meaningful change from the status quo. The defence
interests were served meaning public sentiment for peace efforts lost
out to militarism. They were reinforced by a Committee of 13, composed
of generals, hawkish academics and defense industry officials, countering
the Canada 21 Council ending up on the losing side.
McQuaig speculates whether
wars are an expression of human nature and inevitable consequence of
human aggressiveness. She used an analogy to dueling, once considered
a proper way to settle disputes. No longer, and anyone in civilized
society trying it will end up afoul of the law. So why might not wars
one day also be seen as an anachronism no longer practiced? She cites
political philosopher Anatol Rapoport and political scientist John Mueller
who think so, believing this practice only exists because we give it
legitimacy. They point to other once widely accepted practices failing
to survive over time - slavery (illegal everywhere but still widely
practiced sub rosa even in the West), absolute hereditary monarchy,
gladiatorial combat to the death, human sacrifice, burning heretics,
segregation and Jim Crow laws, and public flogging among many others.
Over time, customs changed and these practices ended, or mostly did.
So why not wars, and Europe
post-WW II shows it's possible. The horror of two world wars on the
continent combined with the emergence of super-weapons underscored what
Einstein said half a century ago on future wars: "I know not with
what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be
fought with sticks and stones." European leaders apparently feel
likewise as the continent was relatively peaceful for the past 62 years,
with the Balkan wars a major exception, yet a localized one. In lieu
of more wars, the European Union was formed and continues expanding.
McQuaig strikes a hopeful note: Maybe "war among European nations
lost its legitimacy."
For that to be true, however,
requires these nations renounce wars everywhere, not just in their backyard
or on their soil. With today's super-weapons, nations have the capacity
to end what Noam Chomsky calls "biology's only experiment with
higher intelligence." It can happen and once almost did during
the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. Forty years later, we learned
only a miracle saved us because a Soviet submarine captain, Vasily Arkhipov,
countermanded his order to fire nuclear-tipped torpedos when Russian
submarines were attacked near Kennedy's "quarantine" line.
Imagine the consequences if he'd done it.
Today, we're back to square
one with a group of American rogue leaders usurping the right to unilaterally
use first strike nuclear weapons. They claim it's part of the nation's
"imperial grand strategy" threatening everyone with extinction
if they follow through - and don't bet they won't.
Back From the Abyss
McQuaig highlights the secret
September 13, 2006 American, Canadian and Mexican elitist meeting in
Banff, Alberta, Canada held to discuss the Bush administration's scheme
for a North American Union. Such an eventuality would mean US North
American hegemonic control. It would have enormous consequences on matters
of political, economic, social and national security issues adversely
affecting everyone on the continent except the privileged plotters benefitting
at everyone else's expense.
McQuaig called the meeting
"the ultimate expression of treachery" as two key themes were
North American energy security and Canada-US military and security cooperation.
These are US priorities, not Canadian ones, so Ottawa's acceding to
American demands amounts to a national betrayal of the public trust.
The fact that the meeting was secret only underscores the threat. That
it was held at all shows the Harper government placed "holding
the bully's coat (above) Canadian public interest in energy, military
and security matters (crying) out for an independent Canadian course...."
Even worse, McQuaig notes,
is that the centerpiece Alberta oil sands development part of a North
American energy strategy undermines responsible Canadian global warming
efforts. By fall, 2006, the Harper government proved no better than
the Bush administration as a leading climate change obstructionist.
Unlike European nations cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Canada's are
rising and are now among the highest levels in the world per person.
In the age of George Bush, Canada, under conservative leadership, is
heading in the wrong direction on this and most other vital national
and world issues. Included among them is being "complicit in some
of the worst aspects of the US 'war on terrorism.' "
Torture is one of them, even
of Canadian citizens, like the outrageous case of Maher Arar. He was
detained at JFK Airport in September, 2002 on his way home, based on
false Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) information about him US
authorities had. It was the beginning of "delivering an innocent
Canadian man into hell" because of Canada's role in Washington's
"war on terrorism."
Arar was initially held in
solitary confinement in the US for nearly two weeks, interrogated and
denied access to legal help. He was falsely labeled an Al Queda member,
"renditioned" to Syria where he was born, ignored by his government,
held under appalling conditions, brutally tortured for a year before
being released in October, 2003 and allowed to return home. A subsequent
thorough investigation proved his innocence provoking outrage across
the country. Canadian authorities treated him with contempt, even leaking
false information to the media suggesting he was a terrorist and his
claims about being tortured were untrue. That underscores Canada's moral
depravity under Stephen Harper's leadership umbilically linked to the
roguish Bush regime in Washington.
McQuaig stresses Harper's
cooperation with Washington's "war on terrorism" "lies
at the very heart of (his) agenda." Maintaining that close relationship
with America on all matters important to Canada depends on it. Defiling
the rights of its citizens and ignoring international law are minor
matters by comparison and easily ignored as Canada sinks into the same
moral swamp as America. It's partnered with Washington's war on the
world, now directed at Islam, but pointing in all directions against
any nation unwilling to become a subservient client state. Washington
demands no less from all nations, and those refusing risk the Marines
showing up followed by regime change. The lord and master of the universe
tolerates no outliers.
Canada's on board under Stephen
Harper, so it needn't worry. McQuaig's book, however, sounds the alarm
all Canadians and Americans need to hear. At book's end, she stresses
how "Powerful forces in this country are encouraging us to accept
the notion of American exceptionalism and a role for Canada as adjunct
to the US empire." She then quotes Rudyard Griffiths, Dominion
Institute's executive director, saying "the country's most cherished
myths seem to be melting away. If we are not what we were, what now
defines us as a nation?"
McQuaig asks if Canadians
will allow war-making to replace peacekeeping and will sacrifice its
social state to pay for it. Her answer is no, that Canadians want none
of neoconservatism, and instead want its political leaders returning
to the nation's traditional values now abandoned. Her own views likely
mirror public sentiment: "a vision committed to fair treatment
and equality, to decency and to the rule of law." That's what being
Canadian means for her. It's not serving "a helpmate's role, with
a lucrative perch inside the US empire, obligingly assisting the bully
as he goes about trying to subdue the world." She can take comfort
knowing most Americans likely share her views and don't want that either.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information
Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.
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