Countdown to terrorism 2010

With the 2010 Olympics looming, Canada might start behaving better now

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

In the aftermath of the London atrocity, I can’t help wondering when Canada will be hit. Some have told me that I’m worrying needlessly, and that Chretien's refusal to openly participate in the invasion of Iraq rescued Canada from the terrorists’ wrath. I’d like to believe them, but I fear they’re mistaken.

To understand why, we need to understand the terrorists’ reasoning. They’re tired of seeing their cities destroyed, their lands occupied by American military bases, their resources stolen by Western corporations, their people oppressed by American-sponsored dictatorships, and their Palestinian brethren ravaged by America’s foremost client state, Israel. They want the Western bombardment, occupation, and exploitation of their lands to end. They want the West in general, and the US in particular, to stop supporting oppressive Middle Eastern regimes with military and economic aid. They want the US to stop vetoing UN condemnations of Israel, and to allow the mechanisms of international law to hold Israel to account for its actions. In true megalomaniacal fashion, they also plan to establish a theocratic Caliphate across the Islamic world. This last goal may only appeal to a small minority of Muslims, but I’ll bet quite a few Muslims find the preceding ones to be eminently sensible, for the simple reason that they are eminently sensible.

The terrorists appear to believe, perhaps with some justification, that the empire will only retreat when its economy crashes and its people lose their stomach for war. The attacks in New York, Madrid, and London were designed to spread suffering and chaos in both the US and its allies, thereby weakening the empire's economic muscle and its military will. The terrorists use these methods because, rightly or wrongly, they believe they can't fight this war in any other way. The deeper a country’s embedded in the US war machine, the bigger a target for terrorist attack it becomes. So, Canadians should ask: just how deeply embedded are we?

Well, for starters, Canada was one of the countries that invaded Afghanistan. Canadians don't talk about that invasion very much anymore. Perhaps we think that the West had a perfect right to bomb that war-shattered country into blood-soaked rubble, to use the designation "unlawful combatant" to do whatever we wanted to whomever we pleased, and to advance our economic interests by handing Afghanistan over to the warlords. After all, weren't the Afghanis harboring terrorist training camps on their soil? Weren't they sheltering Bin Laden, the man behind 9-11?

Few Canadians care that by this reasoning the many nations of Latin America have a perfect right to bomb the US, which for fifty-nine years has used the School of the Americas (SOA)—now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation—to train over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence, sniper training, and interrogation tactics. According to School of the Americas Watch, they've used these skills "to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, 'disappeared', massacred,” and turned into refugees.

Similarly, most Canadians couldn’t care less that the government of Afghanistan offered to turn Bin Laden over if the US would simply provide some evidence that he was responsible for 9-11. It simply doesn’t matter that our southern ally is a bigger sponsor of terrorism than Afghanistan ever was, or that the Afghanis were willing to kowtow once the US showed some marginal commitment to due process. In our relationship with the developing world, Westerners generally assume that our lives and their crimes count, whereas their lives and our crimes don't. If this sounds harsh, then compare the Western outrage over the bombing of London in July 2005 with the Western indifference to the infinitely more murderous siege of Fallujah in April 2004.

We joined the American-led invasion because we suspected the Afghani government of colluding with al-Qaeda, because the war would only cost a few thousand worthless Afghani lives, and because we could make a fast buck in the process. But our service to the Empire doesn't stop there.

By relieving American troops stationed in Afghanistan, Canadian forces freed them to invade Iraq. Later on, we took pressure off of American forces when, in February 2004, we sent Canadian soldiers to help overthrow Haiti's democratically elected government and install a sadistically brutal puppet regime. During the Iraq invasion, Canadian officers at CENTCOM in Qatar provided logistical support to Coalition forces. Three Canadian warships escorted the US fleet during "Operation Apollo", an operation in which the fleet fired Tomahawk missiles at Iraqi targets. Canada offered over-flight and refueling privileges in Canadian airspace to US troop transport planes. A handful of Canadian soldiers also served on "exchange" with the Iraq invasion forces.

Our enmeshment with the US military goes beyond these invasions, however. Our government lets US warplanes test their weapons in Canadian airspace, we allow American pilots to train in that airspace, we let US submarines test their torpedoes in our waters, and we give billions in loans and subsidies to military exporters, exporters who, in 2002 alone, sold $1.75 billion dollars worth of military goods to the US. We’re an integral and major component of the American military apparatus.

Canadians may be blind to this, but I suspect the terrorists aren’t. Remember that Canada is one of the five countries listed by al-Qaeda as possible targets. Short of transforming Canada into a police state, there is no way to guarantee our safety from a terrorist attack. The use of military force certainly won’t protect us. Far from reducing the terrorist threat, the invasions have turned Afghanistan and Iraq into unparalleled recruiting and training grounds for groups like al-Qaeda. The terrorists created and trained there will almost certainly end up employing their skills here. God help us in 2010. Given that we’ll inevitably reap what we sown, isn’t it time we started sowing better crops?

****