Choosing up sides

Critics of Canada's position on the UN and the war should be prepared to defend the implications of their pro-US stance. That won't be easy, because the US position is unsupportable

by Kevin Potvin

When critics of Jean Chrétien's foreign policy complain that Canada should have supported the US in its war on Iraq, they should be reminded that by doing so, they are advocating support for the plan enunciated by The Project for the New American Century.

Paul Cellucci, US Ambassador to Canada, has lately been pronouncing on Canadian government policies as though he were an imperial viceroy delivering edicts from the royal throne. It's too bad Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien continues to feel constrained by the requirements for diplomatic niceties, and doesn't instead directly engage Cellucci. After all, the White House, which dispatched Cellucci to Canada, has declared the age of diplomacy dead.

Chrétien might begin by pointing out to Canadians that none of the members of the current US administration ever considered Saddam Hussein nor the possibility of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction relevant to their Mid East war-making policy. A widely-available report called Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategy, Forces, and Resources, put out in September of 2000 by a conservative lobby group called The Project for the New American Century, explicitly states that "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The report was created by, amongst others, deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz, influential Republican William Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard, and several other leading lights of the right, including I Lewis Libby.

This report is widely regarded as the foundation for a whole new concept of the role America is to play in the world. It was published prior to September 11, 2001. Nearly the entire Bush cabinet sat on the board or is listed as a contributor or advisor to The Project for the New American Century.

The September 2000 report is no bland double-speak bureaucratic product. It is provocative and challenging, and explicitly clear. "Nuclear weapons remain a critical component of American military power," the report says. Nuclear weapons "will be an essential element in preserving American leadership in a more complex and chaotic world."

As early as 1998, The Project advocated a massive war for "regime change" in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. In a letter to then-President Bill Clinton, signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard L Armitage, William J Bennett, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, R James Woolsey and Robert B Zoellick (then all employed in the private sector, but now all officially appointed to government positions by the Bush administration), The Project states that "the only acceptable strategy is one that removes Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

"Mr. Ambassador . . . The Vancouver Board of Trade is on your side," The Vancouver Board of Trade wrote the ambassador, and the US President.

The letter to Clinton concludes, "We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power."

In a letter to current President Bush just nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, The Project dispensed with international diplomacy. "American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council," it states. The letter went on to map out the sequence of targets for unilateral pre-emptive military attacks aimed at removing internationally-recognized governments accredited by the United Nations: "Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply" with US edicts upon those nations' foreign policies, "the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these" states.

When critics of Chrétien's foreign policy, like Alliance leader Stephen Harper, Alliance foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day, National Post columnists Mark Steyn and George Jonas, as well as US ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci, complain that Canada should have supported the US in its war on Iraq, they should be reminded that by doing so, they are advocating support for the plan enunciated by The Project for the New American Century.

Specifically, they should all be directly confronted with the question of whether or not they support a strongly explicit militarily-offensive posture founded entirely upon the world-annihilating threat represented by the US arsenal of 10,000 actively deployed nuclear weapons.

They should further be challenged by the Prime Minister to state whether they support the massive military attack on Iraq regardless of whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not, or whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or not. As members of the current US administration who have directed this war have made explicitly clear, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The destruction of Iraq proceeded for the sole purpose of establishing new American military bases in the Middle East. Is this act supportable or not?

It is clear that Syria and Iran will also be attacked and destroyed, regardless of whether or not these countries pose a threat to America or their neighbours. Reasons for attacking these countries will be invented for public consumption, but we all know now that their fate was sealed before the reasons for their destruction have been found.

US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld announced cryptically last year that he possesses a list of 80 countries the administration would like to visit "regime change" upon. Do the critics of Chrétien's policy support or oppose the systematic liquidation of nearly half the world's nations? This is the US administration's publicly-announced plan, and anyone who advocates support for the US should be prepared to explicitly state that they support every article of this plan.

In particular, the executives of British Columbian companies who participated in creating the Vancouver Board of Trade's recent public letter to Cellucci advocating Canadian support for the US administration, should be asked directly if they support the destruction of the United Nations, a dangerously stepped-up US nuclear-backed military posture around the world, and the unilateral, unprovoked destruction of half the world's states.

Peter Legge, president and CEO of Canada Wide Magazines, which publishes, among other titles, BC Business and TV Week, wrote the letter in his capacity as president of the Vancouver Board of Trade.

The battle in Iraq may be finished, but that was just the opening act. There is a bigger war on, and much more is on the agenda. It is time to choose up sides. Peter Legge and the Vancouver Board of Trade, representing all large BC companies, have chosen their side: "Mr. Ambassador . . . The Vancouver Board of Trade is on your side," Legge wrote the ambassador, and the US President.