The Liberal Party government is carrying out this drive to war under the cover of demanding that the government of Iraq accept UN "weapons inspectors" and then, if Baghdad doesn’t meet all their demands, assaulting that country under UN sponsorship.

Minister of Foreign Affairs William Graham made a point of meeting with Iraq’s foreign minister September 17 in New York and warning him that unless his government admitted inspectors, "your time is up."

McCallum said his government favors a diplomatic settlement but that "it is clear that diplomatic efforts can fail to yield results and military action becomes necessary."

He warned, "Let no one think Canada will hesitate to provide military support.... Canada is sometimes known as a peaceable kingdom but never as a pacifist kingdom."

Canada’s imperialist ruling class has long portrayed itself as "peaceable" and reluctant to use military force. It fact, it has joined or supported every imperialist military action around the globe since World War II, including the deployment of ships, fighter jets, and an infantry unit in the 1990–91 Gulf War.

A week earlier, Prime Minister Jean Chretien gave an interview on CBC television where, in an anti-U.S. posture, he attempted to pose Ottawa’s foreign policy as more humane than that of its rival in Washington. "The perceived greed of the Western world helped plant the seeds" for the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, he said. Chretien called on "Western leaders to address the growing gap between rich and poor."

Stephen Harper, leader of the right-wing Canadian Alliance, the official parliamentary opposition party, condemned Chretien’s comments as "bashing the United States and engaging in damaging anti-American rhetoric." Harper has called on the government to support a U.S.-led assault on Iraq regardless of official UN backing. Industry Minister Allan Rock replied by stating that critics of the prime minister were "unthinking defenders of the ‘ready, aye ready’ school of thought about Canada’s role toward the United States."  
 
Canadian warships in Arabian Sea
While until now the Canadian government had officially posed as undecided in its approach toward Iraq, the Canadian military already has two frigates, one destroyer and two patrol aircraft in the Arabian Sea. They are part of enforcing the imperialist embargo on Iraq and supporting the operations of U.S. aircraft carriers in the region.

The fact that Canada is a weaker imperialist power with limited military weight has fueled debate in the ruling class here on just how the Canadian government can defend its economic interests around the world and not get edged out even more by its imperialist competitors, especially the United States.

Some columnists in the capitalist media have argued that Ottawa’s military strength is "negligible" and that, rather than increasing its military capacity it should take a "soft power" approach by joining efforts in an imperialist-occupied Iraq in "nation building, the development of civic society, economic progress, democracy, the rule of law."

Others, like Vice-Admiral Ron Buck, commander of Canada’s navy, are waging a public campaign for increased military spending by Ottawa. Buck has called for improving Canada’s naval capacities to be able to "deploy a self-sufficient group of vessels almost anywhere around the world, without having to rely on foreign allies." Such an approach, Buck says, would offer the government "a wide variety of options when it comes to foreign missions."

In an October 30 column titled "Shaping the World the Canadian Way," the editors of Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, advised the Canadian government to take a more rounded approach. Boosting military spending is important because "a stronger Canadian military makes sense for more than just peacekeeping," they concluded. And "military might and good works are not mutually exclusive. Whatever the merits of a particular conflict, war must be followed by relief efforts and reconstruction." The message: let’s not get iced out of the booty.
 
 
Related articles:
Against Canadian imperialism  
 
 
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