2003-03-18

The Americans like to brag about how their free press makes them the best-informed nation in the world. One has to wonder then about the small group of Americans who jeered at the International Women's Day participants who called for peace. It appears that a free press is not sufficient to prevent ignorance.

The Americans apparently believe that there is some link between Saddam Hussein's secular Sunni dominated government in Iraq and the fundamentalist Shiite Al Qaeda who are blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks. Such a link only exists to the extent that all the participants are from the same general geographic area, an area that is dominated by one particular religion. The current American stance would be akin to declaring war on Spain after the sinking of the Lusitania.

As Linda Mcquaig so cogently points out, the war is largely about oil. However, I believe it is also about distracting attention from the failure of the campaign in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, all that seems to have been accomplished is that one group of murderous, misogynist bullies has been replaced by another.

Despite the occasional arrests of the latest "Al Qaeda mastermind", I see no evidence that the world is a safer place as a result of that regime change. Nor apparently has the lot of women improved. What the IWD participants know, and what the American hecklers do not seem to understand, is that you do not change people's attitudes by bombing them back to the Stone Age.

A new war in Iraq will almost certainly do exactly what the Afghanistan campaign has done. It will kill, maim, and impoverish. It will destroy the nation's infrastructure. And it will fuel another generation of hatred against the nation killed it's fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children...

Gary Dale, Provincial NDP Candidate
Scarborough East