[api] Stephanie Nolen: "What's the matter with you Canadians?"
Russil Wvong
asking, "What's the matter with you Canadians?" "Why is your country
not allied with the United States?" "Do you support Saddam?"
Russil
--
Destination Baghdad
By STEPHANIE NOLEN
The Toronto Globe and Mail
Saturday, March 22, 2003 - Page F1
SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ -- 'Canadian."
The word rippled through the crowd, repeated from man to man. "She's a
Canadian." And so one man stepped forward to ask me what they all
wanted to know: "What's the matter with you Canadians?"
I have faced this question over and over again, reporting in the
Kurdish autonomous zone of northern Iraq for the past six weeks: "Why
is your country not allied with the United States? Why does your Prime
Minister speak against the war? Do you support Saddam?"
The questions came again this week, when I interviewed a crowd of
young men who had just crossed the border from the territory
controlled by Saddam Hussein, into Kurdistan. They were fleeing their
homes in Kerkuk, where, they said, the Iraqi army was rounding up all
the young men and press-ganging them into military service on the eve
of the war.
I began a conversation with two of them, and soon a small crowd of the
curious had gathered. One man leaned in to ask my translator where I
was from.
Canada? No smiles of welcome here.
Even the smallest mud-brick hovel in Kurdistan has a satellite dish,
and the Kurds followed every development in the buildup to war with
ferocious attention. From reports on the BBC, they know the Canadian
stance on the war, and it is sharply at odds with their image of
Canada as a just, democratic country. Refugees in a muddy camp, the
prosperous bazaari who sold me a generator, the boys at the border --
everyone wants to tell me what they think of doveish Canada.
"We are angry with Canada for not supporting us, like France is not,"
said Taha Ali, a 25-year-old English teacher who lives in a camp for
displaced Kurds near the border. "The whole world should like the
United States and their decision. Because we have suffered a great
deal, many atrocities, and we need a solution."
For the Kurds, it is a straightforward equation: Saddam is a genocidal
madman, he won't go without a fight, and they cannot overthrow him
themselves. The United States has finally stepped up to the
plate. Nobody expected the Canadian army to liberate Baghdad -- but to
oppose the war? That's too much.
It leaves me in an unusual position. I have reported from more than 30
countries, most of them in the developing world, and there is a
consistent set of responses when people learn I am Canadian. There is
"I have a brother in Calgary" or "a cousin in Mississauga -- maybe you
know her?" There is the tacit nod of gratitude, from people whose
schools or clinics or food rations come courtesy of the people of
Canada. And the most common response, of course, is: "You must tell
me, how can I get a visa?"
But I have never before been repeatedly called upon to defend Canadian
foreign policy. The Kurds who ask, "What's the matter with Canada?"
are genuinely seeking an explanation, and so it falls to me to attempt
to speak for the country -- to summarize a complicated political
debate, an issue on which Canadians are divided.
My explanation, made with a lot of hand gestures and the help of my
translator, Sarteep (who could probably give the spiel himself by
now), goes something like this: The people of Canada understand that
Saddam Hussein is a dictator, and that the Kurdish people, like many
other Iraqis, have suffered terribly under his regime. We are not
saying they should be condemned to endure his rule.
What we object to is unilateral action by the United States. We
believe that if the Americans are allowed to decide today that
Mr. Hussein must go, they may decide next week that it should be the
leader of another country -- perhaps it will be Canada who annoys
them, because we will not give them cheap access to our forests or our
water.
Canadians do believe that action should be taken against Saddam, I
say, but for the sake of every other nation, it must be done through
the United Nations. "What if," I ask, "they oust Saddam, and you elect
a new leader, but the United States decides they don't like him
either?"
Most of the time, the Kurds meet my explanation with nods. "It's true
what you say," Mr. Ali said. "But nothing was done to get rid of
Saddam through the United Nations before."
These moments, of being held accountable for the West's disinterest in
Kurdish pain, are always discomfiting. The most powerful stories I
have heard here were told to me in Halabja, by survivors of
Mr. Hussein's gas attack on the town. Five thousand people died on
March 16, 1988, and thousands more suffered cancers, respiratory
ailments and birth defects.
Every time I thanked a survivor in Halabja for telling me their
difficult story of that day, they replied, with dignity, "You're
welcome. But better you should have come before. Where were you in
1988? Where have you been all the years we have suffered under
Saddam?"
bearcat
> said Taha Ali, a 25-year-old English teacher who lives in a camp for
> displaced Kurds near the border. "The whole world should like the
> United States and their decision. Because we have suffered a great
> deal, many atrocities, and we need a solution."
And that is a claim on the lives of Canadian servicemen?
djinn
news:aBXfa.364$r91...@news01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net:
Hi bearcat, I see you've settled in. :)
I took it as the Kurds were just saying that Canada should support the US
diplomatically, not asking for Canadian participation in the war.
bearcat
"djinn" <qinji...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9349C97...@130.133.1.4...
Yeah, this group is outstanding! Thanks!
My responses here and elsewhere were written in a somewhat bad mood, ha ha,
so I'm sure you're right.
I am unfortunately not that impressed with most arguments on either side
concerning the war. I'm against it for two main reasons:
1. In an era of rapidly increasing terrorism, the decision to initiate a
war without broad international support further endangers the lives of all
Americans. The appearance of the United States as a rogue state invading an
Islamic nation will only exacerbate the tensions between the United States
and the Islamic world.
2. In a broader context, the current animosity between the United States
and the Islamic world rests almost wholly on the former's unwavering and
almost completely uncritical of Israel and its policies. While it is not
always possible for even a well-intentioned national policy to avoid the
creation of enemies, the most relevant factor is that supporting Israel is
not and has not been in the interests of the United States. In fact, the
cost of our support has been staggering.
For the most part, I thought Bush's handling of the War in Afghanistan was
good, and prior to this I was not overly critical of him as a President.
But our current entanglement in Iraq is probably our most foolhardy venture
in decades, and one that puts American civilians at an unprecedented risk.
djinn
news:Jigga.364$1K....@news01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net:
>
> "djinn" <qinji...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns9349C97...@130.133.1.4...
>> "bearcat" <bea...@nomail.com> wrote in
>> news:aBXfa.364$r91...@news01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net:
>>
>> >> "We are angry with Canada for not supporting us, like France is
>> >> not," said Taha Ali, a 25-year-old English teacher who lives in a
>> >> camp for displaced Kurds near the border. "The whole world should
>> >> like the United States and their decision. Because we have
>> >> suffered a great deal, many atrocities, and we need a solution."
>> >
>> > And that is a claim on the lives of Canadian servicemen?
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Hi bearcat, I see you've settled in. :)
>>
>>
>> I took it as the Kurds were just saying that Canada should support
>> the US diplomatically, not asking for Canadian participation in the
>> war.
>
> Yeah, this group is outstanding! Thanks!
>
> My responses here and elsewhere were written in a somewhat bad mood,
> ha ha, so I'm sure you're right.
>
> I am unfortunately not that impressed with most arguments on either
> side concerning the war. I'm against it for two main reasons:
>
I was pretty much against the war, up until shooting started. Now I think
anything other than complete victory will be disastrous. A complete victory
meaning Saddam gone, his government dismantled and some sort of
representative government in place.
> 1. In an era of rapidly increasing terrorism, the decision to
> initiate a war without broad international support further endangers
> the lives of all Americans. The appearance of the United States as a
> rogue state invading an Islamic nation will only exacerbate the
> tensions between the United States and the Islamic world.
>
> 2. In a broader context, the current animosity between the United
> States and the Islamic world rests almost wholly on the former's
> unwavering and almost completely uncritical of Israel and its
> policies. While it is not always possible for even a well-intentioned
> national policy to avoid the creation of enemies, the most relevant
> factor is that supporting Israel is not and has not been in the
> interests of the United States. In fact, the cost of our support has
> been staggering.
>
The problem there seems to be finding any solution to the current
situation. The US can restrain Israel to some extent, but who restrains the
Arabs?
Maybe if Iraq attains some semblance of democracy it can lead a movement
toward a negociated settlement.
> For the most part, I thought Bush's handling of the War in Afghanistan
> was good, and prior to this I was not overly critical of him as a
> President. But our current entanglement in Iraq is probably our most
> foolhardy venture in decades, and one that puts American civilians at
> an unprecedented risk.
>
>
Yeah, it would be nice if we had some idea of the goal in this war.
Russil Wvong
> 1. In an era of rapidly increasing terrorism, the decision to initiate a
> war without broad international support further endangers the lives of all
> Americans. The appearance of the United States as a rogue state invading an
> Islamic nation will only exacerbate the tensions between the United States
> and the Islamic world.
I can't disagree with that. The fact that the US wasn't able to get
UNSC authorization for war will make it impossible for people in the
Arab and Muslim world to accept the war as legitimate, no matter how
many UNSC resolutions Saddam Hussein has defied. The fact that in
the last two years the Bush administration has demonstrated its low
regard for international law hasn't helped.
> 2. In a broader context, the current animosity between the United States
> and the Islamic world rests almost wholly on the former's unwavering and
> almost completely uncritical of Israel and its policies.
That's certainly one of two major sources of Arab and Muslim animosity
towards the US (and I agree that the US should be putting much more
pressure on Sharon to halt the settlements and to settle the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict). But there's one other major source:
the sanctions against Iraq for the last 12 years, and the resulting
suffering of the Iraqi people. The sanctions were supposed to be
temporary, and they might have been justifiable for a few months --
things didn't get really bad for the first few months -- but not for
*12 years*.
I think what it boils down to is this. If Saddam Hussein's not
willing to disarm, and if the stability of the region is a vital
interest of the US and its allies -- i.e. you don't want the guy
who set the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire to have nukes -- the US
basically had two options, both bad: (1) continue the sanctions,
which have been a humanitarian and political disaster, or
(2) go to war. The question is, which option would be the
least bad?
Personally, I think war was the least bad option. Michael Walzer
argues that because war is so destructive and uncertain, it'd have
been better to continue the sanctions, terrible though they are;
although I disagree, I respect his opinion.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16110
The next question is, even if war is the least bad option, why now?
Saddam isn't likely to have nuclear weapons (which are much more
dangerous than chemical and biological weapons) for a few years,
and he may be assassinated or weakened for some other reason in
the meantime; why not wait?
Here the problem is that invading Iraq requires the tacit cooperation
of Iraq's neighbors, notably Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.
They've already gone way out on a limb, and they're not going to be
willing to do it again. So it's now or never.
A third question is, why the US? If Saddam Hussein is a regional
threat, why does the US need to get involved? Why not let the
regional players handle it? (As Andrew Northrup put it, the US
isn't the world's mother, responsible for cleaning up everyone's
messes.)
I think that'd certainly be preferable; in general, regional threats
should be dealt with by countries in the region, not by the US. But
I don't think anybody else has the military power to take on Iraq.
A better diplomatic posture would have been for the US to keep its
head down and get somebody else to take the lead in pushing for war
(maybe Britain, maybe Kuwait, maybe the GCC). Then the US would be
in the position of offering to help solve somebody else's problem,
rather than pushing for war against the opposition of pretty much
everybody else. But it's too late now.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
bearcat
This is a really fine group you started, and I hope to be much more active
in the future. Right now, I'm caught up in a ton of work, and I'm trying to
forego Internet fora for a while. :-) I will try to respond to this part at
least, and maybe some others will pick up the ball. While I have some
strong disagreements with your position, I don't think it boils down to some
fundamentally different approach, just differing interpretations, and I
respect your input.
What is rather saddening, I think, is that the most common political
perspectives one could depend on for criticism of the war have very little
credibility in the eyes of most people. I find this war to be unusually
gratuitous and untimely, but aside from the size of the demonstrations, I
don't think the political left has much that's all that new to say
concerning it. In their analysis, every conflict the West ever enters is
some sterling example of imperialism (often unprecedented), a series of war
crimes in the eyes of the world, the United States and others acting as
rogue states and so forth, ad nauseum. The cries of wolf from traditional
critics masks the fact that this war is just phenomenally stupid...
This stupidity is unfortunate, as I thought Afghanistan was handled as well
as could be expected by the current administration...in fact, better than I
would have expected from most US administrations of the past few decades.
"Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:afe9ed76.03032...@posting.google.com...
While that is a good point, I can't help but note that the Arab & Islamic
perception of the United States actions towards Iraq would probably not have
nearly the same slant if the US was not generally perceived as hostile to
Islam through its support of Israel. Certainly, most of the region dislikes
Hussein, and that is a strong card to play in trying to maintain relations
with the rest of the Islamic world.
Now also, weren't many of the effects of sanctions against Iraq greatly
exacerbated by Hussein's greed? I'm sure you know more about this topic
than I do.
>
> I think what it boils down to is this. If Saddam Hussein's not
> willing to disarm, and if the stability of the region is a vital
> interest of the US and its allies -- i.e. you don't want the guy
> who set the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire to have nukes -- the US
> basically had two options, both bad: (1) continue the sanctions,
> which have been a humanitarian and political disaster, or
> (2) go to war. The question is, which option would be the
> least bad?
We are sadly entering a world where building WMD will be child's play. If
technology progresses at its current pace, many of the world's nations will
have them in the next two or three decades, or the capability of creating
them with little effort.
That is reality, and one that the United States and the world has to face.
It is also a reality that requires considerable subtlety and foresight in
diplomatic issues, as well as problem-solving on new levels. What it
_doesn't_ dictate is exactly what we are doing now: trying to overwhelm
other nations with conventional warfare.
If our foreign policy consists in trying to prevent any nations that could
be perceived as hostile to the United States from having WMD by invading
them, we will never win. And sadly, Americans and Westerners will become
increasingly targeted.
>
> Personally, I think war was the least bad option. Michael Walzer
> argues that because war is so destructive and uncertain, it'd have
> been better to continue the sanctions, terrible though they are;
> although I disagree, I respect his opinion.
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16110
>
> The next question is, even if war is the least bad option, why now?
> Saddam isn't likely to have nuclear weapons (which are much more
> dangerous than chemical and biological weapons) for a few years,
> and he may be assassinated or weakened for some other reason in
> the meantime; why not wait?
>
> Here the problem is that invading Iraq requires the tacit cooperation
> of Iraq's neighbors, notably Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.
> They've already gone way out on a limb, and they're not going to be
> willing to do it again. So it's now or never.
I have no idea what this means. What was so bizarre about the whole affair
with Iraq was that it appeared to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, Iraq's
capacity to create WMD became the foundation for a new crusade. It was so
sudden that I assumed Bush had privileged information concerning Hussein's
intentions or recent successes. But if that were the case, we could have at
least shared our information with the French and other allies who opposed
this war. If there was privileged information, it didn't appear to impress
the French, the Russians, the Germans, and some others that we would
conceivably have shared it with.
Diplomacy would have dictated a slow build-up of tensions rather than an
invasion that appears off-the-cuff. We could have made every effort to
appease the objections of the French, the Russians, and so forth, and waited
until next fall for more serious military action if needed. In failing to
exhaust diplomatic channels, we have done nothing to solidify our position
with allies like Saudi Arabia.
>
> A third question is, why the US? If Saddam Hussein is a regional
> threat, why does the US need to get involved? Why not let the
> regional players handle it? (As Andrew Northrup put it, the US
> isn't the world's mother, responsible for cleaning up everyone's
> messes.)
>
> I think that'd certainly be preferable; in general, regional threats
> should be dealt with by countries in the region, not by the US. But
> I don't think anybody else has the military power to take on Iraq.
This is mostly true, although I think, and this is very conjectural, that
every effort should have been made to groom a government in waiting for the
future of Iraq that would have been broadly acceptable. The big question
mark of a post-Hussein Iraq is another reason for objections from Islamic
nations, and they have every reason to be concerned.
>
> A better diplomatic posture would have been for the US to keep its
> head down and get somebody else to take the lead in pushing for war
> (maybe Britain, maybe Kuwait, maybe the GCC). Then the US would be
> in the position of offering to help solve somebody else's problem,
> rather than pushing for war against the opposition of pretty much
> everybody else. But it's too late now.
Yes, although I don't really see what would be in it for the British. I
don't know enough about the power-relations of the area to know who would be
good candidates, other than Kuwait and possibly Saudi Arabia.
bearcat
> "bearcat" <bea...@nomail.com> wrote in
> >
> > I am unfortunately not that impressed with most arguments on either
> > side concerning the war. I'm against it for two main reasons:
> >
> I was pretty much against the war, up until shooting started. Now I think
> anything other than complete victory will be disastrous. A complete
victory
> meaning Saddam gone, his government dismantled and some sort of
> representative government in place.
And I hope they actually find something incriminating; something so
significant in size and scope, such as an underground warehouse or factory
or lab, that it won't look like a "plant."
Due to work considerations, I will be taking a breather from posting for
awhile, but I will try to keep up with this fine group. Best to you... :-)
Russil Wvong
> This is a really fine group you started, and I hope to be much more
> active in the future.
Thanks! I know what you mean about work -- the nice thing about
Usenet groups is that they run themselves, more or less. :-)
> What is rather saddening, I think, is that the most common political
> perspectives one could depend on for criticism of the war have very little
> credibility in the eyes of most people. I find this war to be unusually
> gratuitous and untimely, but aside from the size of the demonstrations, I
> don't think the political left has much that's all that new to say
> concerning it. In their analysis, every conflict the West ever enters is
> some sterling example of imperialism (often unprecedented), a series of war
> crimes in the eyes of the world, the United States and others acting as
> rogue states and so forth, ad nauseum. The cries of wolf from traditional
> critics masks the fact that this war is just phenomenally stupid...
Hmm.
When you say the "political left", I assume you mean the radical left.
Michael Walzer is certainly a credible voice on the left, and he
opposed the war, although reluctantly.
> While that is a good point, I can't help but note that the Arab & Islamic
> perception of the United States actions towards Iraq would probably not have
> nearly the same slant if the US was not generally perceived as hostile to
> Islam through its support of Israel. Certainly, most of the region dislikes
> Hussein, and that is a strong card to play in trying to maintain relations
> with the rest of the Islamic world.
People may dislike Saddam Hussein, but that doesn't justify the suffering
of the Iraqi people. I think that's pretty much independent of US support
for Israel.
Note that this took time to develop. In 1991, after the Gulf War, Arab
views of the US were moderately favorable; after all, the US had just
freed Kuwait and protected Saudi Arabia. Not only that, the US was
strongly backing the Oslo peace process.
But by 1995, Saddam Hussein was able to intervene in fighting between
Kurdish groups (he invaded the northern no-fly zone) without the US
being able to respond -- they couldn't get approval from Saudi Arabia,
which hosted US bases. After that, Saddam knew that he could pretty
much stop pretending to cooperate with UNSCOM and the US wouldn't be
able to respond. The US's last shot was Operation Desert Fox in 1998, a
four-day bombing of suspected WMD sites; the Clinton administration
was opposed by France, Russia, and China.
> Now also, weren't many of the effects of sanctions against Iraq greatly
> exacerbated by Hussein's greed? I'm sure you know more about this topic
> than I do.
It wasn't so much his greed as his willingness to sacrifice Iraqis
for political effect. The US assumed that he would give up his WMD,
and they also assumed that he wouldn't survive his stunning defeat
in the Gulf War. They were wrong on both counts. Conversely,
Saddam Hussein was also assuming that he would be able to fool
UNSCOM and that the sanctions would be lifted fairly quickly. Also
wrong. Iraqi civilians have been caught in the middle.
In August 1991, the UN Security Council offered to allow Iraq to
sell oil for food to relieve the suffering of Iraqi civilians, but
Saddam Hussein refused to accept it until December 1996. The worst
suffering happened during this period.
> > I think what it boils down to is this. If Saddam Hussein's not
> > willing to disarm, and if the stability of the region is a vital
> > interest of the US and its allies -- i.e. you don't want the guy
> > who set the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire to have nukes -- the US
> > basically had two options, both bad: (1) continue the sanctions,
> > which have been a humanitarian and political disaster, or
> > (2) go to war. The question is, which option would be the
> > least bad?
>
> We are sadly entering a world where building WMD will be child's play. If
> technology progresses at its current pace, many of the world's nations will
> have them in the next two or three decades, or the capability of creating
> them with little effort.
We're already in this world; there's currently 44 nuclear-capable
countries (listed in the CTBT). Nuclear anti-proliferation efforts
have actually been pretty successful so far. Frankly, nuclear weapons
are pretty useless, because it's suicidal to use them. They're primarily
useful as a deterrent: if you have nuclear weapons, potential adversaries
will hesitate to attack you. They tend to freeze the geographic status
quo.
What makes Saddam Hussein a special case is that (a) he wants to
overthrow the status quo in the Middle East, and (b) he has a strong
tendency toward wishful thinking (which makes him difficult to deal
with, since he's willing to take aggressive risks). If he had nuclear
weapons, I think the situation would be extremely dangerous.
So you're right, invading countries to prevent them from acquiring
nuclear weapons isn't a general solution; in some cases it may
simply make things worse. But in this case, it's pretty clear to
me that it'd be a major disaster if Saddam acquired nuclear weapons,
and there's no way to convince him not to do so, short of invasion.
(Kenneth Pollack discusses other measures in "The Threatening Storm" --
assassination, a coup, etc. -- but concludes they're not feasible,
because Saddam Hussein has very good internal security.)
In particular, sanctions have worked for the last 12 years, but they're
breaking down, because they're seen as illegitimate. Oil smuggling has
risen to the point where Iraq's neighbors are economically dependent
on it; that gives Saddam Hussein a couple billion dollars in revenue
each year that the UN can't track.
> > [Why now?]
> > Here the problem is that invading Iraq requires the tacit cooperation
> > of Iraq's neighbors, notably Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.
> > They've already gone way out on a limb, and they're not going to be
> > willing to do it again. So it's now or never.
>
> I have no idea what this means.
The US is invading from bases in Kuwait. They have bases in Saudi Arabia.
They have troops in Jordan. They've been moving ships through the Suez
Canal. In other words, Iraq's neighboring governments are cooperating
with the US. But they're taking a huge amount of political heat from
their people, because they're seen as supporting an attack on the Iraqi
people.
If instead of going ahead the US had said, well, we've changed our minds,
we'll let Iraq sit for another couple of years, Iraq's neighbors would
have concluded that they couldn't rely on the US. They certainly wouldn't
go out on a limb again in the future. Which means that the US wouldn't
be able to invade in the future. That would no longer be an option.
From the point of view of Iraq's neighbors, if the US was going to
invade, the sooner the better; they can't keep the lid on forever.
> What was so bizarre about the whole affair
> with Iraq was that it appeared to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, Iraq's
> capacity to create WMD became the foundation for a new crusade.
The problem's been there for a long, long time, and it's been getting
worse and worse over time; people just weren't paying much attention
to it. There's a group of hawks who have been arguing for war with
Iraq for a long time; after 9/11, they got much more visibility. I
think there's three reasons for this.
1. After 9/11, the US was simply much more willing to go to war, period.
2. The hawks think that Iraq was behind the 1993 attack on the WTC,
and immediately after 9/11, they thought there was a good chance
Iraq was also behind the 9/11 attack. (As far as I can tell,
there isn't any evidence.)
3. After 9/11, the Bush administration has a strong personal interest
in preventing the transfer of WMD to terrorists: they don't want
DC to get nuked.
> Diplomacy would have dictated a slow build-up of tensions rather than an
> invasion that appears off-the-cuff.
Bush actually waited from January 2002 to March 2003 before pulling the
trigger. (The hawks were pushing for war with Iraq immediately after
9/11.) But he still looked like a trigger-happy cowboy. Frankly,
maybe next time the US should elect somebody who isn't from Texas.