News and views from SA Canada Canada eyes role in Syria conflict

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in Libya to impose a pro-Western government there, Canada’s Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Ottawa will not rule out military action in Syria. Speaking to the International Security Forum in Halifax on Nov. 20, MacKay postured as the defender of democratic forces suffering repression at the hands of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad.

But taken together with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s bellicose threat to take “necessary action” against Iran, amid media speculation about a possible preemptive Israeli-American strike at Iran’s nuclear power facilities, MacKay’s words help to form a differ­ ent picture.

It is the picture of expanding imperial intervention— designed to blunt and re-shape uprisings across the Arab world. It is the image of Western powers seek­ ing geo-political control over the world’s foremost oil patch.

The business media call it “sabre-rattling.” But such noises have led to bombing and military occupation. In 1999, CF-18s flew 684 combat sorties against Yu­ goslav forces, roughly 10 per cent of the NATO effort to make the Balkans safe for the restoration of private enterprise. More recently, in Libya, Ottawa flew 942 of NATO’s 9600 strike missions, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. Between those forays was the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, where over 900 Canadian sol­ diers continue to occupy, to kill, and to die.

Canada will keep warships in the Mediterranean Sea until the end of 2012, MacKay said. It deployed the frigate HMCS Vancouver as part of NATO’s Libya in­ tervention. After early 2012, HMCS Charlottetown will continue so-called “anti-terrorism” duties.

Certainly, former and present dictators, like Gadhafi and Assad, committed high crimes against workers and farmers, women and youths. Those dictators were in the good books of the Western powers when they imprisoned leftists and smashed unions, as are Wash­ ington and Ottawa’s current allies who rule Saudi Ara­ bia.

But imperialism is always on the prowl for more compliant regimes—ones that would be eager to dis­ mantle state enterprises and public services; ones that would happily sign “free trade” agreements with the vultures of Wall Street, Bay Street, and the City of Lon­ don.

The task of deposing dictators is the task of the peo­ ple suffering under them. The job of working people and progressive folks living in the rich countries is to stay the hand of foreign intervention, to disarm the war makers, and to demonstrate solidarity with those who fight for freedom and social justice. The famous advice of Karl Marx to the English working class on the Irish question bears repeating: No nation that op­ presses another can itself be free.

It is a message that must be driven home in the unions and the labour-based New Democratic Party to avoid another debacle, as when NDP MPs voted in 2011 to support bombing Libya. The Syrian and Ira­ nian test cases are coming soon. Canada, hands off! n not jail people for years when they have never been charged with a crime, unless they are seeking asylum. We do not jail people without providing access to legal counsel, unless they are seeking asylum. We do not categorically bar prisoners from seeking bail, unless of course they are seeking asylum. We do not jail the traumatized victims of political conflict, abuse, and poverty, unless they are seek­ ing asylum.”

Socialists demand an immediate with­ drawal of Bill C-4 and an end to Harper’s attacks on the rights of refugees.

UPDATE: Harper’s criminal justice re­ form bill, discussed in the September edi­ tion of Socialist Action (and which shares Bill C-4’s emphasis on incarceration), has drawn condemnation from two more em­ inent voices in Canada—the former Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Roy McMurtry, and the Canadian Bar Association. n