Madam Speaker, I have to say that it is a very interesting night listening to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and a former minister of external affairs and former prime minister debate the issue of Iraq.
When we talk about Iraq we are talking about a regime that is ruled by a brutal dictator. There is no question about that. He has victimized his people for all too many years. He is not alone in the world, unfortunately. There are quite a few of them. We can find them in North Korea and Libya. There can be questionable regimes in Syria and all over the world.
If that became the reason why we could take unilateral action against any member state, then the whole rationale for the United Nations would be undone. I agree with the position of our government that we want the legitimacy of the United Nations in taking any action against Iraq. Any unilateral action or action by just a couple of nations could be quite destructive to world order and quite destructive to the future.
It was about a year ago that we in the House debated the events of 9/11, which really shook everybody on the North American continent, particularly our friends in the United States. One of the remarkable things to come out of 9/11 was an unprecedented coalition that came together to fight terrorism.
It seems to me that by beating the drums of war Saddam Hussein replaces Osama bin Laden as world enemy number one. The more there is talk about the Americans taking unilateral action, the more the coalition, which has really been unprecedented, has been squandered.
Not until very recently have we seen the debate in the United States starting to take shape at the political level in the U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate. Questions are being raised about the wisdom of pursuing the policy of “either you are with us or you are against us.” I, for one, like many of my constituents, am very concerned that we have to make a black and white choice.
Unfortunately the world is not that simple. There are conditions that create people like Saddam Hussein. There are conditions that create people like Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein was a former ally of the United States in its war against Iran. Osama bin Laden was armed with weapons by the United States in terms of having him fight Soviet aggressions in Afghanistan.
The point I am making is that the United States took unilateral action in those cases. It made those decisions, but in the long term that did not serve their own security or our collective security very well.
When President George Bush Sr. engaged in Desert Storm, he did so with a coalition, and the former prime minister mentioned that. When I look at the present leadership in the United States, it is ironic that it is Colin Powell, the man with the military experience, the man who was a professional soldier, who is the one who is calling for multilateral action. He is calling for caution.
One of the issues that has disturbed many people in this modern warfare and the way we fight it is the incredible damage done to civilians. It is almost like war has become antiseptic. We fight from 50,000 feet up in the sky. Unfortunately the vast majority of victims are women and children. It was almost like when we were in the war in Kosovo. President Clinton stated, and it was his policy, that he could not stand to have any of the soldiers coming back in body bags the way that tens of thousands of body bags came back from Vietnam. It made it necessary that they could accept great losses on the ground but they could not accept significant losses of the military.
The people of Iraq have suffered greatly since Desert Storm. We all know that Saddam Hussein is not hurt by the sanctions. The people who are hurt by the sanctions are the women, the children, the people, the civilian population of Iraq. I think that is important to keep in mind.
I will go back to the Kosovo example. We could have reduced the amount of civilian casualties if we had been willing to engage the enemy on the ground, if we had been willing to roll in the tanks. We found the prospects of losses to the military totally unacceptable.
As we engage in peacekeeping, in peacemaking, now and in the future, I think we will have to place some value on the lives that are destroyed by the new age of antiseptic war that has been waged.
It is important for us as a country. We are a soft power. We are not like the Americans, who are very powerful. I think the Minister of National Defence put it very well when he said that unilateral power is a power-based system, whereas a multilateral, rules-based system is for those countries that are collectively, not individually, strong.
As we face the challenge before us, we have to look down the road and take note. How do we conduct a regime change so we do not unsettle a whole region? One way to do it is to make sure that the people of the region are onside, that the other countries of the region are onside. I submit that we have a much better chance of doing that if we look to a multilateral resolution versus unilateral, trilateral or bilateral action on this issue.
I hope that the debate going on in the United States right now is going to lead to a multilateral approach under the umbrella and the legitimacy of the United Nations.