Mr. Speaker, I want to echo the sentiments of a number of speakers this evening and last evening in recognizing the importance of the opportunity we have been given to debate this issue around the current situation in Iraq and the response that the international community should have to that situation.
Let me begin by saying that I have sat in the House both evenings and have been very concerned about some of the rhetoric that has taken place in the House, of which we have heard more this evening, some of which is out there in the world. There is just way too much willingness to talk about war and the use of war.
If we truly believe that human life is sacred, then the decision to wage war must be made only as an absolute last resort. It is not something to be played with.
I suggest that members of the House should think about what they are saying when they advocate the use of war. They should listen to themselves. They said the same things when the U.S. went into Vietnam.
Let us talk about both of those situations, not just the second world war but the mess that the west ended up in because of what the U.S. did in Vietnam. Let us talk specifically about the gulf war in which 100,000 people died, 35,000 of whom were civilians.
Since the gulf war, sanctions that were imposed after the war have resulted in somewhere between a half a million and a million civilians dying in Iraq from starvation and the lack of medicine. We cannot fall into that trap.
Some of the comments we have heard from Nelson Mandela have been very interesting and very educational. This is a man who has every right to be bitter at the way his country treated him. I think it is very important that we listen to some of the comments he has made. He has directed these comments to the United States specifically and, more generally I believe, to the west. He has talked about how appalled he was with the talk and the rhetoric about the invasion of independent countries. He has accused the U.S. of being the greatest threat to stability and security.
Those are harsh words and, quite frankly, they may not be totally fair, but it is a signal from that great man, who we honoured here just a year ago, that again we should be careful about how we speak about the use of war and how we act when we head down that road.
I want to speak specifically about the consequences of the invasion of Iraq. I had a very personal experience in this regard. This past summer while the House was in recess I had the opportunity to attend a banquet where the local Chaldean Church was being dedicated. It is the first one in Canada. The Chaldean sect is from Iraq, mainly centred in Baghdad.
I sat that evening with the bishop of that church, who told me about his experiences in the gulf war and about being in Baghdad one evening when the bombing was going on. He was in his church when several bombs fell nearby, destroying buildings and, of course more important, killing many of his neighbours and close friends who lived in the neighbourhood. He then explained the type of work that church has been doing in Baghdad to deal with the sanctions and told me about the number of people they are feeding. He finished by giving me what I think was a caution about what he felt would happen to those women, men and children they were feeding if Baghdad were bombed again. It was very personal.
We have to stop and think. What role does Canada have to play? In some of the speeches we have heard that gung-ho, macho attitude of “let us get in there and support whoever the allies are”, whether it is the U.S. by itself or with England. It is a joke. It is easy for us as parliamentarians in Canada to talk that way because we know we have very little capability in terms of deploying military power. That is a shame. We have to correct it, but that is the reality of what we have now.
It is easy to talk that way when we know there is hardly anything we can do about it. But what we can do, as we have so often in the past, as our diplomats and leaders historically have so often done, is seek out diplomatic, creative solutions to those types of world problems that Iraq now represents for us. I listened to some of the speeches in which parliamentarians suggested that there is no other choice, that we all know what Saddam Hussein is and there is only one thing we can do. I could not help but think that this lack of hope, this lack of creativity in how to deal with that monster, is not in keeping with the Canadian tradition.
I thought about another hot spot in another country, Sri Lanka. As recently as a few months ago, people were saying the same thing about that country, that there was nothing we could do and no solution, that we would have to use some type of military force. In fact, Norway, in its peacekeeping efforts, just kept plugging away at it using whatever diplomatic suasion it could. To give Canada its due, we have been in there too. There have been 60,000 people killed there in the last 20 years and that issue now appears to be resolving itself without further violence.
There are times when we can use creative thinking and creative action to solve those problems short of war. That is what we must do now. We must rely on the rule of law. We must allow those inspectors to get into Baghdad, to get into Iraq and to do their jobs. The talk of war must cease until we see those results. We must not demean their work, as I have heard many speakers do, but let them do the jobs that they know how to do. Only then do we decide what further steps may be necessary in order to deal with the issues that confront us from Iraq.
Again, we have to tone down the rhetoric. We have to let the rule of law apply. We have to let Canadian diplomacy work creatively and, hopefully, for the sake of the world, successfully.