Mr. Speaker, the first victim in war is the truth. How long do we sit around and watch people rewrite history, history that we have all experienced and seen, in order to justify what is happening in the Middle East, to justify the actions of Israel and to justify the impending actions of the United States?
The “let's bomb Iraq” press is becoming like the National Enquirer . Propagandists are busy winning the war on words. We are dreaming up scenarios to portray the white hats and the black hats. Of course the black hats are the scuds and the axis of evil, short of Darth Vader, while we white hats, when we kill people, we call it collateral damage. We use patriot missiles and we have smart bombs. Better that we had smart politicians with smart advisers.
Books written recently on Islam and Jihad are so vile with misinformation that had the authors written them about any other sect they would be subjected to serious legal action. Yet those of us who know better are reluctant to speak out lest we be accused of supporting terrorism.
May I point out to the House that the only two countries that have consistently fought al-Qaeda are Iran and Russia. It appears that Iran will be the next target. Al-Qaeda was financed to fight the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Two years ago we really did not care much about how the Taliban treated its own people. The hypocrisy that the western world is going through today is a disgrace. Perhaps we in the western world should reread Frankenstein . When we create a monster it is sure to turn around and bite us.
But let us stick to Iraq. Prior to the star wars of 1991, Iraq was a country like all others in the Middle East under a dictatorship. However, it was a progressive country with health care for all and education and human rights for women, which is far more advanced than other friendly Middle Eastern countries. It was a secular state offering a relative degree of equality for all its citizens. That is not to say that I support Saddam Hussein.
We left Iraq completely destroyed. We took out its power facilities and its water purification plants and left its people in conditions which were far worse than conditions of 50 years ago. Reports of barefoot, unarmed returning Iraqi soldiers being killed have been published. Buried or not, these reports will return to shame us in the eyes of future generations. That was not enough. We imposed total sanctions against the people while a UN search team searched for six years for weapons of mass destruction and destroyed traces of those weapons.
We all stand and condemn human rights abuses around the world, but the human rights abuses that occurred as a result of UN sanctions were far more vile and hideous than they were anywhere else. We left one million children dead.
These sanctions were stringent. People were not allowed to have syringes or hardware to build water purification plants. They were allowed no shampoo for lice and no pencils that contained lead. UN workers quit in protest. In Canada, an all-party committee voted unanimously to take the position of promoting the de-linking of sanctions to allow the necessities for survival to be allowed into the country.
However, there were others in the world. Tony Blair and Madeleine Albright argued that these sanctions were working but were not sanctions against the people, that they were working and stopping Saddam Hussein. Today they say they did not work because, in spite of the sanctions, Tony Blair claims that weapons of mass destruction are being amassed as we speak here tonight.
Tony Blair's report is another non-proof document, yet if his speculation is correct then we have killed a million children for nothing. I am going to read from Robert Fisk. He states:
Here is one example of the dishonesty of this “dossier”. On page 45, we are told--in a long chapter, about Saddam's human rights abuses--that “on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots (sic) broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands”. What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie...in the use of the word 'riots'. These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jnr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia. The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr. Bush Snr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair “dossier” tells us.
Americans are not unanimous in their lust for war. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark sent a letter to the UN. One point which he asserts, and which I believe our minister believes as well, is this:
- George Bush is Leading the United States and Taking the UN and All Nations Toward a Lawless World of Endless Wars.
George Bush in his “War on Terrorism” has asserted his right to attack any country, organization, or people first, without warning in his sole discretion. He and members of his administration have proclaimed the old restraints that law sought to impose on aggression by governments and repression of their people, no longer consistent with national security.
This is a dangerous, dangerous precedent.
I was very proud of my Prime Minister at the United Nations. I am very proud of the position that our Minister of Foreign Affairs has taken. Canada has a role to play. I know that the minister believes that the UN is doing the negotiating with the United States. However, I believe that we are in a very special position because we are their friends, they are our friends, and I think that we have a position where we can be an honest broker in solving some of the problems.
I had heard tonight, just before coming, that the UN has not accepted the U.S. resolution. It says it will not work. I hope that early tomorrow morning our minister will be on the phone talking with Washington.
Finally, I would like to end tonight by telling everyone in this room that each and every one of us, before we come to any conclusions about going to war against any people, should have a jihad of our very own. A jihad is a religious or spiritual struggle in which we must conquer the evil and good within ourselves. Any other use of that word is incorrect.
My apologies go to all of our Muslim Canadians who have suffered under the propaganda that we are building up to justify this war. I say to them to hang in there, because I am sure that Canada will do right by them.
