I heard the news today…. I caught the CBC news this morning (Thursday, October 13, 2016) as the French Prime Minister and Canada’s PM were talking to the media. From the little bit I caught – a bit that makes for a good sound bite – it appears that Canada, under the guise of ’peacekeeping’ will be sending some 600 military personnel abroad.
I use the word ‘guise’ carefully, as the so called “right to protect” doctrine has been seriously discredited by mostly U.S. actions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Honduras among the ones that I recall at this moment. But ‘peacekeeping’ is also a guise, as there is no peace to keep in today’s world, only “terror wars” of various disguises (same root) used to promote U.S./western interests in regions of the world not under their control (yet) nor obligingly sycophantic enough to remain untouched by covert or overt military action.
These announcements this morning reflect earlier statements from the government wherein “Sajjan himself has said Africa hasn’t gotten “the right amount of attention” in recent years.” Canada’s representative to the UN, Marc Andre Blanchard, indicated at that time, “while the road ahead might be dangerous for Canadian troops, the country has an obligation to intervene to prevent the violence from reaching our shores.”
But, Blanchard (and thus the Trudeau liberals) have not given up on the discredited “right to protect” (R2P) saying, “The mandates are multifaceted [but] there are things Canada has been a strong proponent of … the right to allow UN forces to protect citizens rather than just maintain peace and the status quo.” [1]
Wonderful, now Canada is taking a stab at the discredited, dishonoured R2P slogan. Blanchard’s rationale for peacekeeping/R2P is “Peacekeeping is very different than it was 25 years ago. It’s all about mitigating the consequences of conflict.” It has also adopted the idiotic U.SA. meme that we must stop violence from reaching our shores…as if sending our own troops overseas is not exporting more violence to other countries. So rather than just maintain the status quo, we are now taking the role of wanting to change things for our own pursuits and interests, much the same as with the U.S. interests, but also with interests with our own corporations mostly involved with mineral exploitation of African resources. [2]
Mitigating consequences
It is correct, peacekeeping is different, as their is no peace to keep, no treaties signed, no truces, nothing like the Treaty of Guarantee in Cyprus for which Canada did play a significant peacekeeping role; or nothing like the armistice in Korea that has been in place until a “final peaceful settlement” can be achieved where Canada has not played a role in the meantime.
Rather, we have the record of unsuccessful interventions that have not only not prevented “mitigating circumstance” but have always aggravated circumstances, leaving behind hundreds of thousand of dead and injured citizens of the “mitigated” countries as well as wasting a small portion of our own citizens lives.
In Afghanistan, now one third under the control of the Taliban, with other portions now dealing with ISIS, and the government only able to control Kabul and only parts of that city, Canada essentially wasted 158 military lives for nothing. For Libya, our glorious military was honoured by the militant Stephen Harper in the Senate Chambers (appropriate, given the depraved nature of Senatorial behaviour) for leaving behind a destroyed country, with many civilian deaths, ongoing fighting between different factions, and a hotbed of training and equipping for terrorists.
USA! USA!!
Canada essentially has no independent foreign policy. Generally we have followed U.S. interests and actions around the world, understandable as our economy has been seconded to that of the U.S. The Liberal government, while speaking in gentler terms than the Harper militants, is following the same course. We are supporting the neonazi/oligarch government in Ukraine, established through a not so covert U.S. series of actions. Along with that goes all the hubris and rhetoric demonizing Putin as every empire requires an evil ‘other’ to rally the masses against.
We are ostensibly fighting against ISIS in Iraq, but that war represents a summation of U.S. errors and aggravating circumstances, from the mujahideen “freedom fighters” of the Reagan era, through the Taliban sprouting from that, on to the more violent al-Qaeda, which later morphed into the Bush era al-Qaeda in Iraq and the declared Islamic State of Iraq, which with al-Nusra, developed into the Obama era ISIS caliphate that now exists (tentatively) in the Middle East.
World War next anyone?
The U.S. has intervened in 50 countries since WWII to establish their own puppet governments and sycophantic supporters. The results are what we see today: a world that is increasingly close to a third world war – not because of Russian aggression, but because of the U.S.’ failing empire, its unpayable economic debt policy, its military violence spread over much of the world, and its desire to guard the US$ as the hegemonic global reserve fiat currency.
Our good ally Saudi Arabia, implicated in 9/11, known to support jihadis throughout the world, known to support ISIS in the Middle East, committing war crimes and crimes against civilians in Yemen, with an archaic fundamentalist tribal government, complements our association with the U.S. The only reason they survive is that they are ‘useful idiots’ for U.S. foreign policy and geostrategic/economic policies and thus our foreign policy.
With all this interplay of forces in the Middle East, with a declining debt ridden violent empire as our neighbour that pits a war-mongering lying chicken hawk against a xenophobic misogynist racist bigot, the future does not look too bright. For Canada to now step into this increasing maelstrom of violence perpetrated mainly by the U.S./NATO alliance is sheer wilful ignorance and hubris.
Canada has pretensions that do not fit the proposed actions. Instead of peacemaking or peacekeeping, instead of “mitigating consequences”, Canada is simply adding to the violence of the U.S. empire.
Notes
[1] “Canada’s mission in Africa will be focused on ‘peacemaking,’ UN ambassador says”. Paul Tasker, CBC News/Politics, August 27, 2016.
[2] Yves Engler: Canada in Africa, and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, both Fernwood Publishing, 2015 and 2009 respectively.
