Globe and Mail, March 26, 1999 (published in a slightly
edited version)
Canada at war
by David Orchard
Following the lead of the U.S., Canada is participating in a massive
military assault against a sovereign nation in central Europe. The
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a small country of approximately
12 million. Its crime is that it is fighting to preserve its territorial
integrity against an armed secessionist movement. Every other nation
would do the same.
When Abraham Lincoln went to war against the Confederate South
"to preserve the union," as he put it, he was regarded as a hero
and Washington bore long and vindictive grudges against any countries
-- including Canada and Britain -- that did not leap to support
it.
Has not Britain waged a decades long war against the Irish Republican
Army? Was it not a Canadian government in Ottawa that invoked the
War Measures Act and moved troops into Quebec when faced with "apprehended
insurrection"?
We are told that Yugoslavia refused to sign a "peace agreement"
with its armed separatists. There is no peace agreement. There is
an 81 page document, drawn up by the U.S. which will in effect sever
Kosovo, long regarded as the cradle of Serbian nationhood, from
Yugoslavia. Belgrade was told to sign or be bombed.
The majority of the population of the separatist region are of
a different ethnic group than those in the rest of Yugoslavia, we
are told. If this were justification for secession, most nations
in the world, including Canada and the U.S., would disintegrate
overnight.
A long political and media campaign to demonize the Serbs has
culminated with Bill Clinton's comparison of war-torn Yugoslavia
to Hitler's Germany. Equating a weak, already partially dismembered
country under economic sanctions for almost a decade, struggling
to hang on to its heartland, surrounded and menaced by the world's
most powerful nations armed to the teeth with the latest high tech
weapons, to Nazi Germany only goes to graphically illustrate graphically
that truth is the first casualty of war.
Lest anyone be confused, the attack on Yugoslavia is not a United
Nations operation in any way, nor does it have U.N. sanction. Both
Russia and China have condemned it unequivocally. It is a unilateral
and unprecedented act of war by the world's most powerful military
alliance in violation of international law and of NATO's own charter,
which provides for defence in the case of attack against a member
nation. No member nation of NATO has been attacked or threatened
by Yugoslavia.
Why is Canada, the famed peacemaker, involved in the illegal destruction
of a founding member of the U.N. and our ally in both world wars?
Today, Yugoslavia is virtually defenceless, yet with a long and
proud history of fighting for its independence -- for almost five
centuries the southern Slavs led by Serbia fought against the Ottoman
Empire, for years Yugoslavia fought against Hitler's Nazis and,
under Tito, against control by the Soviet Union.
As in Iraq, many of the bombs and missiles raining on the people
of Yugoslavia are coated with depleted uranium. The radioactive
fallout will, as is happening today in Iraq, ensure an agonizing
death for tens of thousands in the years ahead, long after the bombs
stop falling.
After years of pious bleating by Canadian governments about war
crimes (always those by small nations, mind you), we are committing
one of vastly larger proportions as these words are being written.
Who has given NATO the authority to attack Yugoslavia? What exactly
is the Kosovo Liberation Army (regularly described as a terrorist
organization less than a year ago) on whose side we are now entering
this conflict? How, and with what financial backing, did it emerge
as a fully equipped army complete with anti-tank weapons, uniforms
and grenade launchers? What is its connection to U.S. intelligence
and, as recently reported in the London Times, to organized
crime and the heroin trade? If NATO has become an instrument of
terror against the virtually defenceless population of our former
ally -- and it has -- Canada should reconsider its membership in
that organization.
David Orchard is the author
of The Fight for Canada - Four Centuries of Resistance to American
Expansionism and was runner-up to Joe Clark in the 1998 federal
Progressive Conservative leadership contest. He farms in Borden,
SK and can be reached at tel (306) 664-8443 or by e-mail at davidorchard@sasktel.net
Back
Top
|