Trash talking us into war

I think most reasonable people, at least in hindsight, would agree that one of the things the Liberals' got right under Chretien and Martin was keeping Canada out of the gigantic deadly goat rodeo known as the Iraq War.
Remember how in the months that lead up to the invasion we were told again and again that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that there was no question he was working on 'nookyalur' weapons, that Saddam Hussein was seen french kissing Osama Bin Laden under the bleachers during the homecoming game. This was all given as gospel truth by the White House, Pentagon, CIA and about 90% of the Western Media.
And yet, hundreds of billions of dollars and a million or so deaths later, we know it was all bullshit. They were wrong or lying or both.
Iraq was about as close to having nukes or a means to deliver them as say, Guatemala is and was about as much a military threat to its neighbours at that point as Belgium is to France, Germany and Britain.
Outside of a very few conservative true believers and George W. Bush's inner circle, no one, least of all the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, think the invasion of Iraq worked out well.
Remember too, that Stephen Harper very much wanted Canada to take part in the Iraq War.
Now that Harper has his majority, he cannot and will not be denied his opportunity to show the world that Canada is a major player on the world stage just as capable of killing lots of non-Western Nogoodniks and Nogoodnik women and terrorist children as any other NATO member and not just some namby-pambly peacekeeper. Truly, lives could be saved if someone would just give the man a ruler, tell him the centimetres are really inches and send him off to measure his little Cheney.
Even though the current U.S. president is likely to be reelected without having start a war with Iran, Harper, ever hopeful of a victory for his Republican fellow travellers, is already laying the groundwork to take Canada into the next war of choice.

  “I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.
Mr. Harper said he has no doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “There is absolutely no doubt they are lying,” Mr. Harper said, referring to statements by Iran that the nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
“The evidence is just growing overwhelming. This is not, as was the case of Iraq, merely the opinion of allies,” he said.
The development of nuclear weapons as one of the purposes of Iran’s nuclear program “is just beyond dispute at this point,” he said. “The only dispute is how far advanced it is and how far off it will be until they actually develop those weapons and develop the capability of delivering the weapons.” 

Given that Israeli and U.S. conservative hawks have been warnings Iran is just x-number of years/months/weeks/days/hours away from "getting the bomb" roughly every two weeks since the Shah was chased out of Tehran, I tend to take such certainty with a bushel or two of salt.
Given the number of sabres being rattled at it, Iran would be wise to follow North Korea's example and actually get hold of some nukes. Saddam Hussein didn't and look what happened to him.
Mind you, it isn't just that Harper want to get his war on for its own sake, he also thinks he sees a way to turn a dollar or three for his oil-patch pals:

Also during the interview, Mr. Harper linked the debate over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas with concern over Iran’s threat to blockade the main shipping route for oil in the Middle East. “It’s pretty obvious what the right decision is … not just from an economic and environmental standpoint, but from an energy security standpoint,” Mr. Harper said. “When you look at the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, I think that just illustrates how critical it is that supply for the United States be North American,” Mr. Harper said.

The winning quote from the interview though, by far was this bit of classic right wing projection. The same comment could have come from any leader in the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America or Africa in discussing the United States and conservative Canada.

“In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes,” 

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Like it or not, Capt. Semrau must be punished

I'm not sure I'm the guy to take this on and as usual these days I'm busy juggling flaming chainsaws on the job search and family fronts (ain't transPacific relocation a hoot!), but I have to say I'm getting a bit tired of all the letters to the editor I'm seeing about how the high command and "the system" has failed Capt. Semrau and how he deserves a medal.
I don't for a moment think the guy is some kind of bloodthirsty scofflaw, but rules are rules and exist for a very good reason. Do we want soldiers on the battlefield deciding which among the wounded may or may not be successfully treated and simply shooting the ones they think won't make it at their own discretion? Would those who want to pin a medal on Capt. Semrau like to see Canadian soldiers treated by such a standard?
I think the military judge showed the wisdom of Solomon and exercised considerable leniency in dismissing the captain from the military without giving him a dishonorable discharge or a prison sentence. He may well have acted from the highest motives - or the lowest, there really isn't any way of reading his mind - but he acted in clear violation of all the rules of the Canadian Forces and the Geneva Convention, so obviously - at the very least - he had to be punished as an example.
Semrau has been portrayed as an exemplary soldier and commander and he probably was until he stepped over this important line. His men defended his actions and his defence has been that what he did was a mercy killing.
That may be, but it was still an unlawful killing. What he did was withhold medical treatment from a wounded prisoner and then murder that prisoner. Whatever the motive, whether he acted out of brazen cruelty, a secret desire for revenge, or (most likely) compassion for someone in pain he didn't think would survive, what he did was still a war crime and has to be treated as such.  His motives and intentions, noble though they may be, don't really matter in the end. Whether international law needs to be revisited to allow for such actions is an entirely separate minefield and one I don't suggest we should enter.
Semrau must be punished not only for his concrete actions, but for what they represent - a commissioned officer willfully and knowingly violating the rules of war, the regulations of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Geneva Convention. Such conduct, no matter the reason, must carry consequences, otherwise military discipline is seriously undermined. Let us not forget that while the Canadian military defends our democracy and all those other egalitarian principles we hold dear, it is not and cannot be a democracy itself. Structure, chain-of-command and top-down leadership are all essential to the military functioning properly. Soldiers must follow orders and regulations or they are nothing more than a well-armed mob. I'm sorry that Semrau has sacrificed his military career, but his actions cannot be ignored - he is fortunate not to be in prison.

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How to breed terrorists

1. Attack and terrorize a country with overwhelming military force, destroy the quality of life for people living there and kill lots of civilians.

2. Occupy that country and keep killing civilians while trying to kill the people trying to make you leave. Do as little as you can to help the civilians and make sure your occupying troops are as isolated from the civilian population as possible.

3. Continue for as long as people back home can stand it. 

Well said Boris.

(This started out as a comment on Boris' excellent post over at the Beaver, and then just plain got to be too long to be a comment)

The nonsensical rah-rah bullshit about "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight'em over here" is just that - nonsensical bullshit. The coalition isn't just fighting them over there, it is creating them over there.

I'm all for hunting down and shooting every card-carrying Taliban and Al-Qaida member, but they don't carry cards or wear sweaters with a big red "T" for terrorist on them. I sympathize with soldiers wanting to err on the side of not getting killed....................BUT YOU CAN'T JUST GO AROUND SHOOTING EVERYONE JUST TO MAKE SURE!!!!!

Nor can you "precision" bomb a house in a crowded neighborhood just because someone told you there was a bad guy there. Nor can you shoot people for carrying shovels or talking on cell phones or kick in innocent people's doors in the middle of the night and disappear them to the tender mercies of Abu Graib or turn a car full of people into scrap metal and bloody rags because they didn't slow down fast enough as they approached your checkpoint.

You can't do any of these things and expect the people to whom you are doing them to thank you, shower you with candy and flowers and give you their hearts and minds.

What you can expect is the kind of ripple effect that is going on in Iraq.

Most Iraqis hated Saddam Hussien, but they had running water and electricity and there were jobs and as bad as things were, you could feed your family, go to the mosque when and if you wanted, and have some idea of what to expect day to day. Sure, there was always the threat that your crazy neighbour might denounce you to the secret police or that you'd get strung up by the thumbs in Abu Ghraib because your cousin ran an anti-Saddam website, but there wasn't much you could do about it.

When the invasion came and Saddam was given the boot, people cheered. "Hurrah! No more secret police! No more Abu Ghraib! Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!"

Now five years later they have electricity about an hour a day, sometimes less, no running water in most of country, shit blowing up all over the place, foreign soldiers who don't speak your language in the streets willing to shoot you for looking at them the wrong way, checkpoints everywhere, the constant threat that your crazy neighbor will denounce you to the Americans who will hang up by your thumbs in Abu Ghraib, religious fanatics who will shoot you for going to the wrong mosque and who will beat and rape your daughter for not wearing a burqa. There are no jobs, you don't know where your next meal is coming from half the time and you never know when a firefight is going to break out. Those lousy bastards who go to the other mosque shot your son last week and your wife lost her legs three years ago when a bomb went off at the market. And the occupation forces killed six of your cousins, three of your uncles and your grandmother. And they keep calling you Haji.

(at this point someone is saying "you've never been there, you don't know -- go do your homework." Yeah, well, your right I've never been there, but I have heard some stories from the people that have. I suggest listening to the As it Happens Podcast from March 19th in which they play a pair of interviews with an Iraqi who works for the Ministry of Electricity. The first interview is from the end of the first year of the occupation, the second is from this past March, the fifth anniversary. If you don't do podcasting, you can listen to the interviews  here)

Imagine you were born in Baghdad in  the late 1980s to early 1990s. Your childhood was bit messed up what with the aftermath of the eight year war with Iran and the pounding your country took from the Americans  in the Gulf War and the subsequent years of sactions that left your formerly reasonably wealthy developed country poor and scraping for material goods. But you've never know it to be any different, you're just a kid. The grown ups might talk of a time before the country went downhill, but you spend your time playing soccer with your friends, going to school and doing what kids all over the world do - hanging out with your friends and family, scheming to score some candy and having fun. As you get older you start to realize that people in other countries don't have it as tough as you do because their countries don't have economic sanction against them that prevent them from importing stuff. You get a bit ticked off with rest of the world for being mean to Iraq, but maybe they have a point, your president is a pretty scary guy after all and nobody much likes him. 

Then, when you're between 15 and 11 the shit really hits the fan. The sky opens one night in March and the every power station, water works, military base blows up. The sky seems dark with planes and the bombs just keep on exploding everywhere. The earth shakes. You think you will go deaf from the constant onslaught of explosions. The house up the street is just...gone. When the bombing stops the soldiers come and there is some shooting for a few days. The whole city goes crazy for a while - Saddam is gone! People are looting government buildings! Once things start to calm down a little bit, you realize that the foreign soldiers are settling in. Bombs keep going off in your neighbourhood, the soldiers come in the night and take away your neighbours, the electricity doesn't work, the school has been turned into a command post for the police, everyone is scared all the time and everyone you know has lost a brother or a sister or a cousin or a friend or a mother or a father to bombs from one side or the other. You had hoped to go to college one day and be an engineer like your dad, but the college keeps blowing up and you its too dangerous to go to the high school. 

Five years of this go by and now you're 16 to 20 and you HATE the Americans. They have fucked up your life and killed your friends and your family. Just last week, one of their convoys came past and they ran over your cousin like a dog in the street. Your dad got shot by the Militia because he worked for the electricity ministry and was working with the Americans trying to get the power back on in Baghdad. Your cousin lost a leg in a car bombing near the Green Zone. That girl you thought was pretty in your third grade math class way back when, she died in the shock and awe bombings. No one has seen your older brother in two years -- he could be dead, he could be with the insurgents, he could be in Abu Ghraib. Your mother cries every night and your little sister is scared to leave the house.

  You ask yourself "What in the name of the prophet did we do to deserve this? Why don't the infidels go home and leave us alone?" Then, one day after the Americans smashed the front of your neighbours house in with a tank at 3 am and hauled him away, a man comes to you and your friends while you are sitting in the dirt in front of your neighbours house talking about what happened and how angry you all are. "You hate the Americans?" he says. "So do I, what are you willing to do about it?"  He says he knows how you can teach them a lesson, how you can make them leave Iraq, how you can get revenge. You smile and shake his hand and say "Tell me more"

Now, those of you with a conservative bent may think this is unrealistic, but go back and substitute Dallas for Baghdad in these descriptions and tell me it could never happen. Go watch the favorite film of the neo-con cool kids and tell me that if Russia or France or the Pan-Arab Islamofacist League or whoever invaded and occupied the United States that vast swathes of young men would not take to the hills and back alleys and fight to the death to drive them out.

Remember the surge in enlistment in the U.S. armed forces after 9/11? People in middle America who hated arrogant, cosmopolitan New York, who thought it was full of nothing but Jewish pornographers and black gangbangers and rich liberal yuppies, who previously would not have pissed on New York City if it had been one fire, suddenly got all indignant and patriotic and ready to kick some ass somewhere, anywhere to get even. Imagine a smaller version of  9/11 happening in your neighborhood on a frequent basis. What would you want to do to the people responsible? Greet them with flowers and candy?

Why would we expect anything less from the young men of Iraq? Or Afghanistan?

Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here? The longer we stay over there, the more likely they are to come over here to make us stop and the more of them there will be.