Why Is Canada Bombing Iraq?

by Christopher Black
New Eastern Outlook
Nov 11, 2014

Canadians are bombing Iraqis and no one outside the deeply unpopular government of Stephen Harper really knows why. The propaganda system that controls the Canadian media succeeds in sowing confusion upon mystery and all we are allowed to understand is that Canada has once again revealed itself as a country without any existential existence. It is a regional backwater of the United States of America, the remaining vestiges of sovereignty and independence submerged in the swamp of American imperialism and culture.

Long gone are the glory days when a Canadian actually felt distinct in North America, when Canada tried to maintain an independent foreign policy and a national culture born out of the richness of the three founding peoples, the First Nations, the French and the English. Too many have forgotten that the Canadian provinces of the British Empire in North America refused to join the rebellion of the rising bourgeoisie in the 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast. Many Americans who were persecuted by the rebels for staying loyal to the British Crown fled to Canada in the aftermath and never returned. They had a name, the United Empire Loyalists, and the Americans never forgave them or the Canadians for refusing to join in their grand project of the conquest of North America and, consequently, the first of the American wars of conquest was the invasion of Canada in the War of 1812, the primary objective of which was the takeover of all the remaining British territories on the continent.

The American propaganda then was the same as it is now. The invading American forces posted notices in towns and villages announcing that they were bringing the people of Canada “democracy and liberty.” But no one wanted what they were offering and after many battles fought by British regulars, native forces and local militias the Americans were kicked out and put that objective on the back burner while they plundered the lands of the peoples of the interior and then turned on Mexico. They didn’t attempt it again until President Grant contemplated using the Union Armies to invade just after the American Civil War but the idea was abandoned aside from support for Irish Fenian guerrilla raids into Canada in the late 1860s. After that a physical invasion was not necessary since the invasion of finance capital got them all they wanted without a shot fired.

Canada remained a formal colony of British capital until 1867 when it was finally organised as a self governing state within the British empire after a series of internal struggles for more self rule by the growing mercantile and industrial elites but it only achieved any real independence as a country in the 1930’s as Britain’s power rapidly declined after its huge losses of the First World War. But the establishment of a country more independent of Britain did not result in an independent nation. Canada relied on foreign capital to build its infrastructure, its continental railway systems, its hydro-electric projects, its factories, its cities and where British capital could not supply the need it was quickly replaced by American capital.

The domination of the country by the Americans accelerated after the Second World War but it was countered by a rising nationalist feeling generated in part by Canada’s disproportionately large contribution to fighting the fascists in Europe. A nation of eleven million people fielded military forces of almost a million and in 1945 Canada had the third largest navy in the world. After the war the working classes, many of whom viewed the Soviet Union as the most progressive nation in the world, despite the elites’ anti-Russian and anti-socialist propaganda, supported socialist ideals that resulted in the establishment of free national health care and low cost education, affordable housing and were enthusiastic about Canadian artists and writers. They saw how a nation like Russia had rapidly developed its industrial and societal resources in a landmass that was very similar to Canada and realised that they could do the same. But it was not to be. Soon the American dominance began to be felt, with the forced dumping of Hollywood films in Canadian theatres, the take over of oil and gas exploration and pipeline construction, the stifling of any really independent steps to national development and of course the fateful decision under US pressure to join the Nato alliance.

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November 10, 2014 | Categories: Canada, Iraq, news, tyranny, war | Leave a comment