Heck no, we won't go -- we're scared
By MARCUS GEE
Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - Page A17
Like generals who are always fighting the last war, Paul Martin is fighting -- or rather not fighting -- the last war in Iraq. Asked on Monday about reports that Canada would be sending a handful of military trainers to Iraq, the Prime Minister replied: "We refused to send troops to Iraq two years ago. That decision stands. Canadian troops will not be going to Iraq." But the fight being waged in Iraq now is not the fight that Ottawa refused to join back then. It is a fight for democracy, and Canada should be in it.
It seems to have escaped Mr. Martin, but things have changed in Iraq. Last week, in an act of civic courage that amazed the world, Iraqis defied terrorist threats to vote en masse in the country's first free election in half a century. The government that will rise out of that vote will have a resounding mandate to build a new Iraq.
Before it can do that, though, it must put down a vicious insurgency whose express purpose is to thwart democracy. To succeed, the government needs to build and train a new army. Last year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed to send 300 officers to help train soldiers in Iraq and, as a NATO member, Canada is reportedly being asked to contribute 40 of them. That's right, 40 troops, against a U.S. force of 150,000. It seems a small thing to ask, in the cause of creating the first representative government in the Arab world. What possible reason can Mr. Martin have to say no?
That Canada opposed the war in the first place? It won't wash. Canada was against overthrowing Saddam Hussein because the United Nations refused to approve the war and because Ottawa worried about the precedent of an "illegal" invasion. But that debate was over two years ago. There is nothing illegal about the struggle being waged in Iraq now. To the contrary, this is exactly the kind of effort that Canada claims to believe in. Trying to raise Canada's international profile, Mr. Martin says we should do more nation-building and more democracy promotion -- just what Iraq is crying out for.
Before last week, it might have been possible to argue, however implausibly, that Canada was staying out of Iraq because the insurgency was a popular liberation movement and that foreigners had no place helping to put it down. This, in short, was another Vietnam, with nationalist rebels pitted against American interlopers. Last week's election drove a stake through the heart of that argument. By voting in their millions despite rebel threats to kill them if they did, Iraqis showed that, even if they don't like having American troops in their streets, they broadly support the effort to create a new Iraqi government answerable to the people.
Iraq's new national hero is not an insurgent but a Baghdad policeman who saw a suicide bomber approaching a polling station on election day. He wrapped his arms around the man and dragged him away from the crowd, only to be killed when the bomber set off his explosives belt. The election's success has produced a surge of revulsion against the insurgents and a wave of national pride among ordinary Iraqis.
How can Mr. Martin justify refusing to send even a token military force to help them? All Canada's principled objections to the war -- that it's against international law, that the insurgents are popular, that it would be meddling to go -- are as out of date as a Saddam lapel button. There remains only one possible reason for staying out: that Mr. Martin is afraid. Afraid of sending Canadian soldiers to a war zone. Afraid of the ruckus the opposition promises to make if he commits troops after saying he wouldn't.
Canada may agree to train Iraqi soldiers in some safer place, like Jordan. But Iraq? Heck no, we won't go. The message to Iraqis: We may applaud your bravery as you march unarmed to the polls while bombs explode in the background, but we won't send any of our brave, well-armed troops to protect you -- or even to train you to protect yourselves. Sorry, too dangerous.
So let's not pretend we're staying away because of some high-minded objection to a war that is long over. Let's just admit it: We're too scared to go.
] but at least they bring some form of articulate arguement with them and not the kife you spout.
I hadn't checked out this thread before and look what I missed. An actual mention by name and what I will take for a compliment.
