I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of our way and let them have it. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
The day that the apparently reformed warmonger president, Dwight D Eisenhower, envisioned decades ago has finally come. It's time for governments to get out of our way.
I have had the chance since Camp Casey in August, to travel the world. I have also had the honour of meeting hundreds of fellow souls who are just plain sick and tired of the way Bush & Company are cavorting around the world, fledgling Third Reich tyrants, (Hitler didn't need warrants either), threatening the way of life of every person who inhibits our world.
From Italy to Canada to Great Britain and all the nations that send soldiers to war in the Middle East, our global brothers and sisters are tired of their governments' support of Bush-Co with their war crimes and crimes against humanity. Former prime minister Berlusconi of Italy recently paid a high price for his support of Bush-Co's policies by not being re-elected. I knew he was going to be defeated when I was travelling around Italy and feeling voters' frustrations and hearing their fear of losing a democracy, which Berlusconi's neo-fascist rule was destroying.
By many accounts Steven Harper became prime minister through the collapse of weak coalitions and a Liberal government fraud scandal. He now heads a minority government, yet he is unpopular from coast to Canadian coast, and there is a growing sense of unease about his emulation of a very unpopular person in the USA, George W Bush.
Canadians have to be the healthiest looking and most polite citizenry I have encountered in my travels. While the British people I have met are very polite, they have nowhere near the graciousness of Canadians; Canadians are truly civil.
Canadians have been proud of their country's role as peace-keeper and beacon of peace and hope; a refuge for us Americans who feel that the USA's aggressive militarism endangers us and harms our reputations and souls.
Now Canadians also need to wake up to the fact that their new, disliked minority government is leading them down the same slippery slope towards fascist militarism exemplified by their immediate neighbours to the south.
The first day I was in Canada Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor signed onto an extension of the NORAD treaty with the Bush regime, without debate or any vote in Parliament. The citizenry was outraged, in its courteous way.
Not so coincidentally, O'Connor just so happens to be a former defense industry lobbyist who has been using his position to promote the "Canada First" position, which would ultimately remove Canada, once and for all, from its world-peace keeping role. With Canada's support of the Haitian government's overthrow and support of BushCo's travesty in Afghanistan, Canada was already heading down the path of destruction.
Canadians are distressed that defense spending rose by $5.3 billion (roughly what the US spends for two weeks in Iraq) at the same time the preschool budget is being cut, and college tuition is rising.
This increase in military spending correlates with a push to recruit thousands more soldiers who are, ironically, still being told by Canadian recruiters that their country only does peace keeping missions. There is a manipulation of facts, exploitation of fear and false patriotism, which is fueled by the Canadian media, which seems to be turning, for most part, into propaganda tool for the government, a la US right wing Fourth Estate.
However, with Canadian soldiers dying in combat, the citizens of the country are starting to question their Bush clone of a prime minister and his Bush-style cabinet. Recently, the PM said that if he sends troops into combat he expects popular support; which only means that he expects the people to support him and his loose interpretation of the facts.
Also, the Canadian media is now banned from attending ceremonies at the Trenton airbase where flag-draped coffins first arrive with dead soldiers. Allegedly to not cause the families any more pain. But, as the mother of a soldier who came home that way, trust me, it causes far more pain to have your child KIA in a pointless war then it does to see the military honour guard treating our children with the care and respect not afforded to them by their own misleaders.
Recent polls in Canada show that the people are starting to wake up by the truckload. Support for their administration’s backing of Bush-Co’s war has slipped 14 percentage points in two months! Canadians are seeing that the war in Afghanistan is not righteous, and that when Canada sends troops there it frees US troops to be illegally and immorally deployed to Iraq. Canada needs its own Cindy Sheehan to go to the PM’s residence and demand to know what noble cause her child died for, or is still fighting for.
Even more of a struggle right now to Canadian peace coalitions, besides Canada’s apparent slumber, is that your government won’t support war resisters who flee the US military; resisters who don’t want to go to Iraq and kill innocent people, or die for the war profiteers. So far, two soldiers have been denied asylum. I was told by members of a few Canadian political parties that asylum is being denied for two reasons: first, because US soldiers are now “volunteers,” and secondly, because if our kids refuse to go to Iraq and face incarceration, well, American prisons aren’t that bad.
I have said and written about this before: if our kids volunteered, then they should be free to “un-volunteer” if the mission of the organization changes. I have belonged to several volunteer organizations and when I disagree, or when I just feel like it, I leave. I have not been threatened with prison, or execution, which is an option for the US military in times of war.
Most of our kids did not volunteer to go to Iraq in order to guard oil and other “special” contractors, nor did they go to kill innocent people and pad the retirement of the Exxon CEO. And – newsflash – our recruiters are still lying to our young people, telling them that if they enlist they won’t have to go to Iraq, this comes along with other despicable lies. When the recruit signs on the dotted line, the contract becomes binding only on him or her. These kinds of unilateral contracts are not even legal.
Our young soldiers, if they are refugees fleeing an organization that does not reflect their values, should not have to go to prison, no matter what the conditions are. With Amnesty International saying that violations are rampant in “enemy” combatant detention centers, why should Canada think that its soldiers are any better off in a place that they should not be in the first place.
Please, dear Canada, stop the slide before it is too late, and you wake up in a country that you don’t even know anymore. We, here in the US, fell into an exhausted sleep of denial after Vietnam, and we are now reaping what was silently and deviously sown by the right wing radicals who have been working for an overthrow of our government for more than 30 years. If we didn’t learn the lessons of Vietnam, we will surely never forget the lessons we learned at the feet of BushCo that have cost so many so much. It’s OK to copy our baseball and acknowledge the huge hearts of the American people who never wanted to picture the country that we have become. But please don’t copy, or let your government be willing partners in crime with our public enemy number one: BushCo.
After a news conference that I conducted with the Canadian War Resister’s League, the media was grilling a Canadian cabinet minister. Finally in frustration he blurted out: “We’re not going to allow and American woman (me) to dictate our policies.” And, you know what, he’s right. But, with support rapidly dwindling for both wars (the Iraq war was never popular with the people of Canada) and with Canadian support for the asylum of our young men and women of conscience from the US, it’s time for the Canadian government to listen to its people.
It’s time for all of our governments to listen to us. George and Steve and Tony and the rest of you warmongers: Get out of our way – we the people want peace. We will have it. Please join me and sign the Voters for Peace pledge and spread the word far and wide. Our goal is to get 2 million voters to sign the pledge – so we can go back to these legislators and candidates and say, “We will no longer tolerate your wars!”
Cindy Sheehan is a co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace (www.gsfp.org) and the mother of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq. Voters for Peace (www.votersforpeace.us) is a joint project of Gold Star Families for Peace, Democracy Rising, Peace Action, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, and more, all working to bring the peace movement together to think and act as voters.