(Read an American's reply to this letter at the bottom)
SUNDAY HERALD COLUMN -- March 26, 2003 [HH0313]
A DIPLOMATIC MEMO by Silver Donald Cameron
To: Ambassador Paul Cellucci
Embassy of the United States of America
490 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
Dear Mr. Ambassador:
Your recent remarks about Canada’s policy with respect to Iraq were
inaccurate, inappropriate and offensive. Prime Minister Chretien is
maintaining a delicate balance between US pressure and Canadian
opinion - a familiar position for Canadian Prime Ministers - and he
will not tell you to go pound sand. But someone should.
Fundamentally, you argue that the United States would instantly come
to the aid of Canada in an emergency, and Canada should therefore
participate in your ill-advised attack on Iraq.
Your recent remarks about Canada’s policy with respect to Iraq
were
inaccurate, inappropriate and offensive. Prime Minister Chretien is
maintaining a delicate balance between US pressure and Canadian
opinion - a familiar position for Canadian Prime Ministers - and he
will not tell you to go pound sand. But someone should.
Fundamentally, you argue that the United States would instantly come
to the aid of Canada in an emergency, and Canada should therefore
participate in your ill-advised attack on Iraq.
‘There is no security threat to Canada that the United States would
not be ready, willing and able to help with,’ you are quoted as
saying. ‘There would be no debate. There would be no hesitation.
We
would be there for Canada, part of our family.’
Codswallop. And that’s diplomatic.
The primary threat to Canadian security has always been the United
States. A monument in Quebec honours my earliest Canadian ancestor
for repelling an invasion from your home state of Massachusetts in 1690.
The very first instance of military co-operation among the Thirteen
Colonies occurred in 1745 under the leadership of James Shirley, your
predecessor as Governor of Massachusetts, whose army invaded Nova
Scotia and captured the Fortress of Louisbourg. Thirty years later, during
the American Revolution, your privateers sacked our ports. We were at
war once more in 1812-15. The birth of Canada in 1867 was prompted
by fears of a US invasion. That?s why our railroad runs along the Gulf
of
St. Lawrence, far from the US border.
Do you remember ?manifest destiny,? the 1840s US doctrine which held
that your country had a God-given mission to rule all of North
America? Do you remember ?Fifty-four-forty or fight,? the slogan which
rallied Americans to threaten an invasion in 1902 over the Alaska
boundary? Yours is the only country which has ever invaded ours, and
it would do so again in a wink if it thought its interests here were
seriously threatened.
And how does your sentimental mantra of perpetual willingness to
spring to our assistance apply to the First World War, which we
entered in 1914, while you stayed out for three years? We went to war
against Hitler in 1939, while you were moved to join your sister
democracies only after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two years
later. A million Canadians fought in World War II, and 45,000 died. We
need no lectures from Americans about the defence of liberty and democracy.
Nevertheless, despite the strains of our history, we are probably as
close as any two nations in the world. Many Canadians -- I am one --
have family members who are American citizens. Our two nations fought
together not only in two World Wars, but also to repel the invasions
of South Korea in 1949 and Kuwait in 1991. And when great catastrophe
strikes without warning, our people have indeed been there for each
other. As Governor of Massachusetts, you must have been present at the
lighting of the Christmas tree in Boston each year - an annual gift
from Nova Scotia to commemorate the immediate and massive assistance
of Massachusetts after the Halifax Explosion in 1917.
Our chance to reciprocate came on September 11, 2001, when Canadian
communities took in, on an instant?s notice, 40,000 passengers from US
planes forced down by the terrorist attacks. Halifax alone hosted
7,200. We housed them in our homes and schools and churches, fed them
and comforted them and treated them as family. We probably gave more
immediate and practical assistance to Americans than any other
country. Yet when your President later thanked the nations for their
help, he did not mention Canada.
The Iraq conflict, however, is not an unforeseen disaster, but a
deliberate choice. Your President has squandered a worldwide
outpouring of sympathy and solidarity in less than two years -- an
astounding diplomatic debacle. Your own remarks, with their dark hints
of economic revenge, are entirely consistent with the Bush
administration?s policy of diplomacy by bullying, bribing and
threatening.
A huge body of opinion -- even in the US and Britain -- judges this
war to be illegal, reckless and irrelevant to the fight against
terrorism. Your government appears to have forgotten Osama bin Laden,
and not to have noticed that the September 11 terrorists were mostly
Saudi, not Iraqi. They lived not in Baghdad but in Hamburg and San
Diego. The Iraq campaign is a sideshow, a grudge match, a distraction.
It will breed more martyrs, and more terrorists.
Back in Massachusetts, in 1846, a young man was arrested and jailed
for refusing to pay taxes, to avoid supporting his government?s
deplorable policies. He explained this in an essay, ?On the Duty of
Civil Disobedience,? which has ever since inspired people like Gandhi
and Martin Luther King. His name was Henry David Thoreau, and no doubt
the Governor of Massachusetts thought he was a pretty poor American.
He was not; like King, he was a voice for what is finest in American life
and values. And the issue on which he took his stand may sound a bit familiar.
He was opposed to an imperial war -- the unprovoked US invasion which
stripped Mexico of 40% of its territory.
Good citizens - and good friends - oppose bad policies. By telling you
The truth, they strive to save you from folly. They may be mistaken,
but they are not your enemies. That is the message you should take
back to the White House, whether or not there is anyone there who will
understand it.
(Read an American's reply to this letter here!)
Sincerely,
Silver Donald Cameron
Box 555, D'Escousse, NS B0E 1K0
(902)226-3165 fax (902)226-1904
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