[R-G] Fwd: Setting the historical record straight - Canada and the war in Iraq

[Anthony Fenton]

Thank-you, Sid. FYI, a direct link to Stewart's piece is below, and  
also below is the excerpt of Stein and Lang's book that the National  
Post ran today. Unfortunately, the CBC piece is thin on  
'revelations,' and thick on revisionism. Of course, one cannot hope  
to scratch the surface of Canada's real role in Iraq in a 5-minute  
clip...:

Inside the Mission - Staying out of Iraq
October 11, 2007 (Runs 5:12)
Many Canadians take pride in Chretien's decision to refuse to  
participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But was it really his  
decision?

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/militaryafghanistan/ 
inside_the_mission.html

For anyone who may be interested (and by coincidence), a short  
article of mine, "Canada in Iraq: Dedicated to the war of terror,"  
appears in this month's New Socialist (Fall 2007, pp. 26-27 http:// 
www.newsocialist.org/), on the stands but not online as yet. Also,  
germane to R-G, this issue's feature subject is "Ecosocialism and  
environmental activism."

Anthony Fenton


[...]

Copyright 2007 National Post
All Rights Reserved
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)

October 12, 2007 Friday
National Edition

SECTION: ISSUES & IDEAS; Pg. A19

LENGTH: 1092 words

HEADLINE: Our man in Iraq; Did Canada really stay out of the Iraq  
War? The answer is more complicated than Jean Chretien would have had  
Canadians believe

BYLINE: Janice Gross Stein and eugene Lang, National Post

BODY:


Early on during his tenure as defence minister, John McCallum was  
told that Canada had a hundred or so low-level exchange officers who  
were employed largely in technical support roles with the American  
and British militaries. The military advice was unequivocal: These  
officers should remain in place at all costs, regardless of the  
government's ultimate decision on whether to fight the upcoming Iraq  
War. Pulling them out would do permanent and irreparable damage to  
Canada-U.S. and Canada-U.K. military-to-military relations. Canada  
would lose access to information and intelligence. And there would be  
an intangible loss of trust with our closest allies that might never  
be recovered.

On the eve of the war, McCallum received new, more detailed  
information about these exchange officers. The military painted a  
picture for the minister of a benign, marginal group of people that  
should be of little concern to anyone. What the minister did not know  
until later was that the most senior Canadian officer on exchange was  
a brigadier general, Walt Natynczuk, who was directly involved in  
planning the invasion of Iraq from the American headquarters in Kuwait.

In McCallum's view, it was bad enough that a Canadian brigadier  
general was working at U.S. headquarters in Kuwait. Then Ray Henault,  
the chief of the defence staff, informed McCallum that the U.S.  
military HQ was mobile and was leaving Kuwait and entering Iraq with  
Natynczuk in tow. The one fig leaf -- Kuwait, not Iraq -- had been  
removed. McCallum reflected:

"One of the problems I had was a misconception of military  
terminology. They said we had people at the headquarters in Kuwait.  
And at that point I didn't understand--or maybe they deliberately  
didn't tell me-- that headquarters move. One day, Henault came in and  
said General Natynczuk has moved into Iraq with the headquarters. If  
I had known this was a possibility in advance maybe I would have  
pushed to pull them out. It was pretty untenable not to be part of  
the Iraq War but to have soldiers in Iraq."

After the decision not to participate in military operations against  
Iraq was announced, the government was excoriated daily in the House  
of Commons and by the media for keeping these exchange officers in  
place. Had Natynczuk's precise role become publicly known, there  
would have been even more intense criticism of the government in  
Parliament, in the press and in the public. But the government  
managed to keep his presence out of the news. The prime minister  
himself took questions on the exchange officers, as did McCallum and  
Foreign Minister Bill Graham. The response to the opposition attacks  
was simple: These officers would not be involved directly in the  
conflict; Canada had made these commitments to its allies; the  
commitments had to be respected; we would expect nothing less of our  
allies. Government leaders stuck to this line of argument, even  
though other countries that had chosen not to participate in the war  
quickly withdrew their exchange officers assigned to British and  
American forces in the region once hostilities broke out.

Yet the exchange officers who remained in place--as well as Canada's  
command of Task Force 151, a multinational naval task force operating  
in the Persian Gulf--gave the opposition the ammunition it needed to  
claim that the government's policy was duplicitous. They  
characterized the Chretien government as one that wanted to have its  
cake and eat it too. To some degree, it did.

This was a government that was so transfixed at all levels with  
managing relations with Washington -- politician to politician,  
general to general, senior official to senior official -- that the  
foundation of Ottawa's policy on the war in Iraq was put at risk. The  
decisions on exchange officers and the command of Task Force 151  
needlessly exposed the government's policy to daily assault and even  
ridicule in the House of Commons. As McCallum recalled, "That's when  
[Stephen] Harper called me an idiot."

In an almost schizophrenic way, the government bragged publicly about  
its decision to stand aside from the war in Iraq because it violated  
core principles of multilateral-ism and support for the United  
Nations. At the same time, senior Canadian officials, military  
officers and politicians were currying favour in Washington,  
privately telling anyone in the State Department or the Pentagon who  
would listen that, by some measures, Canada's indirect contribution  
to the American war effort in Iraq -- three ships and 100 exchange  
officers -- exceeded that of all but three other countries that were  
formally part of the coalition. McCallum himself told Paul Cellucci,  
the U.S. ambassador in Ottawa, that Canada was "the opposite of  
Spain," a country that originally supported the invasion of Iraq but  
that contributed very little militarily to the war effort.

The government then spent the next few weeks monitoring very closely  
what its allies were contributing to the American war effort in the  
region to ensure that Canada would not be left behind. Just in case,  
senior officials in Ottawa identified other assets -- political and  
military -- that the Americans might appreciate.

The events of that period reveal both a conflicted policy on the Iraq  
War and a clash of world views among civilian officials, politicians  
and military leaders. The military leadership was so obsessed with  
its relationship with the Pentagon that it was willing to risk its  
own credibility with its political masters. Military leaders tried to  
drive foreign policy in the direction they wanted it to go, not  
normally an appropriate role for the military in a democracy. One  
senior official said that the Department of National Defence "gets  
the militaries of other countries to pressure and lobby Ottawa on its  
behalf."

There is, of course, an irony to this story. Canada's military  
leaders created a trap for the government by urging that Canada lead  
Task Force 151, thereby indirectly enmeshing Canada in the Iraq  
theatre. Once the war had begun, however, the politicians and  
diplomats liked the final destination more than the generals did.

The story of Canada's policy on the war in Iraq is also a story of a  
political leadership that spoke with one "principled" voice to  
Canadians --and another, quite different, "pragmatic" voice in  
Washington. Fortunately, few in the public could hear the two voices  
at the same time.

-Excerpted with permission from The Unexpected War, by Janice Gross  
Stein and Eugene Lang. ©Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang, 2007.  
Reprinted with permission of Penguin Group (Canada).

GRAPHIC:
Black & White Photo: Master Corporal Brian Walsh, J5pa Combat Camera;  
HMCS Iroquois exits the Gibraltar Bay enroute to the Arabian Sea in  
October, 2001. ;
Black & White Photo:; (See hardcopy for Photo Description) ;