[R-G] Canada in Afghanistan: The New Conquistadores

[Anthony Fenton]

Canada in Afghanistan: The New Conquistadores

by David Orchard

Global Research, February 23, 2008

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8161
The Harper government is seeking to prolong Canada’s military  
involvement in Afghanistan. So far, Canada has spent six years,  
billions of dollars, 78 young lives (many more wounded) and inflicted  
unknown casualties on that country.

The terms used to describe our occupation and ongoing war are  
remarkably similar to those used over a century ago by colonial  
powers to justify their ruthless wars of colonization. Then, it was  
the white man’s burden to “civilize” the non-whites of the Americas,  
Africa and Asia.  As cub scouts we were taught Kipling’s  
unforgettable prose about the “lesser breeds,” but nothing about the  
real people who paid horrendous costs in death, suffering,  
destruction and theft of their land and resources.

Today, we are involved in a “mission” in Afghanistan to “improve” the  
lives of women and children, to install “democracy,” to root out  
corruption and the drug trade.

Waging war with bombs and guns is not helping women or installing  
democracy. It is, however, strengthening the Afghan resistance —  
hence our increasingly shrill cries for more help from NATO.

The U.S. is involved in a similar “mission” in Iraq. So far, over a  
million Iraqis — many of them children — have died, some two million  
have fled the country, another two million are “internally  
displaced,” untold hundreds of thousands wounded in an endless war  
waged by the world’s most advanced military almost entirely against  
civilians.

The toll of dead, wounded and displaced for Afghanistan is not being  
published.

The deadly effects of radioactive, depleted uranium (DU) ammunition  
being inflicted on both countries (some originally from Saskatchewan)  
haven’t begun to be tabulated or understood, let alone reported back  
to us. The idea that bombing the population will improve the lives of  
women and children could only come from those who have never  
experienced war.

As for narcotics, in 2001, when the West’s attack on Afghanistan  
began, its opium trade was approaching eradication. Today,  
Afghanistan produces over 90% of the world’s heroin and the U.S. is  
proposing mass aerial spraying of pesticides.

Those of the writer’s generation and older will remember the U.S.  
onslaught against little Vietnam — the long unspeakable war  — which  
left six million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians dead, wounded or  
deformed.

In that extraordinary country one sees miles upon miles of neat  
graves in the cemeteries, thousands of acres — aerial sprayed with  
horrific chemicals — still lying waste, craters left from ten million  
tons of bombs dropped, hand excavated underground tunnels in which  
the people were forced to live for years on end. An ancient African  
saying goes, “the axe forgets, but not the tree.” Today, over four  
million Vietnamese still suffer, many indescribably so, the effects  
of Agent Orange and other chemicals, and genetic damage is continuing  
from generation to generation.

In the case of Vietnam, Canada kept its troops out. Over the past  
decade, however, Canada has bombed Yugoslavia, helped overthrow Jean  
Bertrand Aristide’s democratically elected government in Haiti, is  
occupying Afghanistan and now, we learn, is getting involved more  
deeply in the U.S. devastation of Iraq. (Something Stephen Harper and  
Stockwell Day openly advocated from the beginning of the U.S. “Shock  
and Awe” assault on that defenceless nation.)

What gives the rich, powerful, white West the right to wage unending,  
merciless wars against small, largely non-white, Third World  
countries? (Yugoslavia, where the west invented “humanitarian”  
bombing was not a Third World country, but according to President  
Bill Clinton, it needed to accept the benefits of "globalism.") The  
torment of civilians being subjected to the impact of modern weaponry  
is rarely reported in the West. Canadians, as a matter of policy, are  
not informed of the number or types of casualties we have inflicted.

The modern concepts of “humanitarian intervention” and the “duty to  
protect” which seek to override international law and national  
sovereignty are, in this writer’s view, simply 21st century  
terminology for colonization.

Military assaults against the poverty stricken farmers of Afghanistan  
and Haiti, and an Iraqi population struggling for its very survival,  
are part of a long, barbarous tradition going back to slave ships and  
colonial resource wars and will some day, I believe, be seen in that  
context. In the meantime, the agony of millions does not reach our  
ears or eyes, and Prime Minister Harper is busy working the phones to  
shore up the U.S.-led war, seeking more troops and helicopters to  
“finish the job.”

When Canada assisted the British Empire in the Boer War over a  
century ago, it was Québec that led the opposition. It was again  
Québec’s vocal resistance — and former Prime Minister Chrétien’s  
attention to it — that helped keep Canada’s troops out of Iraq.  
Today, it is up to Canadians who can feel the anguish of the Third  
World to speak for the voiceless against Canada’s new government of  
would be conquistadores.


David Orchard is the author of The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries  
of Resistance to American Expansionism. He farms at Borden and  
Choiceland, Saskatchewan. He can be reached at tel 306-652-7095, e- 
mail: davidorchard at sasktel. net   www.davidorchard.com

David Orchard is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global  
Research Articles by David Orchard