Photographs of victims from the U.S. bombing of the Amiriyah bomb shelter
By Matthew Behrens
The
day Joe Biden was inaugurated as U.S. President, the Iraqi people were on my
mind.
A few weeks earlier, Donald Trump had drawn significant
condemnation for granting a pardon to four American Blackwater mercenary
contractors who had infamously murdered 14
Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. Blackwater was a notorious
organization led by Erik Prince, brother of former U.S. Education Secretary
Betsy DeVos.
But the day Trump left office, the airwaves were full of
triumphalist “new day dawning” interviews featuring the blood-stained
architects of and cheerleaders for the past three decades of relentless
Canadian, American, and NATO warfare against the Iraqi people, the same
individuals who had set the stage for the Nisour Square massacre. Among those lauded
on Inauguration Day were former President George W. Bush and General Colin
Powell, whose vicious lies led to the escalation of that war: an illegal 2003
invasion and occupation during which Bush passed Order 17 to
immunize from prosecution any private soldiers caught up in such bloodshed.
Also receiving copious applause that day was Bill Clinton, who
under the guise of enforcing Iraqi “no fly zones” oversaw the bulk of what was
until then the longest U.S. bombing campaign since the war against the people
of Vietnam. His administration also enforced the brutal sanctions against the
Iraqi people that a United Nations humanitarian coordinator deemed genocidal,
killing upwards of 1.5 million people. Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine
Albright (a hero to Deputy
Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland), asked whether the killing of so many
civilians was justified, famously responded: “we
think the price is worth it.”
As I watched the coverage, I felt I was being gaslit. Yes, Trump
was a neofascist nightmare, but how could there by such uncritical and
unquestioning applause for late-in-the-day statements of discomfort about
Trump’s behaviour from the likes of former War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ex-Vice President and torture enthusiast Dick Cheney? On
a day of relief for many given that the twitterer-in-chief was gone, few risked
stepping into the unsavoury role of party pooper to suggest that while one
ranting racist had lost some of his power, systemic racism was still here. This
was clearly evidenced by the celebration of those responsible for the ongoing
torture and murder of the long-suffering people of Iraq, a conveniently
forgotten backdrop whose losses at our hands could not in any way spoil this
magnificent day of American democratic triumphalism.
A Grim Anniversary
Biden’s inaugural fell 30 years and four days after the start of
“Operation Desert Storm,” when
the equivalent of four Hiroshima bombs had already been dropped on Baghdad by
Canadian and other bombers.
Like their American
counterparts, Canadian media and politicians did not mark this anniversary.
Perhaps it would have brought up some uncomfortable connections, as the Prime
Minister who enthusiastically embraced the 1991 war, Brian Mulroney, spent the
last four years supporting
the American bully’s call for increased Canadian war spending and spent time as
a Mar-a-Lago guest.
Mulroney, ever the
fatuous opportunist, changed some of his public colours on November 6, though,
when it appeared Biden would win. In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Mulroney praised Trump, but noted in
comments that came months before the seditious acts of January 6, 2021: “If
anybody did in Canada what [Trump] has just done and has the temerity to run
for public office, I want to tell you the guys with the white coats would come
after you and they would have a powerful case against you.”
Mulroney’s – and by
extension, the Canadian media’s – complete lack of self-awareness were on full
display with that self-serving, “Canadians are different” declaration. Indeed,
a “powerful case” could be made out against Mulroney and Clark for their
contribution to serious crimes against humanity during Iraq War 1.0.
Seeds of Slaughter
Few remember that hot
August day in 1990 when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He seemed
to have cleared the invasion with the American government that had been arming
his regime throughout the 1980s – Donald Rumsfeld famously shook hands
with Hussein while deliveries of chemical weapons made their way to Baghdad –
but failed to recognize the bait and switch that was about to take place.
Almost immediately, the Pentagon, Bush and Mulroney administrations – who were
secretly bemoaning the fall of the Berlin Wall because it meant that calls for
a peace dividend and significant cuts to war budgets were gathering steam –
declared their Iraqi ally a new Hitler and began sending troops overseas.
While Colin Powell had at
that time decried the fact that the U.S. “no longer has the luxury” of having an enemy to prepare
for, he and others now saw that this new development meant gold for weapons
profiteers. Ratcheting up war fever was assisted by the blood-stained Hill
& Knowlton PR group (which created the myth of Kuwaiti babies being ripped from incubators). Hill
& Knowlton's Canadian arm was then run by David MacNaughton (Justin Trudeau's first ambassador to
the U.S.).
While Brian Mulroney was quick to utter self-righteous
pieties about illegal occupations of sovereign territories, the Conservative
government of the day did the exact same thing that summer by sending in 2,600
Canadian troops to occupy sovereign Mohawk land during the Oka crisis. Their
armoured vehicles, helicopters, aerial surveillance equipment, miles of barbed
wire, and countless other means of firepower served to enforce against the
people of Kanesatake the same kind of
sanctions the Iraqi people were about to face, cutting off power and trying to
deny the entry of food, water, medicines, and clothing to the Indigenous land
protectors behind the wire. The military bolstered an additional 4,000
paramilitary SQ members, numbers that dwarfed the initial commitment of 900
Canadian troops sent to take on Hussein.
In a "post-Cold War" world, Canada's military
and its war industries also welcomed a new enemy, and while Indigenous
resistance has always provided a major raision
d'etre for Canadian Forces and related state security agencies (witness the
massive, barely reported Gustafsen Lake crisis of
1995), having an overseas target proved invaluable. Indigenous lands were the
first testing ground for weapons systems used against the Iraqi people, from
fighter bombers who dropped 1,000-pound "dummy" bombs over the Innu
territory of Nitassinan to cruise missiles tested on Cree Territory. The very
first time that cruise missiles were used – their inertial guidance systems had
been built with a hugely controversial contract at Toronto’s Litton Systems
during the 1980s – was during the 1991
war against Iraq.
Meanwhile, Canadian universities helped with some of
the more horrific forms of firepower. For example, fuel air explosives, known
as a "poor man's atom bomb," invert gravity and are designed to suck
people out of air raid shelters; they were researched at McGill University, which continues to be a major war research contributor. Canada's chemical weapons
testing field at Suffield, Alberta, had been used by a Belgian company to
experiment with long-range artillery shells that were sold to the Iraqis during
the 1980s.
Canada Eager for War
From the moment Kuwait was invaded in 1990, Canada was
eager for war, taking every conceivable step to prevent a negotiated solution
while lobbying UN Security Council members to authorize force. Then external
affairs minister Joe Clark said Parliament need not be recalled if the perceived
need to go to war was imminent. And while the narrative of sanctions as a tool
to force Hussein out of Kuwait was trumpeted by the U.S.-led coalition, the Toronto Star reported that "when
Canada was committed to no more than enforcing a trade embargo against Iraq,
Ottawa was calmly setting aside funds for a full-blown war." Some $500
million in federal cuts to social programs were initiated to help pay for the
war, and the government resurrected legislation allowing it to control wartime
production, with General Motors in London (the predecessor to General Dynamics
Land Systems, currently pumping out $15 billion in weapons exports for the
Saudi wars of repression at home and against the people of Yemen) announcing it
could switch from civilian work to military production of armoured personnel
carriers at a moment's notice.
Clark also distinguished himself by naming as
"counterproductive" any pledges that Allied forces would not use
nuclear weapons against Iraq. On October 26, 1990, he declared Canada would go
to war whether the UN authorized it or not. In November, the government ordered
800 body bags (with a weak-kneed NDP only questioning the high number of the
bags). With the outbreak of war, General John de Chastelain cheerily declared,
"We are now at war and the distinction between whether our roles are
offensive or defensive is immaterial.”
Canadian bombers began their runs over Iraq on January
20, 1991, with General Gerard Theriault reminding Toronto Star readers "the destructive ability of one CF-18
[is] as great as an attack by hundreds of bombers during World War II."
After the equivalent of one and a half Hiroshima bombs was dropped on Baghdad
the first night of the war, the NDP's John Brewin stood and declared: “The
first feeling is one of concern for the safety of the pilots and sympathy for
them. We admire the courage they will need in a very difficult assignment.”
Keeping in mind the Iraqis had little anti-aircraft capacity and half the
country's population was under the age of 15, Brewin's remarks were hardly a
voice of principled opposition. (Despite the deadly capacity of the CF-18,
Canada is currently considering investing scores of billions of dollars in a
“new generation” of bombers.)
Meanwhile, Joe Clark proclaimed, “Some wars can be a
point of principle; this is one of those wars.” He insisted that the Geneva
Convention protocols to which Canada was a signatory (concerning
"excessive loss of civilian life") were not being violated. Clark
then fumbled his way through another statement, the like of which he was quite
famous for, when he declared: “If there is one priority, one lesson, which the
world must learn from this war, is that an unrestricted arms trade in the
region is no longer acceptable and constitutes a threat to all members of the
United Nations.” Fine words, perhaps, but not matched by the actions of a
government that would very shortly change the Criminal Code at the behest of
arms manufacturers Diemaco (now known as Colt Canada, located in Kitchener) and
London’s General Motors to allow for the import and possession of automatic
weapons (crucial to the signing of the first Saudi armoured brigade vehicles
contract in 1991). Indeed, over the past three decades, Canadian weapons
exports have grown to the point where, in 2020,
Canada was the second largest exporter of weapons to the region.
Anti-Arab Racism
One of the “strongest” NDP stands during the slaughter
of the Iraqi people urged people across the land to send Valentine's messages
to the troops. Meanwhile, Ontario NDP Premier Bob Rae, despite closing hospital
beds due to budget cuts, opened up several spaces for troop casualties, while
his government discussed security measures to deal with “terrorist” threats.
Needless to say, anti-Arab sentiment and violence ran high (as documented in
Zuhair Kashmeri's book, The Gulf Within: Canadian Arabs, Racism, &
The Gulf War). When the Toronto
Sun produced unsubstantiated scare headlines like “Iraqi Agents Here”,
falsely claiming a dozen saboteurs were lurking in the city, the results were
predictable: among many such incidents of violence and vandalism, an Arabic
teenager at Father Henry Carr High School was beaten by 10 white students as
passersby stopped to watch.
Even at the municipal level, NDP partisans like Jack
Layton joined in the celebration of slaughter, with the late federal NDP leader
(then a Toronto City Councillor) refusing the requests of peace groups not to
appear on the reviewing stand for the returning troops’ Bay Street victory
parade.
The horrific war crimes committed against the Iraqis
continued directly for a good three months, followed by a 12-year-long daily grind
of aerial warfare termed enforcement of no-fly zones, and the genocidal
sanctions enforced by the Canadian navy, which spent over $1 billion ensuring
that medicines, school supplies, and essentials to get water purification and
electricity running would never make it to the people of Iraq. Then came the
2003 escalation of the war: a bloody invasion and occupation with major
Canadian participation that continues in various forms to this day, with
hundreds of Canadian troops still occupying the country under the rationale of
providing training for military and police forces that are regularly implicated in enforced disappearances,
torture, and murder of protesters, among many other crimes.
While Canadian academics, media and politicians
continue to propagate the myth that
Prime Minister Jean Chretien bravely stood up to Bush and refused to take part
in the invasion, the historical record is clear that Canada played a
significant role. Indeed, as CBC reported a decade ago, the very same day Chretien
informed the House of Commons that Canada would allegedly not be involved in the invasion, Canadian officials met with their U.S. counterparts in
Ottawa to promise that Canadian naval and air forces could
"discreetly" be deployed to assist the U.S.-led slaughter. In a
briefing note for the State Department, a U.S. official noted: “While for
domestic political reasons… the [Government of Canada] has decided not to join
in a U.S. coalition of the willing,… they are also prepared to be as helpful as
possible in the military margins.”
When Justin Trudeau was
elected in 2015 with the promise to end what had to that moment been a fairly
extended Canadian bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, initiated under the
Harper regime, he failed to act promptly, and hundreds of additional “sorties”
were flown before that part of the military campaign was officially brought to
an end. Six years ago this month, Team Trudeau worked diligently to cover up the CF-18 slaughter
of some 30 Iraqi civilians, an air strike that only came to light eight months
later when The Globe and Mail reported on
documents released not by Ottawa but by the Pentagon. They indicated that “[t]he
Canadian military made it clear to the United States shortly after the alleged
incident that it felt no obligation under the Geneva Conventions to probe what
happened, the Pentagon records show. 'It should be noted that Canadian Joint
Operations Command [legal advisers] opinion is that, under the Law of Armed
Conflict (LOAC) there are no obligations for the Canadian Armed Forces to
conduct an investigation.’”
Preserving Memory
As I turned off my TV on inauguration night, sickened
by the triumphalism and invocation of allegedly better times to come when
America could “once again count on allies” to wage wars, I thought about the
408 women and children who were incinerated when two U.S. 2,000-pound laser-guided “smart” bombs were deliberately
dropped on top of them in February, 1991, their shadows permanently etched into
the concrete like images from Hiroshima.
It became a war memorial where Umm Greyda, who lost 8 of her children in
that bombing, moved in and acted as a caretaker.
I often think about what it must be like to live and shiver with
fear under the bombs. While many in Canada have experience of that terror as
refugees from countries where Canadian-made weapons are frequently “delivered,”
most of us are far too removed to think about, much less imagine, what it
looks, feels, and smells like. That distancing, which also decreases the
possibility for empathy and solidarity with a people who have been demonized
before we murder them, has long been a priority for those who wage “modern
warfare,” and prevents us from recognizing – and acting upon the fact – that
our tax dollars are used every day in the slaughter of people in countries like
Yemen.
The 1991 attack on Iraq was specifically designed to
prevent such connection with and empathy for the victims of our violence. Military briefings of the time portrayed a
“clean” war that looked as harmless as a high-tech Nintendo game. Generals
cracked jokes while showing footage of bombs hitting targets that looked no
different than animated gaming figures at a video arcade.
During such bleak times, it is critical to look to those who keep
memory alive, like Umm Greyda. They remind us of our responsibility to the
vulnerable and targeted, as well as the power we have to change individual
lives or, at the very least, provide some hope in troubled times. They also
remind us that no matter how many years separate war criminals from the crimes
they have committed, we must never forget – and always seek to hold
accountable – those who signed the paperwork, ordered the torture, approved the
bombings, and concluded that “the price was worth it.”
