"!NO,~GWB BMD WMD,~ EH!"

Ingmar Lee
March 1st, 2005

Canadians across the political spectrum are very grateful that our previous federal government, for all its short-comings, had the sense to listen to the vast majority and stay out of the US invasion of Iraq. In spite of great pressure from the corporate media, and the subsequent insult and ridicule of our country from American war-mongers, not participating was the clearly right thing to do. Around the world, a vast majority of countries chose not to participate, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has described the American assault as being “illegal under international law.” The world now watches in abject horror, as do about half of US citizens, as George W. Bush’s Iraq-attack venture devolves into a morass of destruction, corruption, torture and massacre with no end anywhere in sight. Now Canada has rejected American militarism once again and has refused to participate in George Bush’s “Ballistic Missile Defence” (BMD) scheme. Canada has sent an unequivocal message to Bush: “We are not interested in your apocalyptic global domination project.”

The American military and its ever dwindling ‘coalition’ of the coerced are now being surely and systematically defeated in Iraq. An outraged Iraqi resistance is building an ever-increasing guerrilla campaign to rid their country of the invaders. More than 1400 American soldiers are dead, not counting their coerced collaborators, or their hired-gun mercenaries who are also dying in droves. American-trained Iraqi Security Forces are being slaughtered by the thousands by resistance fighters, who see them as nothing more than traitors. When these forces refused to participate in the mass slaughter and destruction of Fallujah, the Bush administration labelled these Iraqi-army trainees as 'cowards and wimps.'

To date, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians are estimated dead in this latest American assault, (Lancet Medical Journal) with scores and scores of innocents maimed and sickened and made homeless. Recently, US Defence Secretary Donald ‘Rubber-Stamp’ Rumsfeld crowed about the awesome power and reach of the US Military, while recruitment centres across America struggle to fill the ranks of 150,000 exhausted troops who are now required to complete multiple tours of duty. Desertions are up, and while voluntary enlistment plummets, domestic reserve forces are sent to Iraq and the draft seems imminent. Meanwhile North Korea openly flaunts its nuclear capability with impunity, and Russia sends off nuclear fuels to Iran.

Bush’s approach to global domination by the overwhelming use of military force is an unmitigated failure which is bankrupting the country and ruining the reputation of the USA. His policies are greatly endangering American citizens and curtailing their ability to travel freely around the world. On a trip to Europe recently, the only people I met wearing Canadian flags were Americans. What’s happening in Iraq is akin to trying to kill mosquitoes with a sledgehammer. Sure, you wreck the place but the wind of the swing simply blows them out of the way. Then they come back and sting you ~and some of them carry malaria.

In a world where the course of history can be changed with a few fifty-cent box-cutters by a small well-organized group, Ballistic Missile Defence is an outrageously stupid, astronomically expensive and pathetically futile undertaking. Untold billions of dollars depleted from the economy of the world's largest debtor nation have even failed to catch the single major perpetrator of the 911 attacks. Motivated people can simply drive a truck into any one of hundreds of lightly guarded nuclear powerplants across the USA to great destabilizing effect. In the abundantly unrealistic event of a state-launched nuclear attack of North America, a successful BMD defence would see tons of exploded nuclear material raining down on Canada, -the ultimate dirty bomb. To see what the effects of this might be, readers should Google “US depleted uranium atrocities in Iraq.”

Contrary to all the bleating in Canada’s corporate media, by rejecting George Bush’s latest BMD arms race, Canada is actually standing together with a majority of Americans who are increasingly horrified by what this megalomaniac is doing around thhe world in their name. If the USA and the world is to survive the George Bush era, it will be because peace-loving people around the world stood up with a resounding NO to the global terrorizing menace, George W. Bush.



Ingmar Lee is a student of Asian and Environmental Studies at University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada