[SOC] Letter to Paul Cellucci from prize winning Canadian author

[Lloyd Lachow]

To: Ambassador Paul Cellucci, embassy of the united
states of america,
490 sussex dr., ottawa, ont., canada
 
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 u.s. 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 being diplomatic.
 
The primary threat to canadian security has always
been the United States....
 
Do you remember manifest destiny, the 1840s U.S.
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 that rallied
Americans to threaten an invasion in 1902 over the
Alaska boundary? Yours is the only country that 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 the second world war, 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 Sept. 11, 2001, when
Canadian communities took in, on an instant's notice,
40,000 passengers from U.S. 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 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 U.S. 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 Sept. 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 U.S.
invasion which stripped Mexico of 40 per cent 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.
 
Sincerely,
 
Silver Donald Cameron
 
award-winning author silver donald cameron lives in
d'escousse, cape breton, nova scotia
 
copyright � 2003 the halifax herald limited


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