RECOMMEND: Canada’s No To Iraq War: What Leaders Said In 2003 (PHOTOS)
Click on http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/19/canada-iraq-war-2003-what-leaders-said_n_2901483.html
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Kerry writes: I hope Canadians will pause for a moment and take notice of the tenth anniversary of a moment that made Canada into “Canada”. This moment was due to Prime Minister Jean Chretien. If we had been under the present repressive regime there is no doubt that we would be in different straits today and much Canadian blood and money would have been spilled in this illegal and useless war. Stephen Harper and Lyin Brian would have led us into the thick of it.
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TORONTO — Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien’s decision to break with U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a very public and rare expression of Canadian sovereignty that many critics here feared would jeopardize U.S.-Canada relations for years.
Privately for Chrétien, it was also one of the defining moments of his 40-year political career, including a decade as prime minister –- a bold declaration of independence and one that many Canadians supported despite this country’s record of joining previous U.S. military efforts, including the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan War and Korean War.
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LOOKING FURTHER ON THE HUFF POST PAGE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/19/canada-iraq-war-2003-what-leaders-said_n_2901483.html
- There is a video below the photos, “Iraq 10 years later: Who got it wrong?”. It is a valuable look at the propaganda machine, and at “the wisdom” of a relatively small group of people who do not tolerate diversity and independence of thought in decision-making.
- From further down the page:
Arianna Huffington: 10 Years Later: Looking Back on the Iraq War So We Can Clearly Look Forward
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” It’s one of Milan Kundera’s most famous lines, from his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It’s one worth keeping in mind as we approach March 20, the 10th anniversary of one of the biggest disasters in the history of the United States. That was the day George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a team of others — along with much of Washington and a very complicit mainstream media — took the nation to war against Iraq. The devastating consequences of that war will continue for decades, but a full accounting has still yet to happen. Allowing the toxic mixture of lies, deception and rationalizations that led to that war to go unchallenged makes it more likely that we will make similar tragic mistakes in the future. So I hope we can use this moment to assess what really happened, to look back in order to look forward.
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I am reminded, regarding
– lack of diversity and independence of thought in decision-making, and
– “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”:
Please see Who is smarter – a group of people or one smart person? The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
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TEXT FROM Canada’s No To Iraq War: What Leaders Said In 2003 (In case it goes missing later!)
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/19/canada-iraq-war-2003-what-leaders-said_n_2901483.html
Let’s go back.
Let’s go back to March of 2003, when two men who will be studied in history books stood — like so many Canadians — at opposite ends of a spectacularly divisive issue.
One on side: Jean Chrétien. A lion in winter, he was less than a year away from retirement.
On the other: Stephen Harper. At just 43, he lead the coalition of Reform MPs and former Progressive Conservatives known as the Canadian Alliance.
Just 18 months earlier, the attacks of 9/11 prompted Canada to join the war on terror in Afghanistan. By 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush was pushing a preemptive strike in Iraq without the approval of the United Nations.
A “coalition of the willing” was being forged. Canadians from coast to coast wondered if we would be a part of it.
On March 17, Chrétien finally gave an answer.
The Iraq decision was a defining moment for Chrétien and arguably what he will be most remembered for.
As for the man who stood across from him that fateful day? Of course, he would eventually win a majority with a united Conservative Party.
But not before admitting in the 2008 federal election that the war in Iraq was “absolutely an error.”