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Posted on 10/03/2002 6:48:58 AM PDT by zapiks44
OTTAWA - An Ontario Liberal MP set off a heated debate in the Commons yesterday for comparing any U.S. attack on Iraq to the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor and Nazi aggression in Europe during the Second World War.
And another Liberal backbencher fuelled opposition outrage by describing Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War as "a progressive country."
During a debate on Iraq late Monday, Bonnie Brown, the MP for Oakville, suggested a pre-emptive U.S. strike on Saddam Hussein would be akin to the actions of the Japanese empire's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Military experts said her grasp of history is flawed.
"When we moved in World War Two as Allies, we were moving against the idea of one nation aggressively invading and taking over another. This is exactly what George Bush is now proposing," Ms. Brown said.
The third-term MP also drew an analogy between possible U.S. bombing of Iraq and the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941.
"If he does go ahead and strikes Iraq, will he have to rewrite history so that the other pre-emptive strike, Pearl Harbor, is no longer described as an atrocity?"
The lesson of Pearl Harbor, Ms. Brown said, is that pre-emptive strikes are unacceptable.
"Today George Bush is trying to justify the concept and the use of the pre-emptive strike. A pre-emptive attack against Iraq is not self-defence. It is an act that is against international law, including the United Nations charter."
In a lengthy speech denouncing the U.S. President, Ms. Brown said he had provided no evidence that Iraq posed a threat and said an attack on Iraq would be "insulting" to Second World War veterans.
In an interview yesterday, Ms. Brown said she wanted to challenge "the black-and-white view of the world which seems to be the way George Bush sees things."
She denied attempting to link Mr. Bush with Hitler or the Nazis.
Stephen Harper, the Canadian Alliance leader, condemned Ms. Brown's comments as "extreme anti-Americanism" and said they would damage relations with the U.S. government.
"I think these comments are outrageous. I think they explain why the government has been all over the map on this issue, because it is severely divided," Mr. Harper said. The Liberal government "continues to harbour within its ranks people with extreme anti-American positions and anti-allied positions."
During Question Period in the House, the Canadian Alliance asked Bill Graham, the Foreign Affairs Minister, whether Ms. Brown's remarks reflected government policy.
"Analogies that were made on this side of the House were made to say that if we choose unilateralism and if we choose to attack in circumstances which could be perceived as aggression, we defy the memory of those who resisted aggression in the past," Mr. Graham said. "That is a valid position. It is consistent with world international law."
Mr. Graham rejected Alliance suggestions that Ms. Brown was comparing a possible attack on Iraq with Pearl Harbor.
"That is no more the position of this party than it is an accurate description of what the honourable member said in the House."
Military analyst David Bercuson said Pearl Harbor was just one part of a long war Japan was fighting for control of Asia in which millions had already died. A U.S. attack against Iraq would be a strike against a murderous tyrant who might use weapons of mass destruction, he said. "If you saw someone coming at you with a bloody, dripping axe in their hand and you had a gun, would it be pre-emptive to shoot them?"
Mr. Bercuson, director of the Centre of Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, said while Ms. Brown might consider the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack as the start of Japanese aggression, the Chinese didn't.
"If she is really trying to make an analogy between an attack on Iraq and Pearl Harbor then the woman has no idea whatsoever about the war in the Pacific, the war on China, the Rape of Nanking, the destruction of Manchuria," he said.
'The Japanese were already in a full scale war against China. Millions of Chinese had already died because of Japanese aggression.
"Japan was already trying to conquer Asia by force. The Japanese decided that if they were going to war then the logical step was to destroy America at the outset of the war. Japan attacked the U.S. in order to make it possible to finish a war of aggression that it had already started."
Major-General (Ret.) Lewis MacKenzie, the Canadian who commanded UN troops in Sarajevo, said unlike the U.S. with Iraq, Japan gave no warning of an attack.
Also during the Commons debate on Iraq, Colleen Beaumier, the MP for Brampton West-Mississauga, praised Saddam's Iraq as a "progressive" secular nation that has suffered enormous hardship since the Gulf War.
"Prior to the Star Wars of 1991, Iraq was a country like all others in the Middle East under a dictatorship. However, it was a progressive country with health care for all and education and human rights for women, which is far more advanced than other friendly Middle Eastern countries," Ms. Beaumier said. "It was a secular state offering a relative degree of equality for all its citizens."
Ms. Beaumier added, "that is not to say I support Saddam Hussein" but the human rights abuses that occurred under UN sanctions in post-Gulf War Iraq were "far more vile and hideous than they were anywhere else."
© Copyright 2002 National Post
Huh? Did the Dark Side win?
Regards, Ivan
And that is our fault how? Saddam can rebuild his country anytime he wants. All he has to do is prove he's no longer making WMD or threaten other countries.
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