Prime Minister Stephen Harper St

Prime Minister Stephen Harper States He Will Decide War With Iran in Secret With “Allies”!

No Mention of Consulting the Canadian People or Parliament?

Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism

www.FocusOnSocialism.ca

January 17, 2012


A convenient thing about being Prime Minister of Canada is that handlers can arrange a CBC primetime interview and be confident that regardless of how banal the questions and how preposterous the answers the event will be dutifully spun to the gullible as credible.

The Prime Minister with a straight face told Peter Mansbridge in an exclusive CBC interview that Iran “frightens him.”  Claiming it was "beyond dispute" that Iran is developing nuclear weapons because Iranians are religious fanatics and prepared without hesitation to use such weapons to achieve religious or political purposes.[1] Peter Mansbrige let him get away with that racist and bizarre canard.

If one missed who Prime Minister Harper was referring to one might have concluded he was talking about Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, far right US Republican presidential candidates, all of whom proudly proclaim their religious fanaticism and state their readiness to bomb Iran with our without Congressional approval.[2]

The Prime Minister’s right-wing US Republican political kin aspire to be President of the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons on civilian populations, maintains hundreds of nuclear weapons on hair trigger standby and can deliver them anywhere on the planet via a global satellite system of delivery interconnected with about 800 military bases and nuclear equipped fleets, one of which cruises near the coastal waters of Iran. Both the US and NATO maintain a preemptive first strike nuclear doctrine.

Prime Minister Harper, touted as an astute politician and promoted as having international credentials, simply avoids addressing the possibility that the Iranian government may have a legitimate concern about the threat posed by the USA to its vital security, economic interests, its sovereignty and its right to sell its oil to whomever it wishes.    

Prime Minister Harper believes such a right only accrues to Canada. Sounding downright patriotic the Prime Minister asserted in his interview with Mansbridge that Canada will not tolerate US interference in the government’s plans to facilitate the export of Alberta oil to Asian markets via the Gateway pipeline and remarked caustically that US environmentalist interference was tantamount to considering Canada as a “national park”. One would have thought given such a defense of Canadian sovereignty that the Prime Minister would understand better the concern of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamadinejad who rejects the US claim that the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman should be considered US lakes.

Prime Minister Harper with the assistance of the likes of Peter Mansbridge is engaged in fear mongering. Massive US-NATO retaliatory power ranged against Iran is comforting to the Prime Ministers adoring philistine circle that believes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if not deposed in another NATO regime change war will force Canadians to convert to Islam, steal all RRSP savings, ban Tim Hortons and compel the Toronto Maple Leafs to re-locate to Tehran. What else can one say except to ridicule the Prime Minister’s ludicrous double standard? 

Prime Minister Harper is making it all up for his fans. He is simply attempting once again to prepare the Canadian people for another G7-NATO war, again against an oil rich Middle Eastern state that poses no threat to Canada or its people.

Prime Minister Harper is reckless in the extreme in his statements. Standing beside President Obama in Washington last December he said in his usual unctuous style that US enemies cannot be friends of Canada.

Where does that put the Canadian people if the Prime Minister decides at Brussels and not in Parliament to once again propel the country into another NATO regime change war this time with Iran?

What are some the realities?  

The people of Iran are dependent on 80% of their country’s revenue from oil exports, 20% of which goes to the EU, 450,000 barrels a day to Italy, Greece and Spain all members of NATO, all ostensibly Canada’s allies. One wonders why Peter Mansbridge, a media icon, wasn’t astute enough to ask who it is that Prime Minister Harper consults with in secret about a war on Iran? Does it include Spain, Italy and Greece all NATO members and allies and all dependent on Iranian oil? Are these countries mired in an EU financial crisis, prepared to go to war with Iran and if they aren’t and oppose a US-NATO attack on Iran because it will endanger their oil imports, will they become Canada’s enemies?

One wonders what the Italian-Canadian, Spanish-Canadian and Greek-Canadian communities will say about a NATO war that endangers the oil supplies of their homelands?

The foreign policy of the Harper Conservative government is not a Canadian policy it is a NATO war policy. Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative government has no peace policy. The NATO war policy is based on a long standing US imperialist strategy to overthrow all oil rich regimes in the Middle East that do not abjectly accede to US foreign policy diktat.

A Canadian government representing the prevailing sentiment among Canadians for peace and friendship, mutual beneficial trade without political sanctions and threats, with all peoples, regardless of the economic and political system they choose, could be making a major contribution to world peace and would serve Canada’s interests.

The Harper Conservative government is not that government. The Conservative Government is a NATO war government. It has no independent foreign and peace policy based on the interests of the Canadian people and independent of NATO and its principal partner, the USA.

What is inexplicable is that there is not a single opposition party in Parliament that has the courage to say so and advocate a Canadian foreign policy of peace in opposition to Prime Minister Harper’s foreign policy of NATO regime change wars.

If Canadians are to have peace we need a government that promotes it. That means extricating Canada from NATO and the sooner the better.