With Fallujah in Ruins, Protests Across Canada Condemn Bush Visit

From Socialist Voice, December 5, 2004

By Roger Annis and John Riddell

U.S. President George Bush met an angry reception during his state visit to Canada November 30-December 1, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in many cities to protest Washington’s wars.

The largest protest took place in Ottawa on November 30, where close to 20,000 people took part in a day of action to condemn the U.S./British occupation of Iraq and to denounce Bush as a war criminal. The following day, more than 5,000 people marched in Halifax during a 90-minute stopover by Bush.

In Vancouver, British Columbia, two protests took place on November 30, both organized by the Stopwar coalition. A noon march drew 1,000 people, the majority of whom were delegates to the annual B.C. Federation of Labour convention. Five hundred people attended an evening rally.

The city of Ottawa resembled an armed camp for the 24 hours of Bush’s visit. Streets were closed, helicopters hovered constantly, police in riot gear were everywhere, and police snipers occupied rooftops. Actions were held throughout the day in an effort to confront Bush as he moved about the city. A rally of 15,000 took place on Parliament Hill in the late afternoon and evening. Buses brought participants to the city from Toronto, Montreal, and other cities across Ontario and Quebec.

Bush adjusts schedule

The prospect of large protests caused several changes in the Bush schedule. He did not speak to the Canadian parliament—normally the custom during a state visit. His handlers worried that some members of parliament might interrupt his speaking and condemn his policies.

The visit to Ottawa was cut short in order to stop in the east-coast city of Halifax for a public relations performance in front of a select gathering of political and military figures. The ostensible purpose of Bush’s speech was to thank families in eastern Canada who took stranded airline passengers into their homes in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, his speech was a vigorous defense of the U.S. “war on terror” and policy of preemptive aggression. Violating diplomatic protocol, Bush also tossed out a challenge to the Canadian government to join in the “missile defense” program.

Several of the families who offered post-September 11 hospitality spoke out against this show. Speaking to a news conference on November 29 beneath a black banner reading, “He’s not welcome,” Anne Derrick, a lawyer whose family took in passengers, said, “Mr. Bush has squandered the sympathy earned by the U.S. after September 11. I hope he gets the message during his visit here that we will not be cheerleaders for his administration’s brutal foreign policies.”

Marchers in Halifax carried signs saying, “Stranded passengers always welcome; preemptive wars are not!” While the main theme of the march was opposition to the Iraq war, marchers also condemned Bush’s opposition to abortion rights for women and his government’s attack on democratic rights at home.

B.C. Federation of Labor President Jim Sinclair was the main speaker at the noon rally in Vancouver. He condemned the U.S. occupation of Iraq and called for withdrawal of occupation troops. He also denounced the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel and the erection of its apartheid wall on Palestinian land.

Ottawa rally

The main rally in Ottawa heard speeches from Jack Layton, head of the New Democratic Party, a spokesperson of the Bloc Quebecois, Denise Veilleux of the Union des forces progressistes (a left-wing party in Quebec), Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish, several representatives of Arab-Canadian organizations, and others.

Veilleux evoked strong applause from the crowd when she explained that the occupation in Iraq results from an international system of domination and exploitation that must be changed.

Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish received the strongest applause. She was recently expelled from the ranks of Liberal Party members of parliament by Prime Minister Paul Martin for her outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq and the new anti-ballistic missile program that the U.S. government is pressing Ottawa to sign onto.

Jack Layton spoke on the proposed missile program and concerns about the effects of global warming. He made no comment on the war and occupation in Iraq. Just prior to Bush’s visit, Layton had failed to mention Iraq among the steps he proposed the U.S. government take to “make the world a safer place.”

For more than a year, the NDP leadership has downplayed the party’s opposition to the Iraq war and focused instead on themes of defending Canadian sovereignty. It is from mainly this angle that Layton and other party leaders Jack Layton oppose Washington’s “missile defense” program.

Canada’s rulers tighten ties with Washington

Bush’s visit was first and foremost an initiative by Canada’s ruling elite to strengthen its support for U.S. war policies in Iraq and elsewhere. Unfortunately, speakers in the anti-Bush said little about Ottawa’s complicity in the war drive. It is vital that the antiwar movement in Canada strongly oppose the warmakers here at home—otherwise it will be robbed of its potential political impact.

And the federal government has taken many steps over the past year to increase its active support U.S.-led wars and occupations:

• Canada has announced it will join the U.S.-led effort to arrange a national “election” in Iraq in January. This electoral sham, to be staged under the control and watchful eye of occupation forces, is a centerpiece of efforts by the U.S. and Britain to divide and demobilize Iraqi resistance to occupation.
• Canada is also an enthusiastic partner in the imperialist occupation in Afghanistan. It committed 3,000 troops there earlier this year, (since reduced to 700) in the name of helping the U.S. and Britain with their occupation in Iraq.
• In February, Canada joined the U.S.-led intervention that overthrew the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. Canada’s national police force is a part of the ongoing international occupation force there.
• The Canadian government has signaled its interest in signing the proposed ballistic “missile defense” agreement with the U.S. If successful, this armament program would enable the U.S. military to achieve a long-cherished dream: the capacity to launch a devastating nuclear attack on a rival power while absorbing only “tolerable” retaliation on U.S. soil. Obviously, this effort can only escalate the world arms race.
• On the day of Bush’s departure from Canada, Ottawa carried out a decisive shift at the United Nations in its support to the imperialist state of Israel. It voted against three resolutions there that recognize the national rights of the Palestinian people. For many years, Canada abstained on such votes at the UN. Only three other countries of significance voted against the resolutions—the United States, Australia, and Israel.

Destruction of Fallujah

Bush arrived in Ottawa in the shadow of the destruction of the city of Fallujah in Iraq by U.S. occupation forces. Details of the gruesome toll of the U.S. assault on the city, launched on November 7, continue to accumulate.

A massive aerial and artillery bombardment preceded the invasion. Bombardments continued during the two-week assault. U.S. forces prevented military-age men from leaving the city, barricading them into what then became a free-fire zone. Anyone in the city after the invasion began was a target of U.S. snipers.

Most dwellings, commercial buildings, and infrastructure have been destroyed or heavily damaged, and the destruction by occupation forces is continuing as they conduct house to house searches for anti-occupation fighters. “The marines try to avoid ambushes,” describes a correspondent in the December 1 Independent newspaper in Britain, “by blasting holes in side walls instead of coming in through the front door. They throw grenades into every room before entering.”

More ominously, the al-Jazeera news network and the Daily Mirror newspaper of Britain have reported the use of napalm in Fallujah, a chemical weapon banned by international convention in 1980. The Mirror reports that several Labour Party members of the British parliament have denounced the use of napalm and demanded an explanation from Prime Minister Tony Blair.

U.S. pays heavy price

Fallujah was an important material and political base of the opposition to foreign occupation, and it has been lost for the time being. Similar large-scale attacks are underway against other centers of resistance in the country.

The U.S. military claims to have killed 1,200 “insurgents” in Fallujah. The real number is, according to many accounts, considerably less. A Red Cross official in the city estimated 800 civilian deaths. Resistance continues in the city, including in areas supposedly “cleared” by U.S. forces.

The vast majority of anti-occupation fighters in Fallujah succeeded in withdrawing to fight another day. Occupation casualties in dead and wounded were heavy—more than 10%, by U.S. count, of the approximately 6,000 U.S. soldiers thrown into the battle.

Meanwhile, plans to create a compliant and reliable Iraqi army and police service are in tatters. Few Iraqi soldiers were used in Fallujah. In Mosul, the third largest city in the country, an uprising of Iraqi patriots took control of the city in the opening days of the Fallujah assault. The carefully nurtured pro-U.S. police force of 5,000 in that city disappeared—most resigned or joined the patriotic forces.

Each day in Iraq, there are scores of attacks on occupation forces. U.S. combat deaths in November were 135, equaling the previous monthly high, April 2004. Since the invasion, 1,250 U.S. soldiers have died and 9,300 have been wounded. As a result of the worsening attacks, the U.S. is increasing the number of troops by 12,000, to a total of 150,000.

The destruction of Fallujah brought the U.S. no closer to its goal of subduing the Iraqi people. Three hundred thousand people were driven from their homes and their city. A New York Times correspondent wrote December 1 (with probably unconscious irony), “Military officials…face an unusual challenge: how to win back the confidence of the people whose city they have just destroyed. Their task will be made harder by the need to deter returning insurgents, who will try to sabotage the reconstruction with attacks.”

The murders of several injured and unarmed Iraqis that were caught on camera and shown on U.S. television during the battle give a glimpse of the reign of terror that prevails in the city. Those revelations, and those from this past summer earlier this year depicting the torture of Iraqi prisoners in the country’s prisons, underscore the impossibility for the occupation forces to win the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people.

Occupiers sow divisions among Iraqis

While the U.S. claims of victory in Fallujah ring hollow, it did achieve a political goal that eluded it in the preceding offensive there in April of this year. At that time, massive protest inside Iraq, including by forces within the Shia community, put a halt to an offensive against Fallujah. This time, important sections of the Shia religious and political hierarchy stood aside as U.S. battle plans unfolded. The Shia establishment is anxious to participate in the election scheduled for January 2005. They expect to win, and to share in the spoils of governing.

In northern Iraq, the U.S. has achieved a measure of support from leaders of the main political parties of the Kurdish population by tolerating—for now—de facto Kurdish regional autonomy. Washington’s stated goal is to end Kurdish sovereignty, but it is unable to act on that goal for the time being. (See Socialist Voice #14)

Massive protests needed

The U.S. is in Iraq for the long haul. It has built a series of permanent military bases and has no plans to leave unless forced to do so. The generals are prepared to accept substantial casualties among their troops, who, recruited from the poorest layers of U.S. society, are deemed expendable. The U.S. intends to use its overwhelming military power to wear down the will to resist among the Iraqi people. So far, it has made little headway. But Washington hopes that divisions among Iraqi communities to enable it to crush them one by one.

As in Vietnam three decades ago, driving out the occupiers will be primarily a political process, in which Iraqis find the path to unity against the invaders, while working people (including soldiers) in the U.S. and internationally conclude that they, too, are losers from the devastating assault on Iraq and must act to bring it to an end.

Demonstrations like those in Canada during the Bush visit, and the larger and more militant ones that greeted him recently in Chile, are the best help that antiwar activists can provide to the Iraqi people as they struggle to lift the boot of imperialist occupation from their necks and free their country.

–Socialist Voice thanks Richard Fidler for a report on the Ottawa protests.

The 2004 Election and the Left: Some Lessons from Quebec

From Socialist Voice, September 20, 2004. Also published in Canadian Dimension, September 1, 2004

Editors’ Note: The following article first appeared in the August-September issue of Relay, A Socialist Project Review. It is reprinted with permission of Relay and Richard Fidler. To subscribe to Relay, send a $15 cheque payable to Socialist Project to P.O. Box 85, Station E, Toronto ON M6H 4E1. Richard Fidler is an Ottawa member of both the Socialist Project and the UFP. – Roger Annis and John Riddell

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By Richard Fidler

A few thoughts on the June 28 federal election, focused on the Quebec results and their implications for the left in the Rest of Canada.

1. The sovereignty movement is here to stay

This was the fourth consecutive federal election in which the Bloc Québécois has emerged as the dominant party in Francophone Quebec. And the sixth consecutive election in which the federal Liberals, Canada’s “natural governing party,” failed to win a plurality let alone a majority among Quebec’s Francophone voters. The Bloc received 300,000 more votes than it got in 2000; rumours of its imminent demise proved greatly exaggerated.

Quebec has produced nationalist splinter parties in the past: Henri Bourassa’s Parti Nationaliste, the anticonscription Bloc Populaire in the 1940s, Réal Caouette’s rural Créditistes. But none with the longevity and popular support of the Bloc Québécois, not to mention the Parti québécois. Throughout most of the 20th century, until the 1980s, Quebecers, as a minority people within Canada, tended to vote overwhelmingly with the party in power in Ottawa. That was how they could exert maximum influence within the federal system of government, the reasoning went. Now, however, the myth of “French power” within the federal government has been largely abandoned.

One obvious explanation for this change in traditional voting patterns, of course, lies in the fallout from the unilateral patriation of the Constitution in 1982 and the failure to repair that error (Meech, Charlottetown). The roots go much deeper, however. During the Trudeau years, many Francophone Quebecers were able to overlook his visceral hatred of Quebec nationalism because his governments, initially at least, offered some real hope of improvement in their status within Canada, through such things as the official languages policy and repeated (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to develop a made-in-Canada constitution that would be acceptable to Quebec. But since the early 1980s federalism — meaning now the constitutional status quo — has been on the defensive in Quebec. Federal politics in Quebec now more closely resemble the alignments that have developed on the provincial level since the Quiet Revolution of the1960s, the PQ and now the BQ building on the ongoing strength of the pro-sovereignty sentiment.

Quebec’s alienation from the federal regime in the wake of the Meech debacle triggered the collapse of the Tories and now, following the disclosures over the “sponsorship” campaign — with its contemptuous approach to Quebec referendum laws and Québécois political allegiances — has reduced the Liberals to minority government status.

2. Once again, NDP hopes of a Quebec breakthrough are dashed

The NDP’s vote in Quebec, while increasing by 95,000, remained well below 10% of the total. And some of its best scores were for candidates known for their pro-sovereignty views, such as Omar Aktouf (14%), a leader of the Union des forces progressistes (UFP). Until recently, Jack Layton and his Quebec adjutant Pierre Ducasse had banked their hopes for big NDP gains on what they perceived as waning support for sovereignty and with it a decline and eventual disappearance of the Bloc — just as the PQ’s decline in the mid-1980s, when it dropped the sovereignty goal and embraced the “beau risque” strategy with the federal Tories, resulted in a brief surge in the provincial NDP’s support in Quebec. But when the PQ reoriented toward sovereignty under Jacques Parizeau, the Quebec NDP collapsed; its remnants are now in the sovereigntist UFP.

The Quebec national question has plagued the NDP from its inception. At its 1961 founding convention, attended by some 300 delegates from Quebec, the new party adopted a position that recognized Quebec as a distinct “nation”. Even then this was controversial; Eugene Forsey, then the research director for the Canadian Labour Congress, quit the party on the floor of the convention over that nod to reality. Within a few years, faced with the chauvinism of the party’s federal leadership and some key members, mainly Anglophone, in Montreal, most of the party’s supporters in Quebec had left, first to form the Parti Socialiste du Québec, then to join the Parti Québécois or one of the groupuscules further to the left. Since then, with the notable exception of some goodwill earned by the party’s opposition to the War Measures occupation of Quebec in 1970, the NDP’s support in Quebec has been inversely proportional to the fortunes of the sovereigntist movement.

The party’s claim to support Quebec’s right to self-determination has been constantly belied by its practice. In 1982, in the face of unanimous opposition from Quebec’s National Assembly, the NDP parliamentary caucus supported Trudeau’s reform of the Constitution with its Charter of Rights specifically designed to frustrate Quebec legislation in defence of the French language. In 1992, the party campaigned for the Charlottetown Accord, rejected by a majority of Quebec voters. And in 2000, its MPs voted with only two exceptions for the Clarity Act, Parliament’s arrogant declaration that it – and it alone – would decide whether Quebec had a right to negotiate its exit from Confederation.

For a moment, during the recent campaign, it looked as if the federal NDP had finally got it: in Baie Comeau, Pierre Ducasse at his side, Jack Layton denounced the Clarity Act. But Layton’s statement was promptly denounced by both NDP provincial premiers and leading members of his parliamentary caucus. Layton quickly backtracked: the Act was “ancient history”, it was time to move on. And its repeal was not included in Layton’s conditions for possible support to a minority Liberal government.

The NDP’s 66-page platform had one sentence referring to the Quebec national question: it called for “recognizing the fundamental differences that constitute Quebec being a nation within Canada and working with Quebec to obtain common objectives with equitable outcomes, with the option of Quebec opting out of new federal programs with compensation to pursue common objectives and standards in a provincial program.” The emphasis throughout was on the need to enforce “common objectives and standards” — without even a hint of recognition that many of the planks in the platform are matters over which Quebec has or seeks exclusive jurisdiction. Quebec was treated as little more than a province like the others, albeit one requiring perhaps a bit more attention.

The source of these deficiencies is clear. Social democrats have a fundamentally benign and classless perspective on the capitalist state, which they view as the primary instrument and repository of progressive social policy. Quebec’s national demands, by threatening the integrity of the central state, disrupt this perspective, even though Quebec has in recent decades enacted some of the more progressive legislation in Canada in asserting and occupying its jurisdiction. The NDP’s Canadian nationalism effectively trumps Quebec nationalism and subverts the party’s ability to relate to progressive grassroots social movements and activists in Quebec who are in most cases supporters of a sovereign Quebec. As the NDP’s record amply shows, the party’s entire political culture is hostile to Quebec self-determination. It has more or less consistently tailed the Liberal conception of Canadian federalism.

The NDP’s indifference, misunderstanding and sometimes downright opposition in the face of Québécois national demands and aspirations (recall Ed Broadbent’s spurious claim, just prior to the PQ’s 1976 election victory, that French-language communication between Francophone air crews and ground controllers jeopardized air safety?) has tended to isolate it from some of the most dynamic and progressive forces in Quebec society. And as a direct result, its lack of support in Quebec has undermined its credibility throughout Canada as a serious contender for government in the Canadian state.

3. Strategic challenge for the left

In English Canada, it is not just the NDP, of course, that identifies the defence and extension of social programs with preserving and strengthening the Canadian state. Virtually the entire left and progressive milieu shares this perspective to various degrees, and often reveals a remarkable inability to relate to Québécois concerns.

A notable example of the contradictory dynamics in the two nations occurred in the 1988 struggle against the original Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. The procapitalist PQ favoured the Agreement: free trade, it argued would guarantee access by a sovereign Quebec to the U.S. market, lessen Quebec’s dependence on Canadian markets and investments and limit the regulatory authority of the Canadian state. Quebec trade unions were sceptical and even opposed to the deal. But nationalist-minded Quebec trade unionists and social activists were unable to relate to a movement against the deal that framed its campaign as one in defence of “Canadian sovereignty” and even named its coalition the Pro-Canada (later Action Canada) network!

When Quebec voters, under the influence of the still-pending Meech Lake Accord, helped to re-elect Mulroney’s Tories, leftists in English Canada could hardly contain their anger. It was the definitive breach for many who had found it easy in the 1970s to sympathize with the radical manifestoes then being published by Quebec’s unions, which for the most part had not yet become overt supporters of independence.

The divisions and hostility generated in the1988 FTA fight graphically illustrated the need for the left to develop a strategy that could encompass Quebec self-determination and independence with English-Canadian workers’ concerns and interests in a joint struggle directed against the common ruling class in the Canadian state. The failure to develop such consciousness and solidarity — replicated in both the major political confrontations (Meech, Charlottetown, the ’95 referendum, the Clarity Bill) and the ongoing issues over language rights or the fiscal imbalance that strongly favours the federal government — is arguably the greatest single weakness of the working class in both nations.

Significant progress in developing such ongoing strategy and practice of solidarity would do much to help the unions and grassroots social movements in Quebec to see and develop progressive class-based options independently of the current procapitalist leadership of the nationalist movement. In any event, it should be clear by now that there will be no anticapitalist party with mass support in Quebec that does not support Quebec independence.

Developing such a strategy is not an easy task, to be sure, but it is one that in my opinion the Socialist Project needs to address in the near future.

Our founding Statement, a 4,500-word document, assigned virtually no strategic weight to the Quebec national question, simply stating that “acknowledging Quebec’s right to self-determination… means being prepared to facilitate sovereignty-association.” The election pamphlet, A Different Canada is Possible, acknowledged that “Quebec has a wider claim to jurisdictional authority than other provinces” and urged the NDP to commit itself to “bargaining in good faith for a new constitutional settlement”.

The support for “sovereignty-association” or a “new constitutional settlement”, however, sits somewhat uneasily with the unconditional recognition of Quebec’s right to self-determination. There is certainly no harm in holding out the possibility of a federalist constitutional arrangement that accommodates both nations on an equal footing. But the formulations, as they stand, appear to put the cart before the horse. What if Quebec decides it does not want some form of constitutional “association” or “settlement” with Canada?

A more strategically oriented approach, in my view, would build on the UFP’s call for a democratically elected Quebec constituent assembly to adopt a Quebec constitution that would then be put to a popular vote. After all, it is Quebec ¾ a nation that is denied recognition as a nation under the Canadian Constitution, laws and courts ¾ that has the right of self-determination, not Canada, an independent country. (For reasons that are unclear to me, the UFP section of our election pamphlet omitted its call for a constituent assembly.)

Unlike the NDP, socialists do not equate the existing state structures with democracy, equality and progress. We have every interest in supporting the struggles of the Québécois for national independence if that is their choice.

And we need to flesh out and implement a strategy that incorporates the right of self-determination in all its expressions. It cannot be confined to the formal issue of separation or federation. It must include day-to-day solidarity with the Québécois fight against all manifestations of national inequality and oppression, including the issue of language rights, repressive legislation, inequitable tax policies, etc. The recent columns by UFP leaders in Canadian Dimension and the joint production of the election pamphlet with the UFP comrades have been very positive initiatives toward beginning to develop this solidarity between anticapitalist activists in both nations.