scooter-
that's not entirely surprising is it.
don't know if you've heard about the
cafuffle that a proposed statue to honour
war resisters in nelson b.c. is causing
in the u.s.
the proposed monument will be a bronze
statue showing canadians helping u.s.
war resisters.
the negative reaction blows me away.
this from today's paper:
Cowards, eh?: The residents of Nelson are taking some abuse over plans for a monument to U.S. war resisters. One of the latter hopes Canadians will continue a principled tradition
Peter Prontzos
Special to the Sun
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
When you have no reasonable arguments to make, throw insults. That's what a number of Americans, including the "national commander" of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, have done regarding the plan by residents of Nelson, B.C., to build a monument to the 125,000 men and women who escaped from the United States rather than participate in its invasion of Vietnam (U.S. veterans ask Bush to halt B.C.'s 'tribute to cowards', Sept. 25.)
They call these war resisters "cowards." Moreover, Canada is a "country of cowards," according to one American, and "Yanks" like him are "smarter than you, tougher than you, and we will kick your inbred ass."
Of course, not all Americans share this particular view. One woman from Maryland is quoted as saying that parents in the U.S. "bless" Canada, "land of the truly free." In 1967, Noam Chomsky dedicated his first book to those "brave young men who refuse to serve in a criminal war."
And when Michael Moore spoke in Vancouver in 2002, his suggestion that a statue should be put up for war resisters received thunderous applause from the audience.
This issue is important, not only in its own right, but primarily because the U.S. is currently fighting a war in Iraq, and history is repeating itself.
In Vietnam, U.S. president Johnson fabricated a phoney attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin as his excuse to escalate the war and bomb North Vietnam in 1964. Although the U.S. lost the military conflict, more than three million Indochinese were killed, as well as about 55,000 U.S. troops.
By the standards established by the United States and its allies after the Second World War at Nuremberg and in the United Nations Charter, Johnson and his advisers would be considered war criminals.
And as everyone now knows, the current U.S. president, George W. Bush and the other neo-cons in his administration, fabricated the lies of "weapons of mass destruction" and alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden as their excuse to begin what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has correctly called an "illegal" war.
This act of "preventive" war is probably a violation of international law, and, if so, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in that circle are also war criminals.
There is another ominous parallel between the attacks on Vietnam and Iraq. Retired U.S. general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, has said that the war in Iraq "is far graver than Vietnam," and that it is "achieving Bin Laden's ends."
That is, Bush's war has been a boon to those fanatics who use it to recruit more terrorists. Richard Clarke, former U.S. anti-terrorism chief, says that the invasion of Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism not only against the United States, but around the world.
"I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military," Odom says. "There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster."
One of the many ironies is that Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration were the true "draft-dodgers."
They are the ones who supported the war against the Vietnamese -- as long as other people, disproportionately poor, non-white, and working-class, fought and died.
But as Cheney said, he had better things to do, while Bush was skipping his obligations in the National Guard and partying throughout the conflict.
On the other hand, millions of Americans who opposed the Vietnam war put themselves on the line out of moral principle -- refusing orders to ship out, demonstrating, organizing peace networks, burning draft cards, and going to jail. They are more properly called war resisters.
Now, as then, a number of U.S. troops are refusing to fight in Iraq, and some are again seeking asylum in Canada.
When I escaped from the U.S. Marine Corps and arrived in Canada (exactly 35 years ago), I was overwhelmed by the generosity and support from everyone that I met here. When I received my Canadian citizenship, the magistrate congratulated me on my decision.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Canada for providing sanctuary to those of us who did not want to kill Vietnamese and I hope that we Canadians will continue our tradition of accepting those who, today, "refuse to serve in a criminal war."
Peter Prontzos teaches political science at Langara College and is a member of the peace and justice committee of the city of Vancouver.
© The Vancouver Sun 2004
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