Iraq Commentary is Facade for Anti-Americanism

by Jeffrey Shallit

There's one constant about living in Canada.  Whenever the US is in the
news, the papers are filled with commentary that is based more on
anti-US sentiment than the facts.

Thomas Hueglin's April 12 Insight piece, "War, lies and videotape" is a
good example.  After one perfunctory paragraph criticizing Iraq,
Hueglin goes on to develop his main thesis: the US has "elevated war to
a modern art form of lies".  

Ironically, it's Hueglin himself (with a record of resorting to the politics
of resentment in his commentaries) who uses innuendo and half-truths to
support his argument.   

Referring to the attack on a building housing Al-Jazeera in Baghdad,
Hueglin says, "We'll probably never know whether that was collateral or
intentional damage."  This insinuation can't even pass the weakest
skeptical inquiry.  For if the US had wanted to hit Al-Jazeera, why
didn't they simply bomb the entire building to rubble the way they have
doznes of other targets?  And wouldn't such an attack have defeated a
primary US strategy, which is to convince the "Arab street" that the
attack on Iraq was morally justified?

Hueglin goes on to suggest that the US attacked Iraq to prevent it from
switching its oil currency to the Euro.  This claim is backed by
innuendo, not any actual evidence.  Does it really make sense that the
US would launch a $100 billion war just to shore up the dollar?  On the
contrary, a weaker dollar would make US goods more attractive abroad
and help reduce the trade deficit.

Despite the evidence, Hueglin rejects the explanation that France was
unsupportive of the war because of its business dealings with Iraq.
Yet Jacques Chirac has a well-known infatuation with Saddam, so strong
that he's been called "Shah-Iraq" by the Iranians.  Chirac has even
called Saddam a "personal friend".  Chirac sold Iraq a nuclear reactor
in the 1970's, and France was still selling parts for military aircraft
to Iraq as recently as this year.   None of this made it into Hueglin's
analysis.

Hueglin's case is pretty weak.  But what's really offensive about the
article is the moral equivalency Hueglin implicitly suggests, between a
regime ruled by a brutal dictator who has lied to his people for years
while torturing and killing them by the hundreds of thousands, and a
democracy that, while not perfect, is based on principles that were the
inspiration for Canada's own Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Iraq gets
one paragraph of criticism; the US gets seventeen.

Hueglin's not alone in his unsupported analysis --  other Canadian
reaction has verged on the hysterical.  A local Muslim leader called
the war "a heinous crime against one nation and a sinister agenda that
threatens all of humanity".  Yet as coalition troops entered Baghdad,
they were greeted by cheering Iraqis who pulled down a Stalinesque
statue of Saddam.  If liberating Iraq is labeled a "heinous crime", how
should we classify what Saddam did to his own people for thirty years?

Even those who believe, as I do, that the US overstepped its authority,
that weapons inspectors should have been given more time, and that the
United Nations should have played more of a role, should be rejoicing
at the fall of another tyrant.  Like the fall of Mussolini, Milosevic,
and Ceaucescu, the fall of Saddam will be remembered as a great day
for freedom.  And a great day for Iraq -- despite the teeth-gnashing
of the anti-Americans.