Canada, the West and Weapons of Mass Destruction

George Bush is a war criminal for sanctioning the use of chemical weapons in Iraq.

But the Canadian government’s hands are just as dirty.

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg has announced that it will follow the US lead in recreating the flu virus that killed 50 million people in 1918. Jen Kuhn, a biological weapons expert at Harvard University has warned that this could trigger a biological weapons race, and according to the leading scientific publication Nature: “the threat of an accidental release is real.”

There is nothing new about the West’s manufacture and use of WMDs, including Canada’s.

When Winston Churchill was colonial secretary and secretary for war and air in Britain, he led the first ever campaign of using chemical weapons against Iraq. As he argued in 1919, “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.”

When it comes to biological weapons, Canada is the birthplace. During World War Two, Canada used the justification of ‘research and defence’ for the development of such weapons, including anthrax, which was led by Frederick Banting of insulin fame.

According to John Bryden, Liberal MP and author of the book Deadly Allies, “driven by an obsessive belief that the Hun was a threat to civilization, he called for a strategy of total war against the German population with bacteriological weapons. The Banting Institute in downtown Toronto thus became the birthplace of biological warfare research in North America.”

As Canada pioneered biological weapons, the US was developing the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was the largest scientific endeavor ever performed, enlisting gigantic state resources and the brightest minds to produce the most barbaric weapons. These were put into practice with horrific results, killing 140,000 in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki, in war crimes that many still seek to justify.

But the obsession over WMD didn’t end there.

At the end of the war, the US recruited hundreds of Nazi war criminals into NASA, the military, and the aerospace industry. The most well-known were Wernher von Braun and Major General Dornberger, who had led the Nazi V-2 rocket program that had used concentration camp labour to produce the infamous rockets used against London. Von Braun went on to play a central role in the NASA space shuttle program and weapons programs, and Dornberger became senior vice president of Bell Aerospace.

The interconnections between the state and corporations continued during the Vietnam War.

Defence secretary and former Ford boss Robert McNamara led the war campaign that enlisted some the largest corporations to produce the most deadly weapons.

Monsanto made Agent Orange, a defoliant that was littered all over Vietnam to destroy the environment and undermine agriculture, and which has since killed thousands of Vietnamese and US soldiers through cancer.

Dow Chemical repeatedly redesigned napalm, the infamous jellied form of gasoline that sticks to skin and burns to bone. Though Canada was officially not involved in the war, Canadian corporations sold billions of dollars of weapons to the US, including Agent Orange and napalm.

This complicity continues now with Canadian involvement in Bush’s plans to put missiles in space. Though the anti-war movement prevented Martin from politically supporting these new weapons, the Liberals have been encouraging Canadian corporations to be involved economically. As Foreign Affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew said, “I do not believe that we should control Canadian business. I would be very pleased if Canadian business can contribute to the defense systems of the United States.”

Now Canada and the US are recreating conditions for a flu pandemic, both microbiologically and economically. The 1918 pandemic was the result of a virus magnified by poverty and war. Not only are the US and Canada recreating the specific virus, but their policies of militarism and neoliberalism are creating conditions for epidemics to flourish.

Cuts to social programs and patent laws are denying health care to millions, and the subordination of living standards to military priorities is driving more into poverty and ill health.

Here again Martin has played an active role. At the last G8 summit he was central in arguing against a timeline for rich countries to increase international aid. Meanwhile he has continually cut health care spending in order to fund the military and cut taxes.

But there is hope. During the Vietnam War, a mass antiwar movement prevented the US government from using the weapon of largest destruction, and soldier resistance eventually broke the back of the military.

White House tapes from 1972 have shown that President Nixon wanted to use nuclear weapons. In arguing with Henry Kissinger, Nixon exclaimed, “The only place where you and I disagree ... is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.”

To which Kissinger responded: “I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.”

In other words, a mass movement stopped two of the world’s biggest war criminals from using weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile resistance in the military – including pilots refusing to drop bombs, sailors sabotaging war ships, and soldiers refusing to fire – forced the US to withdraw.

These two phenomena are happening again, and show the way to fight back against the West’s WMD’s.

The next big day for the antiwar movement will be March 18 and it is vital that as many people as possible take to the streets.

Across Canada and Quebec it is also crucial to build the war resister support campaign, to provide a way out for the growing number of soldiers horrified by the orders they’re receiving and gaining confidence to resist.

With the January 23 election call, there is an opportunity to expose Martin’s real record of
militarism and cuts to social programs.

The long-term goal has to be to end the capitalist system of mass destruction that subordinates people to profit at all cost.