Editor:
In one of umpteen recent partisan propagandistic pamphlets, the West Vancouver-Sun-shine Coast-Sea to Sky MP invites constituents to support the Weston Canada Day campaign.
In the same flyer Mr. Weston hopes for "a democratic future in Iran." How many of our tax dollars are being squandered on self-serving hype promoting jingoistic foreign policy?
The CIA sponsored the overthrow of the elected government in Iran in the '50s only to replace it with a brutal military dictatorship. When a popular revolution finally ousted the Shah's torture-prone regime, the U.S. supported Iraq's war against Iran, which cost more than a million lives. The U.S. would later attack and invade its erstwhile ally, installing a puppet regime.
People who can read between the pipelines know these wars are more about the control of vast oil reserves and other resources than about democracy.
When in Opposition, Stephan Harper supported the war on Iraq, criticizing popular Prime Minister Jean Chrétien for yielding to the vast majority of Canadians who wanted no part of the aggression. Our current neo-conservative PM continues to support the war in Afghanistan and Israel's cruel siege of Palestine in defiance of the Canadian electorate. Our own MP says he hopes to bring democracy to faraway Iran. He could begin by respecting the wishes of his own constituents. He could push his party to forego spending billions on foreign aggression profiting a few tycoons in the military-industrial complex and their political surrogates while undermining our own national economy. The peace dividend thus created could fund programs of social, economic and environmental uplift for everyone at home.
Yvonne Bain, Libby Hyde, Roger Lagassé and
Norma Mitravitz,
SC Peace Group
