Twenty-five years ago last week, some friends and I poured our blood on the executive office windows of Rexdale’s Litton Systems, which manufactured guidance systems for cruise missiles that were used for the very first time in Gulf War I.
It was real blood, taken the night before by trained medical personnel who shall remain nameless, and put into baby bottles. Coverage of our protest was likely the first time Canadian media showed any bloodshed related to that one-sided conflict. That was precisely the point.
Military briefings at the time portrayed a “clean” war that appeared as harmless as a Nintendo game. Generals cracked jokes showing footage of bombs hitting targets who seemed to be no different from animated figures in a Yonge Street arcade game.
This past month, while Canadian CF-18s continue to drop 250-kilogram bombs on Iraq (this time against ISIS), Canadian media outlets have looked back at the 25th anniversary of Gulf War I through a feel-good lens.
Postmedia’s Matthew Fisher called it a “good” conflict. The Toronto Star’s quirky “odd details” retrospective focused on sand hockey and CARE packages of gloves and scarves sent to the middle of the desert.
They ignore the fact that Iraq has long been a laboratory for modern warfare to market weapons systems to potential buyers. As the Ottawa Citizen reported last month, Canada rents out its soldiers to play the role of catwalk models in corporate sales pitches for Canadian weaponry.
Between 2012 and 2014, such Canadian Forces demonstrations were used to promote armoured brigade vehicles produced by London, Ontario’s General Dynamics Land Systems to regimes in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The Defence Department’s meticulously compiled, anodyne datebook of terror strikes against ISIS, Operation Impact, proudly says the Air Force has flown some 2,018 “sorties” and 396 reconnaissance missions while “delivering some 21,615,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft.” That was before the Trudeau government announced a refocus of the mission on February 8. Air strikes are scheduled to end February 22.
No human casualties are listed, however. That work is left to groups like airwars.org, who continue trying to piece together bits of information to show the human toll of the bombing campaigns. Their estimates: up to 2,400 civilians killed and more than 35,000 bombs and missiles dropped since the air war against ISIS began in the summer of 2014.
Canadian attempts to cover up the CF-18 slaughter of some 27 Iraqi civilians in January 2015 came to light only after the Globe and Mail reported on documents released not by Ottawa, but by the Pentagon.
They indicate that “the Canadian military made it clear to the United States shortly after the alleged incident that it felt no obligation under the Geneva Conventions to probe what happened. It should be noted that Canadian Joint Operations Command [legal advisers] opinion is that under the Law of Armed Conflict there are no obligations for the Canadian Armed Forces to conduct an investigation.”
Canada’s military and diplomatic involvement in Iraq since Gulf War I has contributed to the staggering loss of more than 2 million Iraqi lives through direct warfare and economic sanctions so draconian that the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in 1997-98, Denis Halliday, condemned them as genocidal.
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 was a political godsend for the world’s largest weapons manufacturers. The lead-up to that war intensified with a fake PR campaign about Iraqis ripping babies from Kuwaiti incubators (the creation of global public relations company Hill & Knowlton). It also featured an unusually pugnacious Joe Clark leading the charge as Canada’s external affairs minister, from which perch he said Canada would fight with or without UN authorization. He labelled as “counterproductive” the idea that allied forces would pledge not to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, and ordered 800 body bags.
Canada’s cynicism about a possible diplomatic solution to the Iraq-Kuwait conflict was also clear.
While anti-war demonstrations broke out across the country, CSIS and the RCMP stepped up an intensive, racially targeted campaign at home that prompted the Canadian Arab Federation to produce a rights handbook, When CSIS Calls.
The Alliance for Nonviolent Action (a coalition in which I was an organizer) called for direct action at military bases and a shutdown of the External Affairs building in Ottawa. The RCMP threatened us with charges of treason, and when the Toronto Star printed my home phone number in a story on how to reserve seats on buses headed for Ottawa, a round-the-clock barrage of death threats followed, reflecting the visceral hatred whipped up by politicians and press alike.
The public mood was a toxic mixture of fear, anger and despair, with headlines about terror threats and chemical weapons producing an end-times feeling.
In Ottawa, after sleeping on a church floor, about 300 of us ventured out into the -35°C chill. Among our number was 78-year-old World War II veteran Eldon Comfort, who wore his medals. At External Affairs, he was roughed up like the rest of us by police who figured we’d soon tire of being pushed around. Joe Clark’s motorcade tried entering but was turned away. Some supportive employees refused to cross the line of protesters blocking the front door.
The bombardment of Iraq, where 50 per cent of the population was under 16, continued relentlessly.
By the time we ventured to Litton in early February 1991, anti-war demos had dwindled. Only 30 people protested. A dozen of us were arrested and held at the Metro West Detention Centre, where, triple-bunked, we were the only white people on the range. Guards had shown us pictures of our black cellmates in advance, warning us that we’d be beaten because they allegedly didn’t like peace protesters.
Instead, at about 2 am, a soft, rhythmic chanting began bouncing off the walls. One of my cellmates explained that there were a lot of Rastafarian detainees, and they were praying for us because, he said, “You guys did a righteous thing today.”
It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life to be among a group of men who had been caged for weeks, months or years and who were praying for a group of relatively privileged people who would be out in a day or two.
Matthew Behrens is a freelance writer and social justice advocate who coordinates the Homes Not Bombs non-violent direct action network.
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