CKNW Editorial
for October 4, 2001

My remarks today are directed at the "however" faction … you know who I mean … "the events of September 11 were horrible ‘however’" … followed by a litany of complaints against the United States.

I was born in the Great Depression, grew up during World War II, and spent my adult life in varying degrees of fear that I and my family would be consumed in a nuclear holocaust. I recall the Cuba Missile crisis of 1962 like yesterday … I had my wife and four little kids ready to run to the Interior to avoid the nuking we knew was coming.

Now, all you howevers, listen very carefully. At the close of the Second World war another one started – it was called the Cold War but no less a war for that. It was a battle where essential goodness and evil were clearly defined.

Have you any idea what communism was? Do you not understand that vile and horrible as the holocaust was, in terms of innocent deaths it pales when compared to what Stalin and Mao Zedong did? Do you not understand that communism wasn’t some political party you could try then reject if you didn’t like it – once in, it was there forever. That there was no free speech …no free elections … no freedom of assembly to protest what you saw as bad things and bad people … there was no freedom of religion. Communism, no matter where it was found, was a brutal police state.

In 1945 with the consent, indeed the active encouragement of the non communist world the United States of America took on its defence. When Britain could no longer defend Greece from Communism President Harry Truman stepped in and pronounced what became known as the Truman Doctrine which essentially drew the line in the sand and said to communism, no further.

The stakes were freedom or slavery. Make no mistake on that point – of course there were economic and political considerations but the central and constant issue was whether we would live free to do as we wished or as slaves.

Contrary to what some would have you believe, Communism was an attempt at world domination. And let me remind all you howevers out there that the Berlin Wall wasn’t built to keep the nasty capitalists out but to prevent East Germans from leaving. For forty years people in Eastern Europe were held in subjugation … were jailed, tortured and often killed for speaking their mind … it was this that the United States undertook to protect the rest of the world from.

This was a global battle. Every region of the world was involved. This wasn’t a boxing match to be played under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules but war. And it was a war where only one side’s actions came under public scrutiny.

And you howevers had a field day. And I’ll tell you why you did. It was because, mortal though the stakes were, those fighting communism always permitted free speech in the fullest.

The United States was damned if it did and damned if it didn’t. If it supported odious regimes, such as Batista in Cuba it was damned for that … yet the alternative was communism and I remind you that since Castro took over in 1959 there has never been a free election.

The philosophical battle for the hearts and minds of populations also was a strategic battle. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States were prepared to be strategically outflanked. Why was Allende toppled and murdered in Santiago in 1973 – admittedly a horrible thing? Because he was about to take Chile into the Communist fold which would likely have seen some neighbours follow suit. Tough … dirty … but we’re talking war here and, as Sherman said, war is hell.

Did the United States make errors? Egregious errors?

Of course it did. Its policy, and that of Britain, in Iran was stupid and brought about calamities down the road. The refusal of John Foster Dulles to fund the Aswan dam in Egypt was a colossal blunder. And there’s Viet Nam. That turned out to be a disaster but what’s forgotten is that the United States got in there in the first place to defend the international Geneva agreement that divided the country into North and South Viet Nam.

By 1990 the struggle between the two powers was over and the United States had won. But was this just a victory of the American bully boys over the Russians?

Ask that question of the Poles, the East Germans, the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Czechs and the Slovaks. Ask it of the Bulgarians. Ask the Latvians, the Lithuanians and the Estonians. Ask the citizens of former Russian republics. Indeed ask the Russians themselves. Many of these people have had desperately tough times since the Cold War ended but they would never consent to go back in time.

While you’re at it, ask the people of Malaysia and Singapore whether or not they’re sorry the British fought the Communists there after the war.

What you howevers do is an old trick, a verbal conjuring act. First, you take all the sins of the United States, as you see them, out of context and collect them into a one size fits all condemnation. Secondly, you imply that if the United States had not stepped in the people would have been deliriously happy with what was bound to happen. The Grenadians would have been delighted to live under Castro’s Cuba and Chileans would have just loved communism. You want us to believe that Viet Nam is just a bursting with democracy thanks to Ho Chi Minh … and the Sandinistas were freedom loving democrats. Then, with stunning naivete you assume that if the United States had simply gone home after World War II and let the rest of the world go by that Communism would have beat a peaceful retreat.

During the Cold War, the United States and her allies had to put up with a lot of crap. It’s because they were democracies fighting for the preservation of freedom that they tolerated all you howevers, marching for peace or for whatever country you thought had been last wronged by the United States … while in the Soviet Union and its satellites no protest was permitted.

When two super powers tangle, a hell of a lot of other people are going to get bumped and bruised. Great mistakes – Russia in Afghanistan and the US in Viet Nam – will be made. National dignities will be bruised. Injustices – some very serious – will be committed. But get this all you howevers out there – the fact that Sunera Thobani can make an outrageous speech while financed by our government, and the fact that you can echo her sympathies … the fact that I’m here and you can call and express your opinion … is due to one thing and one thing only – the United States fought the cold war, and with precious little help from us, won it.

So remember as you shout your anti American slogans, re-write history while chanting the latest Noam Chomsky mantra, that you owe the right to do so to the country that you so despise and whose martyred dead of September 11 you so basely dishonour.