It is a privilege not to be hated for your nationality, and we should
not relinquish it lightly
By NAOMI KLEIN
Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - Page A21

In Baghdad, every encounter we had was a bit like going through
customs.

"American?" was the inevitable first question.

"No, no, Canadian," our over-eager reply.

Sometimes our word wasn't good enough and our interrogators wanted
proof.

We'd pull out our passports for inspection.

On their faces, you could often see a cloud of rage pass over. Women
would sometimes let themselves smile. Kids would stop acting like
mini-commandos and run off and play.

Don't get me wrong: Canadians aren't loved in Iraq; we just aren't, so
far as I could tell, actively loathed.

So it's wrenching being back in Canada confronting the prospect of
Stephen Harper as our next prime minister. This is a man who so longed
to join George W. Bush's coalition of the willing that he called
former defence minister John McCallum an "idiot" in the House of
Commons, declaring we should be in Iraq with the United States, "doing
everything necessary to win." This is a man who was so eager to
"support the war effort" that he went on Fox and claimed that "the
silent majority of Canadians is strongly supportive" of the invasion,
defying the findings of every credible opinion poll.

If the Conservatives are given the chance to turn Canada into more of
a card-carrying combatant in Mr. Bush's disastrous war on terrorism
than we are already, the little bit of grace I encountered in Iraq
will quickly disappear. When I go back, showing my passport to the ad
hoc inspectors could well have a very different effect.

I was in Iraq in April, at a pivotal moment when the United States
decided to wage two pre-emptive wars within a pre-emptive war, one
against the resistance in Fallujah, the other against Muqtada al-Sadr
in Najaf and Sadr City. The Los Angeles Times estimates that 800
Iraqis have been killed in the past nine weeks of U.S. attacks on Sadr
City, even more than the 600 estimated to have died in the siege on
Fallujah.

As mosques were desecrated, prisoners tortured and children killed, I
witnessed George Bush's awesome enemy-manufacturing machine up close.
Hatred of Americans soared, not just in Iraq but also in neighbouring
countries.

The retaliation began immediately: a wave of kidnappings of
foreigners, now so common they barely make the news. The change in
mood was palpable.

Anti-Americanism was no longer a sentiment; it was an uncontrollable
force of nature. Being Canadian didn't let us off the hook; we were
still part of an ugly invasion of foreign soldiers, contractors and
journalists traipsing through the country and taking what wasn't ours:
lives, jobs, oil, stories, photographs. The kidnappers didn't usually
discriminate based on nationality.

But being Canadian, or more specifically, not being American, did
sometimes open up a little window. It gave people who were suffering
permission to glimpse the humanity behind our nationality. And the
overwhelming majority of Iraqis I met -- even, miraculously, those who
had just lost children and spouses to U.S. weapons -- were profoundly
grateful for that reprieve, relieved not to have to hate. I, of
course, was even more grateful, since being not-American kept me out
of serious danger more than once.

It is a privilege not to be hated for your nationality, and we should
not relinquish it lightly. George Bush has denied that privilege to
his own people, and Stephen Harper would cavalierly strip it from
Canadians by erasing what few small but important differences remain
between Canadian and U.S. foreign policy. The danger posed by this act
is not just about whether Canadians are safe when we travel to the
Middle East. The hatred that Mr. Bush is manufacturing there, for the
United States and its coalition partners, is already following the
soldiers home.

I have felt that hatred in Iraq, and trust me: We don't want to
experience it here in Canada. Or don't trust me, trust the citizens of
Spain, who decided in their March elections that they are not willing
to accept the blowback from George Bush's wars, that they don't want
these multiplying enemies to be their enemies too. Or the citizens of
the United Kingdom, who just battered Tony Blair's Labour Party in
last week's local elections, furious at being dragged into a war that
has made them less safe. Or the citizens of Australia, who are about
to send the same message to John Howard. Or even the citizens of the
United States, 55 per cent of whom now disapprove of Mr. Bush's
performance in Iraq, according to a recent Los Angles Times poll.

Yet just as the rest of the world is finally saying "no more,"
Canadians are poised to elect a party that is saying "me too."

The hawks in Washington like to paint Canada as a freeloader, mooching
off their expensive military protection, the continent's weak link on
terrorism. The truth is that around the world, it is blind government
complicity with U.S. foreign policy, precisely the kind of complicity
advocated by Mr. Harper, that is putting civilians in the line of
terror. It is the United States that is the weak link.

Before I went to Iraq, a seasoned war correspondent who had spent a
year reporting from Baghdad gave me his best piece of security advice.
"Stay away from Americans, they're bad for your health." He wasn't
being anti-American (he's an American citizen and supported the war);
he was just being practical. In Iraq, that advice means you don't want
to ride in the U.S. convoys or embed with U.S. troops. You keep your
distance and stay independent. At this perilous moment in history, the
same principle applies at home: Canadian security depends on our
ability to maintain meaningful sovereignty from the United States.
Being inside the U.S. security fortress isn't a missile shield, it's a
missile magnet.

As long as the United States continues to act as a global aggressor,
the best way for us to stay healthy is to stay as far away as from
Americans as possible.

With 8,890 kilometres of shared border, geographical distance is not
an option. Fortunately, political distance still is. Let's not
surrender it.

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences.