NDP Foreign Affairs critic Alex McDonough made a trip to Afghanistan and has returned with a change of heart regarding our troop deployment. On CTV's Question Period today she told Craig Oliver that we need to have troops in Afghanistan and Darfur, as well as Haiti. This is not an either/or position as previously reported by the media. And McDonough was clear that she saw Canada's involvement in Afghanistan as long term. A shift in policy direction for the NDP. Now all she wants is a debate and vote on that long term commitment.
The NDP under Layton has moved to the right when it comes to Canada's role as an Imperialist nation. He abandoned the long historical opposition the party had to NATO and now the party shifts right supporting the coup de dat in Haiti, troops in Darfur (which like Chad is rich in oil, which is why the Sudanese and the rebels are fighting over the region) and now they support the Canadian US Enduring Freedom pacification campaign in Southern Afghanistan. As long as Parliament gets to debate the issue.
This is a far cry from the party that opposed WWII, The War Measures Act of 1971, and the Viet Nam war. What next for the NDP support for the Conservatives plans to militarize the arctic for PetroCanada?
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This is depressing. And disgusting. Not surprising, given Layton's apparent dream of replacing the Liberals as the less-evil party in a neoliberal duopoly, but even for someone with as low expectations of the NDP as I have, it is still discouraging.
ReplyDeleteAnd incidentally, though party leader J.S. Woodsworth spoke against World War II in the sham debate in the House of Commons -- sham because at the time we were legally at war once war was declared by the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, and Mackenzie King was just doing it as a sop to English Canadian nationalism -- it was made clear even then that he was speaking for himself and not for the party. I'm pretty sure he was the only CCF member to speak or vote against it, or one of only a couple.
I think you are correct about Wordsworth speaking for himself. Stanely Knowles spoke out against the Korean War and Viet Nam. The NDP actually voted for the war in Kosovo until internal party revolt led them to backpedal. So even before Layton shifted the party right the party parliamentarians/MP's were moving in that direction.
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