One story, one act of resistance at a time. This morning, I keep thinking about Winston Churchill, and the powerful allegory he used to warn that the appeaser is the man who feeds others to the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. This is the only way I can make sense of our Prime Minister’s support for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to plunge the Middle East into war. Last month, Prime Minister Carney rallied the world at Davos by telling middle powers that in this age of gangsters, it was no longer good enough to “go along to get along.” The Prime Minister spoke those words as Donald Trump was making clear his plans to tear apart the Western alliance and replace the United Nations with his autocrat/gangster gang who make up the Board of Peace. But on Iran, Carney has chosen to go along. Sure, the support might be tepid, but it is support nonetheless. The Prime Minister has claimed that this was about removing the threat of nuclear weapons. This is false, and the Prime Minister knows this. He said that Iran posed a threat to regional peace. And yet he stands with Netanyahu, who has carried out a horrific genocide in Gaza, broken international law in the West Bank, bombed Syria, Lebanon and is now declaring war on Iran. Iran has not posed a credible nuclear threat in years. The claim by Trump is even less credible than the Rumsfeld claim that the search for weapons of mass destruction was necessary to launch the massively destructive war in Iraq. But in that case, George Bush Jr. brought the case to the United Nations. The world assessed the evidence, and Canada, at that time, took the principled position of not going along with the invasion. This time, the United Nations has been totally sidelined. This is a unilateral act of war by two gangster regimes. In Trump’s case, it is a full-scale war to divert attention from Epstein and his sinking poll numbers. This is not about debating how brutal the Iranian regime is. It is about whether the international rule of law and the United Nations still have a place in resolving conflicts. Netanyahu, Trump and Putin are waging war on the crumbling notion of law, sovereignty and war crimes. On this issue, Canada doesn’t get to go along to get along. If the PM isn’t going to be the one to call allied nations to seek a UN solution to resolve further escalation, then who will be there to stand up for the rule of law? It comes back to the crocodile. We gave our tepid thumbs up to the illegal invasion of Venezuela. We are now supporting the mass bombing of Iran. What happens when Trump moves forward with his “friendly” takeover of Cuba? Perhaps the thinking in Ottawa is that by becoming mired in a Middle East war, Trump will be distracted from his obsession with breaking our nation. Playing nice with crocodiles in the hope that they will be nice to us never ends well. Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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