To break with imperialism, NDP must break with Layton legacy

Jack Layton was a warmonger and the veneration of the late NDP leader highlights the party’s militarist ethos.

A few months ago, leadership candidate Heather McPherson declared, “Jack believed that hope could triumph over fear, that everyone deserves a seat at the table in the fight for something better. Standing at his statue in Toronto today, I felt his spirit and his call to action more clearly than ever.”

Avi Lewis has also repeatedly invoked Layton in recent months. He’s cited his name to justify running to lead the NDP without holding a seat in Parliament, noting Layton “took us to our historic highs as a party.”

In 2011 the Layton-led NDP supported two House of Commons votes endorsing the bombing of Libya. “It’s appropriate for Canada to be a part of this effort to try to stop Gadhafi from attacking his citizens as he has been threatening to do,’’ said Layton. “It’s “important that we get (this mission) right.” But history has demonstrated that the NATO bombing campaign was justified based on exaggerations and outright lies about the Muammar Gaddafi regime’s human rights violations. Additionally, NATO forces explicitly contravened the UN resolutions sanctioning a no-fly zone by dispatching troops and expanding the bombing far beyond protecting civilians. Canada also defied UN resolutions 1970 and 1973 by selling drones to the rebels.

Fifteen years later Libya is still divided into various warring factions and hundreds of militias operate in the country of seven million. Nearly 20% of the country remains internally displaced and living standards have collapsed.

During the 2011 election campaign, noted National Post commentator Kevin Libin in “Pacifist NDP leans right on foreign policy”, “Mr. Layton has been undisguised in his panders to the pro-military zeitgeist, celebrating the contributions of troops and veterans while promising them better post-career rewards for their ‘courageous and selfless … sacrifice.’” Libin points out that “staunchly pro-Israel” MPs Thomas Mulcair and Pat Martin dominated party policy on that issue and during the election Layton promised to “maintain the current planned levels of defence spending commitments.” Concurrently, he promoted the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, a $100 billion effort to expand the combat fleet over three decades (over their lifespan the cost of the surface combatants that can fire Tomahawk missiles 1500 kilometres is expected to top a quarter trillion dollars). “Our current ships have reached the end of their operational lives”, said Layton in 2011.

Despite the media portrayal, Layton broadly supported Canadian belligerence in Afghanistan. The NDP initially supported Canada’s October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Three years after becoming leader of the party and after a major escalation, Layton called for Canada to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he didn’t mobilize against a war that saw 40,000 Canadians deployed halfway across the globe.

To prepare soldiers and the public for a more aggressive deployment to Kandahar, in 2005 Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier said, “we are going to Afghanistan to actually take down the folks that are trying to blow up men and women.” He added, “we’re not the public service of Canada, we’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.”

The NDP leader labeled Hillier’s bombastic comments an “appropriate response” to the circumstances. Layton told the Globe and Mail, “we have a very committed, level-headed head of our armed forces, who isn’t afraid to express the passion that underlies the mission that front-line personnel are going to be taking on.”

Eight months after Canadian Forces took charge in Kandahar, Layton called for peace talks with the Taliban and withdrawal of the 2,000 Canadian troops from southern Afghanistan within six months. (He didn’t call for the 50 troops in the north to be withdrawn.) But Layton made the demand a week before the party’s Québec City convention, reportedly, “to discourage the party from adopting a more controversial resolution.” The September 2006 NDP convention overwhelmingly supported a resolution calling for Canadian Forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. The resolution called for “the safe and immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan”, but also included wording pushed by the NDP leadership to soften the “troops out” demand. It called for “support[ing] the continuation of development assistance to Afghanistan and democratic peace building in that country so that reconstruction efforts and good governance are achieved.”

While government officials and right-wing commentators dubbed him “Taliban Jack” for supporting negotiations with the Taliban, Layton’s criticism of the occupation never came across as sincere or principled. He complained the mission was “not clearly defined” and lacked an “exit strategy”. In calling for the removal of troops from Kandahar prior to the 2006 convention Layton declared: “Our efforts in the region are overwhelmingly focussed on military force — spending defence dollars on counter-insurgency. Prime Minister Harper need only look at the experience in Iraq to conclude that ill-conceived and unbalanced missions do not create the conditions for long-term peace. Why are we blindly following the defence policy prescriptions of the Bush administration? This is not the right mission for Canada. There is no balance — in particular it lacks a comprehensive rebuilding plan and commensurate development assistance.” Layton did not criticize Canada’s role in propping up the Hamid Karzai regime. Nor did he question how linking feminism to foreign occupation would impact Afghan women over the long term or how the government could claim to ‘fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan’ while its policies in Haiti at the time contributed to a massive increase in rape. (According to the Lancet medical journal, 35,000 women were raped in Port-au- Prince in the 22 months after the 2004 Canada-backed coup discussed below.)

The “Taliban Jack” backlash, election as US president of the more popular Barrack Obama — who expanded the Afghan war — and a short-term alliance with the Liberal Party led the NDP to stop calling for withdrawal. Between October 2008 and August 2009, the party did not issue a single press release calling for Canadian troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. In December 2008 the NDP formally announced it would stop opposing the war while it worked with the Liberals to defeat the minority Conservative government.

In mid-2010 the Liberals called on the Conservatives to extend the Afghan mission after an announced withdrawal in 2011. With Liberal foreign critic Bob Rae calling on Ottawa to “see this thing through”, notes Derrick O’Keefe, “the leadership of the New Democratic Party (NDP) remained utterly silent on the question of Afghanistan. For NDP leader Jack Layton this was true to his form over the past couple of years. As the war in Afghanistan expanded, the social democratic opposition became more muted. Save for the occasional de rigueur mention of the party’s official policy calling for troop withdrawal, after late 2008 the since deceased Layton rarely criticized the war.”

Layton was also wishy-washy on the February 29, 2004, US/France/Canada military invasion and coup in Haiti. In the House of Commons ten days later foreign critic Svend Robinson rightly called for an investigation into elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s removal. He also requested the tabling of documents concerning the January 2003 Ottawa Initiative on Haiti, where high level US, Canadian and French officials discussed overthrowing Aristide. Robinson asked if “regime change in Haiti” was discussed at this meeting.

On March 10 Layton described the situation in Haiti as “very grave.” But instead of “holding Paul Martin’s feet to the fire” regarding Haiti, as the NDP leader claimed he would do, the party largely dropped the issue. During the June 2004 federal election debate Liberal leader Paul Martin and Bloc Québecois leader Gilles Duceppe agreed that Canada’s involvement in Haiti was a success. Layton didn’t object, wasting an opportunity to provide an alternative view of Canada’s disastrous role in the Caribbean nation.

Do those praising Layton have an opinion about his support for NATO belligerence? If they are against militarism and Canadian participation in US-led imperialism, why do they keep citing Layton as a leader to emulate? More importantly, are party members who reject Layton’s imperial legacy seeking to ensure their preferred candidate in the leadership won’t continue the NDP’s warmongering tradition as leader?