Last Saturday, thousands of people acrossCanada demonstrated in support of the demand to bring Canadiantroops home from Afghanistan.

This pan-Canadian day of action wasled by four major organizations: the Canadian Peace Alliance,le Collectif Echec a la guerre, the Canadian Labour Congress and theCanadian Islamic Congress. Hundreds more organizations, includingthe Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, also supported the calland mobilized to bring their members out.

These protests were against Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, butthey were also part of a deepening criticism of Canadian foreignpolicy in the Middle East as a whole, including the blind Canadiangovernment defence of Israel and the morally reprehensible Canadianembargo on the Hamas government and blockage of Gaza.

The Middle East has been the key testing ground for Canada’s newimperialist foreign policy. Canada has long backed U.S. militaryinterventions, but usually with some effort to do so throughmultilateral institutions and with some effort to distance itselffrom the worst aspects of American policies by an emphasis on“peacekeeping roles.”

This had been Canada’s response to the American “waron terror” since 2001 under former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien: offeringspecific logistical supports to the American military mobilization,setting up a “peacekeeping” operation in Kabul soon after the launchof the Afghan war against the Taliban, and staying out the “coalitionof the willing” entering into the war in Iraq.

The Liberalgovernment of Paul Martin had begun moving Canada even closer toAmerican policies in the region (and also pro-Israeli positions).This could be seen in the Martin government endorsing Canadianmilitary deployment into a combat role in southern Afghanistan,breaking with the Chrétien policy of “peacekeeping” in Kabul.

But the new Conservative government of Stephen Harper has adopted theAmerican narrative of the Bush Administration that the attack on theWorld Trade Centre in New York was also an attack on Canada: Canadian(and U.S.) interventions in the Middle East are necessary measures toprevent further terrorist acts on Canada. Indeed, this has become thegovernment’s principal justification for the extension of the Canadianmission mandate in southern Afghanistan moving Canadian troops into adirect combat role.

It was also invoked as the reason for theSeptember, 2006, decision to increase Canadian combat troops and todeploy a new level of arms in the form of additional fighter jets andtanks with long-range firing capacities.

The Harper governmentinherited the Afghanistan mission but they have defined it as acentrepiece of their government, partly on its own terms and partlyin embracing the American geo-political vision of American primacy inthe world order and the right to take unilateral pre-emptive militaryinterventions where it determines a threat to exist.

This Canadian foreign policy stance has raised key concerns for tradeunionists in Canada. In the wake of the American bombing and attackson Afghanistan in October, 2001, a group of trade union activistsinitially came together to survey worker opinions and draft aresponse to the growing pro-war hysteria. Out of those meetings camea pamphlet called Terrorism, War and Workers and a network calledTrade Unionists Against the War (TUAW). A few years later, asCanadians debated possible support for the U.S. war in Iraq, TUAWproduced a broadsheet explaining why working people need to opposethe U.S. intervention.

Now that Canadians are debating the Harper government’s morallyoutrageous and failing mission in Afghanistan, TUAW has produced anew broadsheet available in both PDF and HTML versions. Itchallenges the justification for Canada’s failing and totallyunjustified war in support of U.S. aggression in Afghanistan, andexplains why trade unionists need to call for immediate withdrawal ofCanadian and all foreign troops from that country.

This broadsheet will be used as a tool in our efforts to organizeinside the trade union movement, and to help to build a base for theanti-war movement amongst the working classes and more widely inpopular organizations.