In recent months, columnists have graced the pages of major Canadian newspapers denouncing our country’s peace movement. They allege, among other things, purported ties to “Islamic extremists” that render the peace movement’s work questionable.

Leonard Stern’s May 19 rant in the Ottawa Citizen was a fitting case in point.

Stern, an editor of the Citizen, lambastes Canadians who recently took part in an international peace conference hosted in Cairo, Egypt. He compares them to Stalinist double-agents of the 1950s.

Readers must have sipped their morning coffee with considerable surprise.

What motivates an editor of the Ottawa Citizen to make such outrageous claims?

Here was Stern’s answer: members of Islamic groups Hamas and Hezbollah attended the Cairo anti-war conference, and that means Canadians mingled with the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

Disputing that cartoon-like analysis of global terrorism is relatively easy. To the best of my knowledge, the world’s most dangerous terrorists, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, were nowhere to be found at the Cairo conference.

As the world has discovered, Bush and Blair’s minions orchestrated the Iraq invasion based on lies and deceit. Those disagreeing with them were silenced, and soldiers sent to the front lines were misled. For this, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over 3,400 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives. Many more have been seriously wounded.

For this, vast stretches of Iraqi land are devastated, or poisoned by bombs tipped with depleted uranium.

For this, new pockets of anti-U.S. terrorism have emerged in Iraq. Al Qaeda never had a base in Iraq previously, but it does now.

Of course, Al Qaeda operatives weren’t at the Cairo peace conference that Canadians attended. Much like Bush and Blair, they’re too busy blowing up anyone deemed to be blocking their moral crusade. These second-rank terrorists, once funded by the West in its stand-off against the Soviet Union, now wreak havoc against Arabs and Westerners alike. They feed off the anger and despair of a region under constant siege.

Today, four years after the Iraq invasion, and almost six years after 9/11, sound-minded Canadians are demanding a new approach to the Arab world. This approach must acknowledge the role of Western meddling (or, to use an appropriate term, imperialism) in the Middle East. It must own up to the West’s role in backing dictatorial Arab regimes (while deposing others) in a bid to control oil and geopolitical power.

This approach must distinguish between Islamic groups using violence to resist Western imperialism, and others bent on violence for their own narrow ends. This approach must treat the Arab world with respect, and not demonize an entire region based on ignorance, half-truths or outright fallacies.

Instead, we need to ask some tough, far-reaching questions. As Albert Einstein once said, the best questions produce the best answers.

  • Why are some in the Arab world willing to blow themselves up as a political act?
  • Why did Hamas win the Palestinian elections, and why would Hezbollah do the same if a fair vote was held today in Lebanon?
  • Why was the financial core of the U.S. a target for (largely Saudi Arabian) terrorists?

Pro-war voices have a pat response to these questions, one sound-thinking people should reject out of hand.

“Islamists,” they say, are guided by religious ideology. They attack the West because they hate our democracy, our culture, and our way of life. They get elected (or would be elected) because the Arab world is desperate, and out to destroy us.

Reality, of course, paints a much different picture.

In the real world, Arab families are the same as Western families, though many suffer under regimes propped up by Western governments. In the real world, some “Islamist” groups have played a role in resisting Western-backed military invasions. Not surprisingly, they have won widespread support for doing so. In the real world, if Canada had a democracy of any substance, Bush or Blair would be arrested the next moment either hit the tarmac of a Canadian airport.

Sadly, there is an unacknowledged pecking order in the West to dealing with terrorism.

Western leaders care when terrorism hits home. They “hunt down” and “punish” wrongdoers in rapid fashion. Outspoken politicians will fight to the last drop of someone else’s blood. They care much less when people elsewhere suffer under terrorism financed by Western dollars.

When Palestinian children get shot in the street, or thousands of Lebanese languish in Israeli jails, Western leaders are chasing a different soundbite.

The Canadian peace activists who visited the Cairo conference turned over a new leaf, and opened a new dialogue with others in the Arab world.

Given the horrors of war unfolding daily on our televisions, this dialogue is a source of hope for future generations.

The pro-war voices will cry foul, but Canada’s peace movement must persist. I hope to be among next year’s Canadian delegation to the Cairo conference.

In true Canadian style, I’ll begin most conversations with the following words:

“I apologize for the legacy of Western imperialism. It doesn’t represent me, or the values held by most Westerners. Like Cindy Sheehan, Mark Twain, or Louis Riel, I’m an anti-imperialist. How can we work together in the interests of peace?”