March 7, 2005
If future ballistic missile defense uses space, it will be with good reason.
For a start, ballistic missiles fly through space. The further a ballistic missile must travel, the higher it must fly, and in order to reach a target more than 100 miles away, a ballistic missile must fly to such an altitude that it passes into space.
In the initial or "boost" phase, a ballistic missile must struggle against gravity and the earth's atmosphere, it is burdened by the weight of its fuel, and it trails a long, hot flame behind it, all of which makes the missile slower and more obvious. In boost phase, a ballistic missile is still in one piece; After that, the missile releases its warheads and decoys, greatly mulitiplying the number of targets for any missile defense system. Once the warheads begin their descents, gravity accelerates them by 10 meters per second, every second, and they can reach phenomenally high speeds which again magnify the difficulty of intercepting them. Missile exhaust, which can be detected by heat and light sensors, does not trail descending warheads as it does rockets in boost phase. And debris from a ballistic missile destroyed in boost phase would fall back onto the aggressor's territory, as opposed to a targeted or neutral nation's.
So a ballistic missile is most vulnerable and harmless during the boost phase. But that lasts five minutes at most. If an interceptor must travel half way around the world to catch up to a ballistic missile, then by the time it does, boost phase will be long over. Stationary and mobile BMD radar and interceptors can be distributed widely over land and sea, and aircraft fitted with BMD sensors and lasers can patrol the skies so that, wherever a ballistic missile might be launched, the wherewithal to detect and destroy it would be reasonably nearby. But it is difficult, logistically and diplomatically, to achieve with those systems the sort of coverage necessary to defeat ballistic missile threats during boost phase.
To better ensure that, defense scientists look to space. The most advanced space-based BMD system being proposed is Space-Based Laser, or SBL. A network of 12 to 20 satellites, each equipped with sensors and armed with a laser, would continually orbit the globe on different courses so that at any given moment, at least one satellite would be within range of any possible ballistic missile launch, anywhere on earth. Each satellite would have the ability to both detect and destroy, and would sense a ballistic missile, compute the missile's track, and correct its own laser fire, all so immediately that the missile would be shattered shortly after emerging above any cloud cover. To defeat ballistic missiles during the criticial boost phase, a space-based system would be the closest to failsafe.
Although the use of space for ballistic missile defense has been proposed for at least two decades, space-based systems are still only proposals; The current U.S. BMD system, with which Canada was asked to cooperate, is not space-based.
We have opposed a rudimentary earth-based missile defense system intended to protect against accidental or limited ballistic missile attacks in this age of terrorism, largely out of ostensible concern that it could proceed to space-based missile defenses, and that they could proceed to space weaponry which would give America an unprecedented and unrivalled military capability. But what does America have today if not precisely an unprecedented and unrivalled military capability, and under that aegis the world is moving toward greater and greater freedom. America has today the ability to strike at will, anywhere on earth, and enough firepower to destroy the world 200 times over; Any possible future space weaponry could only update America's existing doomsday arsenal.
Space has of course already been militarized in that satellites orbiting earth today provide military surveillance and targeting for bombing. But space has also already been weaponized in that ballistic missiles use space to enable faster, farther flight, and nuclear warheads in an EMP attack would use the first couple hundred miles of space to generate an electromagnetic pulse to damage or destroy electronics and electrical grids on earth below.
We ought not assume that a ballistic missile attack against America would be America's problem and none of our concern. Even if the effects of an attack could be expected to stop south of the U.S.-Canadian border, our trading partnership is such that Canada would suffer an economic upheaval if an American city were devastated or if America were electronically incapacitated in a ballistic missile strike and the U.S. economy collapsed in its wake. In what is becoming a trend, our natural and historic allies in the English-speaking world -- America, Britain, and Australia, plus Denmark and Japan -- are confronting yet another threat while we wring our hands, though we were not asked even to shoulder a share of the burden. Canada was perfectly entitled as a sovereign state to decide against joining America's missile shield, but it is equally entitled to change its mind.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Halifax Chronicle-Herald
March 19, 2005
March 18, 2005
News Media Doomsaying on Iraq, Afghanistan, and...Germany
January 18, 2005
In January of 1946, as America and its allies were struggling to transform post-war Germany from a Reich into a democracy, an article in Life magazine declared "Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe", observing that "We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease," and "Never has American prestige in Europe been lower." The Saturday Evening Post sought to explain "How We Botched the German Occupation", commenting that "We have got into this German job without understanding what we were tackling or why." That February, The New York Times reported "U.S. Seen 'Fumbling' Its Job in Germany". And in October, a Collier's Magazine article pronounced "Failure in Germany".
To read such doomsaying, it might almost come as a surprise that Germany has been a peaceful and prosperous democracy for over half a century now. But excessively pessimistic news and commentary is not peculiar to 1946.
On October 31, 2001, The New York Times published a front page article entitled "A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam". Just three weeks after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan had begun, the Times report asserted, "Despite the insistence of President Bush and members of his cabinet that all is well, the war in Afghanistan has gone less smoothly than many had hoped," "signs of progress are sparse," "American bombs falling on civilian targets will not win Afghan 'hearts and minds'," and "nor have its tanks made any progress toward Kabul, the capital." Kabul fell two weeks later, and national Afghan elections were held successfully last October.
Shortly after the Fall of Baghdad, news and commentary swirled furiously around a story that provides another case study. On April 14, 2003, PBS's NewsHour claimed, "Largely unstopped by U.S. troops, looters pillaged over 170,000 items from the National Archeological Museum of Baghdad on Saturday, stealing or destroying a priceless collection of artifacts from more than 10,000 years of history." On April 13, Britain's Independent lamented "A civilisation torn to pieces" while Salon went one further on April 17 with "The end of civilization". A New York Times article on April 16 charged that "coalition forces were guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry building while hundreds of Iraqis ransacked and ran off with precious heirlooms and artifacts from a 7000-year-old civilization."
But on May 1, The New York Times was clarifying that "the losses seem to be less severe than originally thought." On June 10, an article in Britain's Guardian summed up the museum looting story thusly: "the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks." The Iraq National Museum had suffered some looting, but practically all of its 170,000-item collection had been hidden for safe-keeping by the curators before the war; Nearly the entire collection was intact and in the Museum's possession. Of course, the revelation that the bad news was not remotely as bad as initially indicated received considerably less attention than did the bogus bad news.
And while the admittedly abundant bad news from Iraq receives relentless coverage (The New York Times famously featured the Abu Ghraib prison scandal on its front page for 32 consecutive days), the good news rarely rates such prominent mention. And, yes, there is such a thing as good news from Iraq.
The November audio address attributed to Iraq's al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, implicitly conceded defeat, railing against Muslim scholars, "You have delivered us to our enemy." Shiite Grand Ayatolla Ali al-Sistani, arguably the most influential figure in Iraq, has actually issued a fatwa obligating followers -- including women -- to vote. And Iraq's Shiites and Kurds, who combined comprise about 80 percent of the Iraqi people, have remained broadly supportive of the democratization effort.
The IMF has estimated that Iraq's GDP grew by an astounding 52 percent in 2004. The U.S. Agency for International Development has rehabilitated or re-equipped 420 Iraqi health care facilities, immunized three million Iraqi children, renovated 2,405 Iraqi schools, trained 33,000 teachers and school administrators, and produced 8.7 million textbooks. And Canada has contributed to the restoration of Iraq's marshes, drained on Saddam Hussein's orders as punishment for disloyalty by Iraqi Marsh Arabs.
There is undeniably no shortage of bad news from Iraq, and journalists and commentators would be derelict to ignore the steep cost of the Iraq mission. But trumpeting every conceivable setback while dismissing evidence of progress as "delusional pro-war propaganda" is precisely what the insurgents are counting on. Anti-democracy forces in Iraq cannot succeed militarily or electorally. They can however produce a steady supply of terror which can be used in the West and particularly America and Britain as an argument for abandoning aggressive action against Islamic terrorism and fascism. And more immediately, their terrorism and our pessimism could discourage the Iraqi people from participating in their new democracy. If Iraqis make a success of their upcoming national elections, it will have been with little moral support from us.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Halifax Chronicle-Herald
In January of 1946, as America and its allies were struggling to transform post-war Germany from a Reich into a democracy, an article in Life magazine declared "Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe", observing that "We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease," and "Never has American prestige in Europe been lower." The Saturday Evening Post sought to explain "How We Botched the German Occupation", commenting that "We have got into this German job without understanding what we were tackling or why." That February, The New York Times reported "U.S. Seen 'Fumbling' Its Job in Germany". And in October, a Collier's Magazine article pronounced "Failure in Germany".
To read such doomsaying, it might almost come as a surprise that Germany has been a peaceful and prosperous democracy for over half a century now. But excessively pessimistic news and commentary is not peculiar to 1946.
On October 31, 2001, The New York Times published a front page article entitled "A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam". Just three weeks after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan had begun, the Times report asserted, "Despite the insistence of President Bush and members of his cabinet that all is well, the war in Afghanistan has gone less smoothly than many had hoped," "signs of progress are sparse," "American bombs falling on civilian targets will not win Afghan 'hearts and minds'," and "nor have its tanks made any progress toward Kabul, the capital." Kabul fell two weeks later, and national Afghan elections were held successfully last October.
Shortly after the Fall of Baghdad, news and commentary swirled furiously around a story that provides another case study. On April 14, 2003, PBS's NewsHour claimed, "Largely unstopped by U.S. troops, looters pillaged over 170,000 items from the National Archeological Museum of Baghdad on Saturday, stealing or destroying a priceless collection of artifacts from more than 10,000 years of history." On April 13, Britain's Independent lamented "A civilisation torn to pieces" while Salon went one further on April 17 with "The end of civilization". A New York Times article on April 16 charged that "coalition forces were guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry building while hundreds of Iraqis ransacked and ran off with precious heirlooms and artifacts from a 7000-year-old civilization."
But on May 1, The New York Times was clarifying that "the losses seem to be less severe than originally thought." On June 10, an article in Britain's Guardian summed up the museum looting story thusly: "the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks." The Iraq National Museum had suffered some looting, but practically all of its 170,000-item collection had been hidden for safe-keeping by the curators before the war; Nearly the entire collection was intact and in the Museum's possession. Of course, the revelation that the bad news was not remotely as bad as initially indicated received considerably less attention than did the bogus bad news.
And while the admittedly abundant bad news from Iraq receives relentless coverage (The New York Times famously featured the Abu Ghraib prison scandal on its front page for 32 consecutive days), the good news rarely rates such prominent mention. And, yes, there is such a thing as good news from Iraq.
The November audio address attributed to Iraq's al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, implicitly conceded defeat, railing against Muslim scholars, "You have delivered us to our enemy." Shiite Grand Ayatolla Ali al-Sistani, arguably the most influential figure in Iraq, has actually issued a fatwa obligating followers -- including women -- to vote. And Iraq's Shiites and Kurds, who combined comprise about 80 percent of the Iraqi people, have remained broadly supportive of the democratization effort.
The IMF has estimated that Iraq's GDP grew by an astounding 52 percent in 2004. The U.S. Agency for International Development has rehabilitated or re-equipped 420 Iraqi health care facilities, immunized three million Iraqi children, renovated 2,405 Iraqi schools, trained 33,000 teachers and school administrators, and produced 8.7 million textbooks. And Canada has contributed to the restoration of Iraq's marshes, drained on Saddam Hussein's orders as punishment for disloyalty by Iraqi Marsh Arabs.
There is undeniably no shortage of bad news from Iraq, and journalists and commentators would be derelict to ignore the steep cost of the Iraq mission. But trumpeting every conceivable setback while dismissing evidence of progress as "delusional pro-war propaganda" is precisely what the insurgents are counting on. Anti-democracy forces in Iraq cannot succeed militarily or electorally. They can however produce a steady supply of terror which can be used in the West and particularly America and Britain as an argument for abandoning aggressive action against Islamic terrorism and fascism. And more immediately, their terrorism and our pessimism could discourage the Iraqi people from participating in their new democracy. If Iraqis make a success of their upcoming national elections, it will have been with little moral support from us.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Halifax Chronicle-Herald
March 17, 2005
Missile Defense Against EMP Attack
September 22, 2004
With a single nuclear warhead and a ballistic missile capable of delivering it to the upper ionosphere over the American Midwest, the continental United States could be electronically incapacitated and primitivized by a phenomenon called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.
As the "Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack" reported to Congress this July, a "high-altitude" nuclear explosion would generate an extraordinary electromagnetic surge which would overwhelm electric conductors, damaging and destroying electronic devices and the very electrical grids. In an instant, 21st Century society would regress technologically to the 19th Century.
Ironically, experts believe that such a destructive nuclear explosion would have no direct effect on humans, but given our dependence on electricity, the indirect effects could be catastrophic. Airplanes in mid-flight would be stranded with inoperable instruments. Electronic medical equipment including life support systems would fail. America's high-tech military -- although it has taken some steps to immunize its electronics to an EMP -- would be dangerously degraded. Police forces and emergency responders would lose communication abilities. Water utilities would shut down. Modern food production, which depends on electricity to enable 2 percent of the population to feed the other 98 percent, would be incapacitated. Refrigeration would quit. Electrical heating in winter or air conditioning in summer would be useless. Telephone, radio, television, and internet communication would break down. Commercial satellites would be disabled. Financial services from stock exchanges to local banks, which conduct business electronically, would be discontinued, causing innumerable problems and losses. The repercussions of an EMP attack would resemble an apocalyptic nightmare.
Opponents of Ballistic Missile Defense argue that ballistic missiles are not necessarily required for a practically infinite number of attacks including even nuclear attacks, and 9/11 proved that plane tickets and "box cutters" were enough to collapse America's tallest buildings and destroy part of the Pentagon. But an EMP attack would require a nuclear detonation in the ionosphere, and that would necessitate a "delivery vehicle" capable of attaining altitudes of between 25 and 250 miles. Plus which, the radius of the EMP attack increases with the altitude of the nuclear detonation: The higher the nuclear explosion, the wider the electromagnetic pulse. Commercial aircraft have maximum altitudes of about 8 miles; military jets are restricted to about 17 miles; and even cruise missiles have ceilings of about 15 miles. Spacecraft, experimental aircraft such as the scramjet, and ballistic missiles can operate in the extreme low-oxygen altitudes necessary for delivery of an EMP attack, especially a more widespread one. So an EMP attack would in all likelihood be delivered by ballistic missile.
In the debate over Canada's policy on the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense program, the threat of ballistic missile-delivered EMP attack deserves consideration as a matter of Canadian national interest. An EMP attack massive enough to span the continental U.S. could not be expected to halt at the Canadian border, and regardless of the scale of the attack, Canada's economy and way of life are so dependent on the United States, and North American power grids and satellite networks, etc. are so interconnected, that even a localized attack would necessarily have a crippling effect on Canada. In an EMP attack intended for America, Canada would be collateral damage.
BMD is said to constitute a "weaponization of space," but the explosion of a nuclear weapon in the ionosphere would be a true weaponization of space, and BMD is intended precisely to prevent such a thing.
As for the concern that BMD might commence a new arms race, there should also be some concern that the lack of missile defense might allow an EMP attack, particularly given the presumable attractiveness to terrorists of such an attainable means of bringing America to its knees. The U.S. has offered to share missile defense technology with Russia to demonstrate that it has no anti-Russian designs and to help preclude an arms race. And, as BMD presently proposes to defend only against limited attacks such as by rogue elements or stray, accidental launch -- not against the massive missile volleys of a superpower -- the "Mutual Assured Destruction" principle deemed so vital during the Cold War would remain intact, albeit anachronistically.
The notion that a working missile defense system is an impossibility is reminiscent of "If humans were meant to fly, we'd have wings." Successfully defending against ballistic missiles is certainly a challenge, but if America could build a working airplane in 1903 and put a man on the moon in 1969, then it is not beyond the realm of possibility that in the 21st Century it will be able to strike down offensive ballistic missiles.
In any event, as Canada is not being asked to bear the costs and challenges of America's Ballistic Missile Defense project -- let alone sacrifice soldiers -- then at least we can be spared the more usual arguments against Canadian action on defense.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
With a single nuclear warhead and a ballistic missile capable of delivering it to the upper ionosphere over the American Midwest, the continental United States could be electronically incapacitated and primitivized by a phenomenon called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.
As the "Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack" reported to Congress this July, a "high-altitude" nuclear explosion would generate an extraordinary electromagnetic surge which would overwhelm electric conductors, damaging and destroying electronic devices and the very electrical grids. In an instant, 21st Century society would regress technologically to the 19th Century.
Ironically, experts believe that such a destructive nuclear explosion would have no direct effect on humans, but given our dependence on electricity, the indirect effects could be catastrophic. Airplanes in mid-flight would be stranded with inoperable instruments. Electronic medical equipment including life support systems would fail. America's high-tech military -- although it has taken some steps to immunize its electronics to an EMP -- would be dangerously degraded. Police forces and emergency responders would lose communication abilities. Water utilities would shut down. Modern food production, which depends on electricity to enable 2 percent of the population to feed the other 98 percent, would be incapacitated. Refrigeration would quit. Electrical heating in winter or air conditioning in summer would be useless. Telephone, radio, television, and internet communication would break down. Commercial satellites would be disabled. Financial services from stock exchanges to local banks, which conduct business electronically, would be discontinued, causing innumerable problems and losses. The repercussions of an EMP attack would resemble an apocalyptic nightmare.
Opponents of Ballistic Missile Defense argue that ballistic missiles are not necessarily required for a practically infinite number of attacks including even nuclear attacks, and 9/11 proved that plane tickets and "box cutters" were enough to collapse America's tallest buildings and destroy part of the Pentagon. But an EMP attack would require a nuclear detonation in the ionosphere, and that would necessitate a "delivery vehicle" capable of attaining altitudes of between 25 and 250 miles. Plus which, the radius of the EMP attack increases with the altitude of the nuclear detonation: The higher the nuclear explosion, the wider the electromagnetic pulse. Commercial aircraft have maximum altitudes of about 8 miles; military jets are restricted to about 17 miles; and even cruise missiles have ceilings of about 15 miles. Spacecraft, experimental aircraft such as the scramjet, and ballistic missiles can operate in the extreme low-oxygen altitudes necessary for delivery of an EMP attack, especially a more widespread one. So an EMP attack would in all likelihood be delivered by ballistic missile.
In the debate over Canada's policy on the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense program, the threat of ballistic missile-delivered EMP attack deserves consideration as a matter of Canadian national interest. An EMP attack massive enough to span the continental U.S. could not be expected to halt at the Canadian border, and regardless of the scale of the attack, Canada's economy and way of life are so dependent on the United States, and North American power grids and satellite networks, etc. are so interconnected, that even a localized attack would necessarily have a crippling effect on Canada. In an EMP attack intended for America, Canada would be collateral damage.
BMD is said to constitute a "weaponization of space," but the explosion of a nuclear weapon in the ionosphere would be a true weaponization of space, and BMD is intended precisely to prevent such a thing.
As for the concern that BMD might commence a new arms race, there should also be some concern that the lack of missile defense might allow an EMP attack, particularly given the presumable attractiveness to terrorists of such an attainable means of bringing America to its knees. The U.S. has offered to share missile defense technology with Russia to demonstrate that it has no anti-Russian designs and to help preclude an arms race. And, as BMD presently proposes to defend only against limited attacks such as by rogue elements or stray, accidental launch -- not against the massive missile volleys of a superpower -- the "Mutual Assured Destruction" principle deemed so vital during the Cold War would remain intact, albeit anachronistically.
The notion that a working missile defense system is an impossibility is reminiscent of "If humans were meant to fly, we'd have wings." Successfully defending against ballistic missiles is certainly a challenge, but if America could build a working airplane in 1903 and put a man on the moon in 1969, then it is not beyond the realm of possibility that in the 21st Century it will be able to strike down offensive ballistic missiles.
In any event, as Canada is not being asked to bear the costs and challenges of America's Ballistic Missile Defense project -- let alone sacrifice soldiers -- then at least we can be spared the more usual arguments against Canadian action on defense.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
Nova Scotia and the Maritimes on the American Civil War, and Iraq
May 25, 2004
Shocking though it may be to us today, Nova Scotia and the Maritimes chose the Confederacy over the Union in the American Civil War, overwhelmingly and with some enthusiasm.
In his 1998 book In Armageddon’s Shadow - The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces, University of New Brunswick professor Greg Marquis documents the fervour for the Confederacy and against the Union in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes of that time.
Sam Slick author and former Nova Scotia chief justice Thomas Chandler Haliburton damned the Union for "the ungodly and unchristian way in which they carried on the war…” and "…their utter disregard of all International law.”
The office of a St. Stephen newspaper proprietor who championed the Union was vandalized, allegedly by locals with a preference for the Confederacy. He later moved his paper to Calais in Maine and ultimately joined the Union Army.
Halifax Harbour despite the official neutrality of the Maritime colonies famously sheltered, repaired, supplied, and aided in the escape of the Confederate raider Tallahassee, responsible for destroying or capturing 35 Union vessels. The Tallahassee's captain John Taylor Wood after the war made a home of Halifax, where he became a leading member of the community.
The Class of '65 at their graduation from King's College in Windsor sang "We'll Hang Andrew Johnson from a Sour Apple Tree", Johnson having succeeded Lincoln as president after Lincoln's assassination in April of that year.
Confederate Major J. Smith Stansbury moved to Halifax in 1864 in ill health, and when he died not long after it was "among friends and sympathizers”; prominent Halifax clergy and citizens joined the funeral procession, and Stansbury was buried in the Camp Hill Cemetery, in the family plot of future Canadian Senator Benjamin Weir.
There were Nova Scotians and Maritimers who took sides for the Union, and some who fought for it: Marquis estimates that 10,000 Maritimers fought in the American Civil War, most of those on the side of the Union. But the Union faction constituted a distinct minority of the general population; Nova Scotia and the Maritimes picked the losing side in the American Civil War.
Sympathy for the Confederacy for some years must've seemed reasonable enough: Confederate forces had a good run of battle decisions, President Lincoln was much despised, the Union government lost legitimacy for such emergency measures as suspension of habeas corpus, censorship, and mass arrests, etc. But obviously the Union ultimately prevailed, and in hindsight we can scarcely imagine that its victory and rightness ever were in question.
Surely those Maritimers and Canadians unhappy about the Iraq War would object strenuously and understandably to their equation with Confederate sympathizers, and that is not my purpose. It is instead to demonstrate that this is not the first time we have felt strongly about an American war in which we are very largely uninvolved, not the first time we have damned U.S. policy in such a war, and it's just possible it'll be not the first time we come to feel differently about that war.
It's not venturing too far onto a limb to suppose that a majority of Maritimers and Canadians regard the Iraq War as "Bush's War”, not a war for security and freedom, and regard the arguments for the war as "Bush spin" and not legitimate rationales. But what if Iraq -- however messily -- becomes one of a precious few Muslim nations with true liberty, democracy, and rule of law, rejects reversion to a tyrannical and menacing rogue state, and serves as a positive model for the wider Muslim world?What if Iraq -- along with Afghanistan -- is not some anomalous, tragic misadventure, but the latest in the procession of American-led wars of liberation such as in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and America's own Confederate states?
While the world fixates on some pictures from Abu Ghraib prison and other such diversions, Iraqis are voting in local elections, an Iraqi Constitution is taking root, freedom of speech and of the press is flourishing, free enterprise is bustling, insurgents are being decimated, hospitals and schools are being constructed, utilities and infrastructure being restored, and so on.
For the Iraq project to prevail, America need not be perfect, and the Iraqi people need not love America; they need only choose decent, normal life over anti-Western tyranny. And Iraqis now are freed to make that choice.
Canada has every right as a sovereign state to abstain from this Iraq War, just as the United States had every right to abstain from the early years of the First and Second World Wars. But America came to feel differently about the world wars, and we may yet come to feel differently about this one, even if by that time the Iraq War like the Civil War is history.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
Shocking though it may be to us today, Nova Scotia and the Maritimes chose the Confederacy over the Union in the American Civil War, overwhelmingly and with some enthusiasm.
In his 1998 book In Armageddon’s Shadow - The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces, University of New Brunswick professor Greg Marquis documents the fervour for the Confederacy and against the Union in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes of that time.
Sam Slick author and former Nova Scotia chief justice Thomas Chandler Haliburton damned the Union for "the ungodly and unchristian way in which they carried on the war…” and "…their utter disregard of all International law.”
The office of a St. Stephen newspaper proprietor who championed the Union was vandalized, allegedly by locals with a preference for the Confederacy. He later moved his paper to Calais in Maine and ultimately joined the Union Army.
Halifax Harbour despite the official neutrality of the Maritime colonies famously sheltered, repaired, supplied, and aided in the escape of the Confederate raider Tallahassee, responsible for destroying or capturing 35 Union vessels. The Tallahassee's captain John Taylor Wood after the war made a home of Halifax, where he became a leading member of the community.
The Class of '65 at their graduation from King's College in Windsor sang "We'll Hang Andrew Johnson from a Sour Apple Tree", Johnson having succeeded Lincoln as president after Lincoln's assassination in April of that year.
Confederate Major J. Smith Stansbury moved to Halifax in 1864 in ill health, and when he died not long after it was "among friends and sympathizers”; prominent Halifax clergy and citizens joined the funeral procession, and Stansbury was buried in the Camp Hill Cemetery, in the family plot of future Canadian Senator Benjamin Weir.
There were Nova Scotians and Maritimers who took sides for the Union, and some who fought for it: Marquis estimates that 10,000 Maritimers fought in the American Civil War, most of those on the side of the Union. But the Union faction constituted a distinct minority of the general population; Nova Scotia and the Maritimes picked the losing side in the American Civil War.
Sympathy for the Confederacy for some years must've seemed reasonable enough: Confederate forces had a good run of battle decisions, President Lincoln was much despised, the Union government lost legitimacy for such emergency measures as suspension of habeas corpus, censorship, and mass arrests, etc. But obviously the Union ultimately prevailed, and in hindsight we can scarcely imagine that its victory and rightness ever were in question.
Surely those Maritimers and Canadians unhappy about the Iraq War would object strenuously and understandably to their equation with Confederate sympathizers, and that is not my purpose. It is instead to demonstrate that this is not the first time we have felt strongly about an American war in which we are very largely uninvolved, not the first time we have damned U.S. policy in such a war, and it's just possible it'll be not the first time we come to feel differently about that war.
It's not venturing too far onto a limb to suppose that a majority of Maritimers and Canadians regard the Iraq War as "Bush's War”, not a war for security and freedom, and regard the arguments for the war as "Bush spin" and not legitimate rationales. But what if Iraq -- however messily -- becomes one of a precious few Muslim nations with true liberty, democracy, and rule of law, rejects reversion to a tyrannical and menacing rogue state, and serves as a positive model for the wider Muslim world?What if Iraq -- along with Afghanistan -- is not some anomalous, tragic misadventure, but the latest in the procession of American-led wars of liberation such as in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and America's own Confederate states?
While the world fixates on some pictures from Abu Ghraib prison and other such diversions, Iraqis are voting in local elections, an Iraqi Constitution is taking root, freedom of speech and of the press is flourishing, free enterprise is bustling, insurgents are being decimated, hospitals and schools are being constructed, utilities and infrastructure being restored, and so on.
For the Iraq project to prevail, America need not be perfect, and the Iraqi people need not love America; they need only choose decent, normal life over anti-Western tyranny. And Iraqis now are freed to make that choice.
Canada has every right as a sovereign state to abstain from this Iraq War, just as the United States had every right to abstain from the early years of the First and Second World Wars. But America came to feel differently about the world wars, and we may yet come to feel differently about this one, even if by that time the Iraq War like the Civil War is history.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
March 16, 2005
The story of the 14th Colony; What it was, and what became of it
Not long before the Revolution, Britain's Thirteen Colonies in America were joined to their north by a fourteenth: Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia had been a French colony called Acadia to varying degrees beginning in 1604, but fell fully and finally to Britain with the second capture of the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1758, not two decades before the American Revolution. (Nova Scotia included present-day New Brunswick until 1784, and until 1769 included present-day Prince Edward Island.)
Nova Scotia by the time of the Revolution was not an established, developed commonwealth like the first thirteen, but a fledgling frontier colony being resettled by British subjects, the preponderance of those coming by design from New England. Little Nova Scotia was nonetheless base to a considerable part of the Royal Navy and later an entire regiment of the British Army meant expressly for enforcing loyalty to the Crown, so that the British government had a military influence in Nova Scotia unparalleled in the other colonies. Plus which Nova Scotia was not connected contiguously to the settled centers of those other colonies and was thus estranged from the revolutionary activity to the south.
Which is not to say Nova Scotia saw no revolutionary activity. A stack of hay bound for government forces in Boston was set afire, privateers raided the coasts with some frequency, and locals laid siege to Fort Cumberland, unsupported by the revolutionary Continental Army and thus unsuccessful. But the Nova Scotia Assembly had not dispatched a delegation to the Continental Congress, for the practical reason that the military presence of the Crown prohibited such a movement as that, and absent official Nova Scotian participation in the Continental Congress, then-General George Washington declined support for revolutionary efforts in Nova Scotia. They do say that judgment came to be Washington's greatest regret.
So Nova Scotia was largely left out of the Revolutionary War, and after the American victory and founding of the United States, carried on as a British colony.
Then came the 1860s, when Canada -- referring then to Ontario and Quebec -- looked to construct a counter to the United States on the North American continent, subsume the unhappy union of Upper and Lower Canada into some grander political arrangement, and aggrandize itself generally, and presumed to conscript the smaller British North American colonies into its cause. Nova Scotia wanted no part of this "Confederation", or union with Canada: in the Confederation year of 1867 Nova Scotians elected anti-Confederation candidates to 36 of 38 seats provincially and 18 of 19 seats federally, and 31,000 -- or 65 percent -- of Nova Scotia's electorate signed a petition declaring Nova Scotia's lumping into the Confederation scheme democratically illegitimate. But Nova Scotia was annexed to Canada by the British North America Act of 1867, against its express democratic will. As late as 1886, Nova Scotians elected a separatist provincial government with 26 of 38 seats, but to no avail.
Nova Scotia has been an Indian territory, a French colony, a colony divided between French and British, a British colony, a province of Canada as a British dominion, and a province of Canada as a fully-sovereign European-style state; so long as the world turns, there is no cause for supposing Nova Scotia's present iteration must be its last.
Nova Scotia had been a French colony called Acadia to varying degrees beginning in 1604, but fell fully and finally to Britain with the second capture of the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1758, not two decades before the American Revolution. (Nova Scotia included present-day New Brunswick until 1784, and until 1769 included present-day Prince Edward Island.)
Nova Scotia by the time of the Revolution was not an established, developed commonwealth like the first thirteen, but a fledgling frontier colony being resettled by British subjects, the preponderance of those coming by design from New England. Little Nova Scotia was nonetheless base to a considerable part of the Royal Navy and later an entire regiment of the British Army meant expressly for enforcing loyalty to the Crown, so that the British government had a military influence in Nova Scotia unparalleled in the other colonies. Plus which Nova Scotia was not connected contiguously to the settled centers of those other colonies and was thus estranged from the revolutionary activity to the south.
Which is not to say Nova Scotia saw no revolutionary activity. A stack of hay bound for government forces in Boston was set afire, privateers raided the coasts with some frequency, and locals laid siege to Fort Cumberland, unsupported by the revolutionary Continental Army and thus unsuccessful. But the Nova Scotia Assembly had not dispatched a delegation to the Continental Congress, for the practical reason that the military presence of the Crown prohibited such a movement as that, and absent official Nova Scotian participation in the Continental Congress, then-General George Washington declined support for revolutionary efforts in Nova Scotia. They do say that judgment came to be Washington's greatest regret.
So Nova Scotia was largely left out of the Revolutionary War, and after the American victory and founding of the United States, carried on as a British colony.
Then came the 1860s, when Canada -- referring then to Ontario and Quebec -- looked to construct a counter to the United States on the North American continent, subsume the unhappy union of Upper and Lower Canada into some grander political arrangement, and aggrandize itself generally, and presumed to conscript the smaller British North American colonies into its cause. Nova Scotia wanted no part of this "Confederation", or union with Canada: in the Confederation year of 1867 Nova Scotians elected anti-Confederation candidates to 36 of 38 seats provincially and 18 of 19 seats federally, and 31,000 -- or 65 percent -- of Nova Scotia's electorate signed a petition declaring Nova Scotia's lumping into the Confederation scheme democratically illegitimate. But Nova Scotia was annexed to Canada by the British North America Act of 1867, against its express democratic will. As late as 1886, Nova Scotians elected a separatist provincial government with 26 of 38 seats, but to no avail.
Nova Scotia has been an Indian territory, a French colony, a colony divided between French and British, a British colony, a province of Canada as a British dominion, and a province of Canada as a fully-sovereign European-style state; so long as the world turns, there is no cause for supposing Nova Scotia's present iteration must be its last.
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