Canada’s Conservative government has again taken the country to war, this time in Iraq and Syria. Under the facade of a “humanitarian intervention” against the extremist group ISIS, the Canadian military is participating in a major US-led war whose real aims are: the shoring up of the pro-US regime in Iraq; the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is a close ally of Russia and Iran; and the strengthening of US imperialism’s military-strategic hegemony over the world’s most important oil-exporting region.
Like the 2003 Iraq War, the current war is being sold to the public with a pack of lies. ISIS did not fall from the sky. It is a direct product of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US “regime change” wars in Libya and Syria. Its fighters have been funded, organized and trained by the US and its key allies in the region, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Over the past two decades, Canada, under Liberal and Conservative governments alike, has put paid to its previous claims to be a “peacekeeper.” Canada has joined or supported every US-led war since the 1991 Gulf War, including the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected president, the 2001 war in Afghanistan, and the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya.
SEP (Canada) National Secretary Keith Jones will be the principal speaker at Sunday’s meeting. He will examine the reasons for Canada’s aggressive, imperialist foreign policy and its connection to the breakdown of global capitalism and the ever-widening assault on workers’ social and democratic rights. Based on this analysis, Jones will elaborate the SEP’s program for opposing imperialist war through the mobilization of the international working class in the fight for socialism.
WSWS readers and all workers and youth who want to understand and fight for the socialist alternative to war, austerity and repression are cordially invited to Sunday’s meeting. Questions and discussion will follow Jones’ report.
Sunday, November 23, 2 p.m.
Centre St-Pierre, Room 204
1212 rue Panet, Montréal
Near the Beaudry Métro Station (the Green Line)