Bread Not Bombs: A Political Agenda for Social Justice

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century, Prime Ministers: Ranking

Senator Douglas Roche is arguably Canada’s leading disarmament
crusader. As a Tory Member of Parliament, as Mulroney’s ambassador for
disarmament, and as an independent senator, he has made his life’s
work the cause of peace. He is against global poverty, for development
assistance, against nuclear proliferation, for peace and the United
Nations, and against NATO. Of his bona fides there can be no doubt; of
his good sense, however, we may rightly have our doubts.

Roche’s book was written at the time of the NATO attacks on
Yugoslavia because of NATO’s appalling genocidal policies in Kosovo.
Roche naturally—indeed instinctively—opposed this war, arguing that
it was illegal, that only the Security Council could authorize such
matters, that the United Nations should be involved on the ground, and
that Canada ought not to join in. Others said the same, to be sure, but
such calls were simply unrealistic for Ottawa and other NATO capitals.
The UN was not likely to intervene, and if by chance it did, the
intervention would be too late to save the Kosovars and so bungled by
New York’s peacekeeping/peacemaking incompetence as to guarantee a
disaster. Brutal as it was (and the NATO air assault was as surgical as
such attacks could ever be), the NATO intervention was necessary,
justified, and without doubt saved more lives than it cost. Roche simply
cannot accept such reasoning—NATO bad, UN good—which he repeats in
the same Orwellian tones, whatever the issue.

We need idealists, and Roche is an idealist. Disarmament is a positive
goal, but it is unlikely to be realized—ever. Sometimes soft power
doesn’t save lives; sometimes it costs lives. The Douglas Roches of
the world—and Canada is full of them—could do with a stiff dose of
realism added to their idealism.