CANADIAN POLITICAL LEADER SCORES JOHNSON
Widespread opposition in Canada to Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam and his sending American troops to occupy the . Dominican Republic has been reflected in a stiffening of attitude among heads of the New Democratic party, Canada's version of a Labor party. The June issue of the Workers Vanguard quotes extensively from a speech made in the House of Commons by NDP leader T.C.Douglas raking the Liberal government for "supine subservience" to the Johnson administration. Douglas warned that "what is now a local war could escalate into a world holocaust which. would devastate the greater part of the earth."
Douglas also disavowed Harold Wilson, head of the British Labour party, who has been crawling on his belly in support of Johnson's war policies.
The position taken by Douglas comes much closer to liberalism than to anything like revolutionary socialism. For example, he places faith in the completely discredited. United Nations, he appeals for ' 'negotiations" in Vietnam, and he makes the completely impermissible concession of granting that an imperialist power like the
United States has the "right" to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries "to defend its nationals and property." And he is, of course, “against Communism." That such a procapitalist politician should find it necessary to attack the foreign policies of both the American and Canadian governments testifies to the anxiety of the Canadian people over the course of events since Johngon won election last November.
Among the points scored by Douglas, the following are of interest: oO
"This revolution of the coloured races of the world demand= ing the right of self-determination is going to go on. It has nothing to do with Communism. Communists, of course, fish in troubled water as they always do, and they ally themselves with any protest movement. But if we took all the Communist countries and all the Communists out of the world this afternoon, the problem of the struggle for the right to self-determination by the coloured peoples of the earth in Asia, Africa and South America would con-= tinue and we would still have to face that problem,"
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"And when in 1953 the United States could see that the French were no longer going to be able to hold on in Viet Nam, they brought in Diem, who was set up in South Viet Nam as the head of a government, a government that was dictatorial and repressive, a government which began by abolishing land reform, land reform in a country where 80 per cent of the land is owned by absentee landlords, abolished local elections, and jailed without trial not only Communists but thousands of non=Communists who had belonged to democratic political parties up until that time. It is hardly to be wondered then that the National Liberation Front was able to gather to itself a great bulk of the support of the people of South Viet Nam in revolt against the dictatorial government of Diem.
"The Secretary of State for External Affairs continues to tell the House the same myth that the China lobby and the American propagandists have been peddling all over the North American continent, that the United States intervention in South Viet Nam is at the request of a sovereign power under attack from the outside,
"In the first place one questions South Viet Nam as being a sovereign power. From the very beginning it has been a puppet government supported militarily and financially by the United States, and to say that the United States was invited in by South Viet Nam is like saying that Edgar Bergen was invited to dinner by Charlie McCarthy. The fact of course is that the reason the United States had to intervene is because the puppet government it had set up did not have the support of its own people, and that today two thirds of Viet Nam is occupied by the National Liberation Front who collect
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the taxes, who run the villages, and who operate the greater part of the country. The government hes never been able to hold on to anything but the cities, and this with a succession Of governments because it does not en joy the support of the people.’
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",..the situation in the Dominican Republic raises some very serious problems for Canada, located as we are in the Western Hemisphere and affected by anything that is done by the United States, No one can deny the right of the United States to go into a country to defend its nationals and property. But within 24 hours of going ‘into the Dominican Republic the President of the United States said -that they were there primarily to prevent another Cuba.
"This raises the whole question whether or not the Johnson doctrine has replaced the Monroe doctrine, namely that the United States reserves the right at any time to intervene unilaterally wherever a country has a government the ideology of which is unacceptable to the United States, I was glad to hear the statement made by the Minister this morning to the effect that we do not accept this doctrine, I think we should also make it clear that any peace keeping force set up by the Organization of American States should have the approval of the United Nations. Otherwise the world is embarking upon a very dangerous precedent which will allow any group of nations, under the guise of setting up a peace force, carrying on military and political intervention in the affairs of other countries.'
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“But I doubt very much whether the intervention in South Viet Nam, or in the Dominican Republic was because the United States was concerned about individual freedom, If they were, I do not know how they put up with Diem for so long in South Viet Nam, or Batista in Cuba, or Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
"T think that the United States has been much more concerned with the fear that these countries will have Governments that will want to exercise their right to manage their own economic affairs....
"I think that sums up the whole question very clearly. We in this party are prepared to support collective security to resist aggression, but we do not believe that any country has the right to ‘use military power to force dictatorial and discredited regimes upon people who are seeking the right to self-determination., We do not want some new form of colonialism masquerading as an anti-Communist crusade,
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