Policies and terminology, rationales and contrived crises can be adopted, adjusted and applied as required by imperial powers bent on intruding themselves into and gaining domination over vast tracts of the world. Canada's integral involvement in naval operations in several seas and all five oceans may be attributed to the supposed exigency of the day, but it is a practice going back centuries and has little to do with whatever officials in Washington, Ottawa and Brussels proclaim it to be.
The US rescue operation in the Gulf of Aden this last Sunday, where Navy snipers killed three abductors of the captain of an American-Danish commercial vessel, is being celebrated in the American press and that of the West in general as a purgative, expiatory and redemptive milestone in undoing the blight of a US military helicopter shot down in the capital of Somalia sixteen years ago and a demonstration of American resolve - even the first blood rite of the new administration (though Pakistan was the location of its initial bloodletting in a zone outside of those charted by its predecessor) - is nothing unprecedented.
"There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror."
The above is not a threat by al-Qaeda or any other targeted group. It was issued by American General William Eaton in 1799 in reference to the so-called Barbary pirates of North Africa, described in a US journal four years ago as "arguably the first international terrorists the United States ever faced." (13)
In 1785, only nine years after the founding of the American republic, an American commercial vessel was seized in the Mediterranean Sea by what Washington labeled as pirates, in the words of the same source cited above, "initiating events that would lead to America's first war on terrorism -the Tripolitan War of 1801."
The same General Eaton quoted above, at the time US consul in Tripoli, recruited an armed mercenary force of "several hundred Arabs, 24 Greeks, 8 U.S. marines, and a former Army officer (who led the campaign). The force crossed 600 miles of desert to the 'shores of Tripoli,' as recited in the Marine Corps hymn, and captured Derna, Tripoli's second-largest city." (14)
If the above sounds eerily similar to current demands by US elected officials to expand anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden into amphibious and helicopter assaults on the Somalia mainland, it should. The model is the same.
There is nothing new in warships from North America conducting operations in off the coast of northeast Africa or in the Mediterranean. What is novel is their current scope. On October 4, 2001 NATO for the only time in its sixty year history activated its Article 5 mutual military assistance provision and one of eight measures implemented - support for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan being another - was the establishment of Operation Active Endeavor, a comprehensive naval surveillance and interdiction program continuing to this day and one that will never end until NATO itself does.
The bloc's warships police the entire sea and control access to and from the Mediterranean at all its main choke points: The Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal and the Dardanelles Strait leading into the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea and the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, respectively.
NATO ships have monitored over 100,000 ships and boarded over a hundred. As part of Operation Active Endeavor and related operations Canadian and US military vessels are active in the Mediterranean.
In February of this year Canada participated in NATO's two week Noble Manta '09 exercise in the Ionian Sea, the purpose of which was to "demonstrate NATO's determination to maintain proficiency and improve interoperability in coordinated anti-submarine, anti-surface and coastal surveillance operations using a multinational force of ships, submarines and aircraft. The exercise also provided operational training in potential NATO Response Force (NRF) tasks/roles and missions, exercising the procedures for possible NRF operations...." (15)
Canada also contributes to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) operation, which after Israel's sustained military assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 was expanded to include increased NATO states infantry, armor and naval deployments to secure the country's border with Israel for the protection of the latter, patrol the border with Syria and enforce a select naval blockade of the nation's Mediterranean coast.
A Canadian was among four soldiers killed by an Israeli air strike on a UN observation post in July of 2006.
The US has provided over $400 million in military aid in the interim and Canada, Britain, Germany and Belgium are also instrumental in rebuilding the Lebanese armed forces as a Western proxy institution in the nation and the region.
The European Maritime Force (EUROMARFOR) that effects the blockade of Lebanon's coast has approached more than 22,000 ships and referred 240 to Lebanese authorities.
In February of this year the Danish foreign ministry announced that a two-day meeting had been held with representatives from the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway "on how to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza." (16)
In March a British diplomat stated that nine NATO members, "The United States, Canada and seven European states" had agreed in a London meeting "to stop alleged weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip by campaigns of information sharing, diplomatic pressure and interception at sea." (17)
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