March17, 2003
Even the clout of contemporary actors such as Susan Sarandon couldn’t get lefty Canadian Member of Parliament Libby Davies and University of Toronto Professor Emeritus Mel Watkins through the doors when they showed up--uninvited--on the doorstep of the Edgewood U.S. Army Biological Weapons site in Maryland.
Davies and Watkins are part of a 13-member delegation of parliamentarians, scientists, academics, faith and union leaders from Canada, the U.K., Italy, Denmark, and the U.S.
French and German representation, we can only assume, must be in the offing.
According to a Canadian Press wire, the group of pacifists was not well received in Maryland. "Upon arrival at the main gate, the ‘Inspections Team’ was met by heavily-armed security and a spokesman from the facility."
The Inspections Team was informed that, despite a formal request to the Department of Defense issued well in advance of the imminent visit, Team Inspectors lacked the appropriate credentials to be admitted onto base property. The team pressed home the point that they support the work of U.N. inspectors, and stressed that inspections are the first step toward the eradication of weapons of mass destruction everywhere.
Team member Alan Simpson, a U.K. Member of Parliament, took it one step further with a lecture: "Had this inspection taken place in Iraq, and had we been denied access to such a site, President Bush would have declared material breach of Resolution 1441 and authorized war on Iraq. This is the scale of double standard the disarmament movement has to address."
American military personnel are not the captive audience, forced to hear out Simpson when he’s waxing eloquent is in the House of Lords. Lofty title, notwithstanding, he was given the same bum’s rush as other Team members.
At the core of the Team is Rooting Out Evil, a Canadian-based coalition of international citizens opposed to the development, storage, and use of weapons of mass destruction by any nation. Rooting Out Evil claims to have recruited almost 25,000 ‘honourary inspectors’ through its website. And God knows, given the number of people now signing up for pacifism, they could be telling the truth.
The Team came to Maryland armed with a taped statement from Sarandon. "As an American, I support this initiative by Rooting Out Evil to expose the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration, and I think that all nations with weapons of mass destruction should be transparent and work toward disarmament," said Sarandon on the tape.
But being a pacifist doesn’t guarantee you a foot in the door of the military bases of other countries, no matter how long the hype.
Nor does holding a seat in parliament make for automatic credentials.
Rooting Out Evil may trade heavily on the support of crusading film stars. But the U.S. Army goes far beyond the celluloid of Hollywood and the world of film. They have their own Private Ryans who must go out in the trenches in the harsher world of reality.