Wars are a test for socialists. They pose more sharply the terrible consequences of a world driven by the market and controlled by profit-hungry multinationals. And the 1990s have seen a series of horribly destructive conflicts.
In 1991, a United Nations led force bombed Iraq in what all now acknowledge was a war to protect oil profits.
Sanctions against Iraq -- which were supported by the NDP when they were first introduced -- are killing at least 4,000 Iraqi children a month, according to the United Nations.
Last year, the US lobbed missiles at Afghanistan and the Sudan claiming to be targeting terrorists. They have since settled out of court with the owners of the pharmaceutical company they destroyed in the Sudan. The factory produced medicine, not chemical weapons.
And then we had this year's terrible war in Balkans.
In that war, the US and its allies, including Canada, used cluster bombs -- thousands of which remain unexploded in the fields and forests of Kosovo. They will kill and maim people for years.
The allies used depleted uranium weapons, widely acknowledged to be the source of "Gulf War syndrome." The resulting radioactive contamination will slowly kill thousands over the next decades.
This was clearly a war for NATO's power. It had nothing to do with "humanitarian" aims, as NATO claimed.
Many NDP youth organizations opposed the war. Thousands of rank and file NDP members opposed the war.
They joined the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Canadian Federation of Students, Labour Councils in Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto and hundreds of other progressive organizations and individuals in building an anti-war movement across the country.
Yet the NDP federal caucus joined the pro-war chorus and supported the use of Canadian troops.
Shamefully there was not one member of the federal caucus with the guts of Britain's Tony Benn.
Benn spoke on anti-war platforms throughout Britain, condemning the war.
He also challenged the NDP. "There's never been a war for humanitarian reasons," he told Toronto's NOW magazine. "I think the NDP better think again."
Svend Robinson, after touring Kosovo, did think again about his earlier pro-war stance. He now condemns the terrible crimes committed by NATO.
"Those in NATO who were responsible for the loss of so many innocent civilian lives in places including hospitals, markets, civilian vehicles including a train and bus, and the use of cluster bombs, must surely have their conduct measured against international humanitarian law ... Their 'collateral damage' was massive, and those responsible must be brought to justice."
These words of Robinson's are excellent.
But when it mattered most -- when the bombs started falling -- he and the rest of the caucus supported the war.
This was a shameful episode in the party's history.