Fated To Act

"What we are facing here is one of the most barbaric terrorist groups the world has ever known. Their world view is a direct challenge to the values of Western civilization."
"I ask that as we consider whether or how to act, we also consider what happens if we don't act. It might seem convenient to brush options off as leading to mission creep in the future. But the hard reality is that inaction is not an option."
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird

Minister of Defence John Nicholson confirmed that a small, very small, contingent of Canadian troops is being deployed from the Petawawa-based Canadian Special Operations Regiment (Joint Task Force) to Iraq to help the international community address the resonating problem of vicious jihad that now resides within the Middle East, but which will eventually come back to roost in Western countries. This will occur for the simple enough reason that the psychopathic lunacy of unrestrained barbarism has proven appealing to some young Muslims living in the West.

Thousands of Muslim men (and some women) have responded to the recruiting call from the Islamic State whose gruesome videos of beheadings and mass slaughter have managed, incredibly enough, to appeal to the appetite for adventure inherent in some minds, bolstered by the febrile imagining that to launch oneself into a virulent conflict meant to exact death and destruction on a large scale for the purpose of instilling terror into the hearts and souls of the targeted represents a service to Islam.

Islamists make every effort to impress on young Muslims their duty to Islam to embark on violent jihad as proof of their surrender to the religion for which jihad is considered a mainstay in the never-ending effort to bring non-Muslims into the fold, or slaughter them for refusing the opportunity to worship within Islam. With the ennui of those who tire of having all the opportunities available to them to advance into a future of security and achievement within the confines of a Western social contract, many leave to go abroad to join the mujahadeen.

Their eventual return becomes a major concern to the countries they leave. While the episodes of returning jihadists wreaking havoc within the societies that nurtured them in democracy and liberty have as yet been rare, there is little doubt they will occur with an increasing frequency. When they have on occasion taken place their effect has been devastating in destroying the equilibrium among populations who imagine themselves safe from the carnage they view taking place elsewhere.

For Canada, an advance team of soldiers has arrived in Iraq to aid the Kurdish Iraqi population and the peshmerga in protecting the civilian population against the mind-boggling atrocities being perpetrated on Christians, Yazidis and other minorities by the Islamic State. And where some astute observers have reached the conclusion that the United States, in committing to the fight against ISIS, now finds itself acting in concert with the Shiite Islamist Iranians, Canada will agree to no such arrangement.

"Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world", responded Foreign Minister John Baird, from Ottawa. "Just because it's not their brand of terrorism (Sunni Islamist jihad) doesn't [absolve] them. They have had a very destabilizing influence in just about every single country in that region", he stated, countering the observation that Iran has great influence in Iraq and Syria as companion Shiite regimes to their own, all fearful of the Sunni jihadists.

Which, in and of itself, represents a huge part of the problem, with Shias viewing Sunnis as heretical and Sunnis returning the compliment to the point where either is prepared to destroy the other, all in the name of tradition, tribalism and sectarian hatred. It is out of this dysfunction within the religion and between co-religionists, albeit of different traditions, that the barbarism unfolding now within Syria, Libya and Iraq takes place.

"We'll want to see if we're making a difference. This is a very tragic situation, and we believe that we have to do our part to assist in averting any more tragedy of this type", added Minister of Defence Nicholson. U.S. President Barack Obama has announced his plan to "degrade and destroy" the Islamist jihadis. There is much discomfiture in the reality that to do so he is taking a stand that is sectarian-based since the ISIS terrorists are of the Sunni brand.

While Hezbollah represents the Shiite brand of jihadist violence.

And the larger problem is the intervention of Western governments in Middle Eastern affairs. Where it seems much more reasonable to expect that the Arab League, as an example, has more than sufficient men in their militaries, and expends an enormous amount of oil dollars in the purchase of advanced weaponry, making them fully capable of sorting out their own abysmal interrelations, let alone putting down a maliciously violent militia of a mere ten thousand or more men intent on annihilating their opposition on their way to gathering more territory and terrorizing more people.