Assuming Positions of Honour

"Even if the United States could solve the logistic and sustainment issues involved on a timely basis, the United States cannot deploy its own major ground force combat units into the middle of a civil war. The rise of the Islamic State and the support it has gained from Iraq's Sunnis is the result of the conflict between Arab Sunni and Arab Shiite that former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki provoked between 2010 and being pushed out of the position in 2014. Far too many Iraqis will now see any U.S. action as taking sides in their civil war, there are far too many hostile Shiite and Sunni militias, and far too many Iraqi politicians who will exploit the situation for their own benefit."
Anthony Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington

"Why aren't we talking more about the kind of humanitarian aid that Canada can and must be engaged in?"
"Rather than, you know, trying to whip out our CF-18s and show them how big they are. It just doesn't work like that in Canada."
"Instead, he [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] dares us to oppose his war, staking out not moral territory but political territory. Indeed, it seems like he has decided that he actually wants the opposition parties to vote against this military adventure of his. Which is completely contrary, I think, to what Canadians want to see."
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau

Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria (Photo: AP)

He's quite incorrect, of course, is Trudeau Junior. While appearing satisfied to take the moral high ground, he does anything but. Adolescent in his reasoning as he is in his expression. Canada is providing humanitarian aid and a great deal of it. And it will be required to continue providing humanitarian aid increasingly on an ever growing scale, if nothing is done to halt the progress of the crazed jihadist Islamic State terrorists who are titled in polite circles 'militants', and not terrorists, but terrorists they most certainly are.

Canadians don't, of course, want to go to war, don't want their country to be engaged in yet another war, don't want to see Canadian casualties, and are well aware of the endless circuitous rounds of explosively violent and deadly sectarian and tribal social dysfunction in the Arab world. Perhaps Canadians would be satisfied to leave the sects to slaughter one another in the hope that they might disintegrate by attrition the psychopaths among them.

On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the Islamic State's agenda has infiltrated Canada, the United States and Europe to an unforeseen degree, tantalizing restless young Muslims with the belief of their requirement to join the global jihad envisioned by Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the rest of the blood-slavering malcontents suffering the pathology of hatred, division and the need to dominate by brute force. Let alone the attraction to Islamic State of mockingly beheading Westerners they abduct for ransom and revenge.

Providing humanitarian aid has its purpose; preventing, or halting the need for that humanitarian aid to be required seems a far more humane option. Of course, Mr. Trudeau, an aspirant for the prime ministership of Canada also speaks of the efficacy of diplomacy and how necessary it is for diplomacy to be given a chance, what a sterling option it is. To which the response of many skeptics would be that they'd enjoy witnessing an exchange between Justin Trudeau and any member of Islamic State where the former uses reason and diplomacy in a conversation with the latter.

Former Canadian diplomat, UN envoy and al-Qaeda hostage Robert Fowler could give this entitled political upstart a few lessons in that direction. Mr. Cordesman deplores a situation that he traces to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that unleashed tribal and sectarian vituperation and hatred resulting in an orgy of violence that has never since abated, since the removal of Iraq's dictator Saddist Hussein who had kept it in check while abusing everyone as was his totalitarian entitlement.

True as this has been, as can be seen echoed in Libya, the option to leave the ferocious beasts of jihad slavering over one another's blood isn't quite open to the rest of the world, since their appetite is never slated with Muslim blood alone, and they crave the extension of their bloodshed to the infidels of the world, the Jews and the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Christians, the Muslims they characterize as despised heretics, taking pleasure in rape, torture and slaughter as their divine mission.

Kurdish refugees wait by the side of the road near Suruc, Turkey, after their arrival from Kobani, as fighting intensified between Syrian Kurds and the militants of Islamic State group on Oct. 5, 2014. Photo by Associated Press