Today is a big day in Canadian Parliament. PM Harper is leading his Conservative government in a debate on a motion to provide air-strike support to the efforts against ISIS.
No, not at all. cbruuny, careful with that
CPC Kool-Aid. Our current weak and rather ineffectual Prime Minister was quite absent in the House of Commons for the debate. Not much of a leader, so afraid to go on House record and face the questions. Errand boys, as usual, were ordered and took the sword.
It will pass, but not without some pointless debate.
Are you an advocate of tyrannical fascism? A prime purpose of Parliamentary procedure is to offer an opportunity of debate and in Question Period, the opposition parties have their a primary mission to question the government upon is policies.
Up until this point, for weeks, the government has done its utmost to insult Canadians with avoidance of adequate respect for Canadians. By ignoring questions posed by opposition Members of Parliament, straight to the inexcusable embarrassment of the Conservative Parliamentary Secretary, Paul Calandra, with tearful apology to the House for his behaviour against
answers for military engagement. His misdirecting actions were upon the direct orders of the Prime Minister's Office.
It's pointless for a few reasons (aside from the fact that it is a foregone conclusion that ISIS needs to be eradicated and Canada should assist in the international coalition).
And do what?
What is the mission and what is the goal?
You state the 'eradication of ISIS'? That's bullshit hyperbole. Air power cannot conquer a present and occupying military force on the ground. FULL STOP.
Let's get straight into discussing this theatre of operations:
Why is Canada just now getting around to this?
Does news travel slow up there or is their legislative calendar that busy?
??? The UK only had voted in their House of Commons last week. Australia has just got around to it. Only a few weeks of action by the USA and have any of your representative houses voted on action? Quite the flippant comment by you, Fern.
This contemporary theatre of operations, particularly Iraq, is out of Canadian scope of engagement and responsibility. Fern, is you ignorance so extreme to expect Canada to immediate come to the USA's beck and call, to help fix what the USA -- NOT Canada -- broke?
Let's be clear -- the USA, Brits, Danes, and Australians committed in 2003 to an illegal war of aggression, effectively breaking Iraq, and were instrumental in setting the stage for the present actors of the civil war there now. ISIS's blood is directly upon the USA's hands for its abomination of policy to effectively divide Iraq upon religious lines. The stupidity of disbanding the Sunni dominated Iraq military and the de-Ba'athifictaion of that state are where the current IS military mostly come.
Airstrikes against IS are only a token, face saving, and chest pumping gesture -- not a solution. The removal of a military force can only be accomplished by an opposing ground force. Airstrikes can possible weaken a present force and slow its advance -- but not force its retreat and particularly not impose its defeat. Just today, the northern Syrian town of Kobane is about to fall. Have the US airstrikes prevented the fall to IS of the entire Syrian-Turkey border region? Absolutely not. Who are the ground forces that these airstrikes are to support? What is their goal?
cbrunny, your partisan post is quite inane in that you mock Mulcair and the Liberals for asking valid questions. Seriously, I take much greater analysis stock from the Liberal likes of Naval Captain Marc Garneau and Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie (who will for a seat next year), than the vapid benches of the Conservative government, notably PM Stephen Harper who was so keen to join in to the 2003 criminal follies into Iraq.
Who's to be militarily supported from the air in Syria and Iraq? Two civil wars that we are now to take sides upon.
- Syria -- the Syrian government? Kurdish militias?
- Iraq -- the Shia dominating military and government and to repeat the past US failures of pacification in Falujah and elsewhere? That was with 'boots on the ground,' yet the ultimate blowback was a more violent and oppressive civil war that is present there now.
The Iraqi (Shia military, Baghdad government) fell back from Sunni dominated Iraqi regions that they lacked the fortitude to defend. For years the Baghdad government, with US support and as the USA did a decade before, went out of their way to alienate the Sunni population to the west and north of Baghdad. IS and its affiliates are holding regions of Iraq directly upon these nationalistic lines.
Then we have the Kurds, who against the perception of our NATO ally, have many of their militia and leadership categorised under active terrorism upon the domestic territory of Turkey.
The entire situation is a rationally forecasted mess, and it's of little wonder that tomorrow the Conservative government will fail to gain opposition support for a military mission in Iraq. No decent leader goes out of his way to push away and insult the opposition in times when military conduct is best acted with unity. Stephen Harper is a blowhard. Long dreaming of
leading in military glory while using any opportunity to rally only his political base. The ultimate chicken hawk who is incapable of recognising the strength of 'speaking softly while carrying a big stick.' He ain't got no stick to play, but has the bombastic audacity to nearly repeat the GW Bush deranged call of 'Bring it on.'
Before the next federal election, an easy prediction of no military gains being quantitatively gained against core IS held territory. More refugees. More massacres and crimes to play up the IS propaganda goal of terrorizing a held populace into submission.
It is vile. It is horrible. I appreciate that they should be stopped. But to what practical end?
Airstrikes provide no solution and at present any means to a relatively quick resolution. 11 years after the US led criminal invasion into Iraq, and what has been accomplished? This is not Canada's fight to meddle up any further.
Fern, you in the USA care? Then send your boots on the ground to die and occupy for another decade with the hope of achieving some semblance of civility.
You broke it. Millions are paying the price for it, and if to go in again, millions more will continue to do so with no rational expectation for a lasting resolution. A great big clusterfuck by bombastic pricks who ignorantly from half way arund the world militarily rush to act without thought.
cbrunny, this is why Canadian opposition parties should vote against a Harper platitude of bravado military tokenism. The Prime Minister has gone out of his way to take the lead and make this Royal Canadian Air Force mission his fight. Gleefully, I will see his inept party fall at the polls in a year or sooner.