The House of Commons Beclowns Itself and It's Off to War We Go

“We will strike ISIL where, and only where, Canada has the clear support of the government of that country. At present, that is only true in Iraq,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the House of Commons today. “If it were to become the case in Syria, then we would participate in airstrikes in that country also.”

There. Stop right there. What Prime Minister Harper just told the brutalized and broken people of Syria was this:

Unless and until we obtain the permission of the mass murderer who continues to bomb your children in their schools and playgrounds, who starves you to death, who continues to carry out poison-gas attacks against your villages and towns and who herds you by the thousands into his assembly-line death chambers, we will not a raise a hand against the Islamist psychopaths he has opened up his prisons to unleash against you. 

Rather a good opening, one would have thought, for the Opposition to get straight to the heart of the matter.

Prime Minister Harper had fatally exposed the most indefensible condition of Canada’s enlistment in President Barack Obama’s shambling air-power coalition against Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,  as you like) in Iraq and Syria.

The prime minister had further inadvertently drawn direct attention to the very cause of the current Syrian-Iraqi agony in the first place: President Obama’s deliberate squandering of the unmentionable late-stage gains his reviled White House predecessor had made in Iraq, and the unforgivable obsequiousness of the “international community” to Obama’s insistence that the godfather and primogenitor of Syria’s unbearable suffering -Bashar Al Assad’s grotesque atrocity machine – should remain undisturbed in Damascus.

All the evidence from Syria and Iraq so far is that Obama’s coalition air strikes, which the Royal Canadian Air Force will now be scrambled to join, are a continuation of this delightfully peaceful policy, only by other means. You’d think there would have been someone in Parliament who might be noticing this, but no.

What Harper’s speech elicited from the Opposition was a deafening cascade of the same revisionist and defeatist imbecility that for more than a decade has enfeebled the Liberals and the New Democrats’ activist and voter-base constituencies and rendered them utterly useless in what Foreign Minister John Baird has quite rightly called “the great struggle of our generation.”

After droning on and on with pretty well every subject-changing irrelevance (“the wrong-headed invasion of 2003), zombie talking point (“All of the other horrors unfolding before our eyes are the result of that failed invasion, transparently unanswerable question (“How much will this mission cost?, and rote, clever sounding question (“What are the rules of engagement? What is our exit strategy? that he could fit into his allotted time, Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair wrapped it up this way:

“The tragedy in Iraq and Syria will not end with another Western-led war in that region. It will end by helping the people of Iraq and Syria to build the political, institutional and security capabilities they need to oppose these threats themselves.”

It seems not to have occurred to the NDP leader he has absolutely nothing new to offer – zero – in the way of “the political, institutional and security capabilities” that the Syrian people and the Iraqi people desperately require, right now, to defend themselves against the butchers of the Islamic State, or against the Baath Party’s Shabiha militias and the mercenary armies of Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that have waged war on the Syrian people on behalf of the Assad regime.

Harper hasn’t provided Mulcair with any excuse to be useless in the case of Iraq, where Harper’s got every reason and every excuse to be useful. He’s got roughly 50 UN member states that have signed up with Obama in one way or another. He’s got the consent of the Iraqi government. He’s got UN Resolution 2178.

There is only one question Muclair has chosen to consider in the matter of whether or not he should support a Canadian fighter-jet combat role in Iraq. It’s the same question the late NDP leader Jack Layton asked himself in the matter of Canada’s military contribution to the popular Afghan struggle against the emirate of the Taliban – the role model for the Islamic State’s caliphate. It’s this one:”Does my ass look big in this?”

As for Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, he’s been perhaps too preoccupied with the intensive war-room deliberations required of our civilization’s epic and existential struggle against Sun Media personality Ezra Levant, on top of the hard work of thinking up frat-boy jokes that would insult even the most thick-skinned of the many brave women in the RCAF. In any case, Justin managed only the most mewling, puerile and  junior-high version of Mulcair’s windbaggery.

“We can be resourceful, and there are significant, substantial, non-combat roles that Canada can play,” Trudeau said, obviously unaware that the prissy “world stage” narcissism of that same non-combat role-playing is what has left the Syrians and the Iraqis, and the Kurds and the Yazidis, in the hell they’re living in today. Trudeau may also be unaware that Canada is already making a relatively extraordinary humanitarian effort, which in any case only staunches the bleeding.

But then again, when Trudeau calls for debates in the House on the subject of Iraq and Syria he doesn’t even bother to show up. As for the rest of what Trudeau had to say today, it was so embarrassing to long-time Liberals I won’t be so mean as to bring it up here.

As for Green leader Elizabeth May, I stopped listening when she traced the origins of the current sufferings in the Middle East to the Americans’ “bright idea to recruit a millionaire named Osama Bin Laden to take on the Soviet threat in Afghanistan,” a comical fiction that persists only among the conspiracy-theorist hippies who continue to render her party the butt of jokes.

In sum, then, what the brutalized and broken people of Syria and Iraq heard from Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition today was this:

“Trudge and trundle along into your mass graves and death camps and torture chambers. Should any of you escape the death marches, we will be on hand to apply bandages to your severed limbs, and patches to your gouged-out eyes, and we will always see to it that the television cameras are there to record what a lovely, generous and peacemaking country Canada is.”

So, with only that alternative on offer, it’s off to war we go.

Source - http://ottawacitizen.com/opini...its-off-to-war-we-go

I disagree with the Liberals and NDP. Prime Minister Harper made the right decision in supporting the USA.

I'm fully backing my party, the NDP.

The Liberal Party of Canada will be proven correct on this item

This is a good decision by the NDP.

Is like my Green party quiet.

Not a fiction and in about thirty years' time, when the US documents become open to the public, it will be seen that the information about Osama Bin Laden being buried in the sea is a fiction.

I guess yuji is the only Conservative in town. I always stand behind my party.

I like the Green Party. Those who care for the environment are good souls.

But I will still vote conservative.

ISIS is also fiction to you. Knucklehead. 

I hope they find a cure for Alzheimer's before I turn 80. Sad to see ole people in LaLa Land.

NDP are morons, When terrorism lands and actually occurs in Canadian territory then these fools will slowly wake up.

PM Harper is exposing Canadian aid workers in Iraq and Syria to beheadings. ISIS killed that British man this week because Britain joined Obama's coalition.

They want to lay back and have the US do all the dirty work while they enjoy protection and security for free. Freedom isn't free.

I was in Toronto not too long ago, Canada is not the same. I went a few places and some of the extremist views there are quite tangible. They have some trouble on their hands give it time.

Gil

We are a member of NATO and must support the USA.

Young Trudeau should have remained quiet on this issue. This ISIS are a bunch of backwards and he will have to go along with the Americans if elected.  Instead he should focus on other issues.

Wally

Trudeau has no choice on this major issue. Canada must be united in supporting the USA.

NDP and Liberals are putting Canada to shame.

Canada is not America with large sections of colored people.  A terror attack by a muslim regardless of where he is from or the color of his skin will result in the so-called darkies from South Asia and the diaspora (including Guyana) experiencing some serious white racism.  That guy who squealed on the boys from Toronto may have realized this so he spilled the beans.

Young Trudeau has a young and inexperienced team.  I met with one of them recently then realized how young the guy was and he has never been in an election campaign before.  Young Trudeau has to stick to issues that can get him votes in the rural areas such as this foreign worker program that has been flooded by people from the Phillipines and is putting low skilled people out of work in areas of the country where there are few jobs available.

Through the foreign workers programme, many individuals with those from the Philippines came to Canada, primarily in the past eight to ten years because Canadians companies; particularly in Alberta; could not get Canadian citizens to fill the jobs. They were refusing to work at the places, selecting instead jobs in the construction locations which were paying enormous salaries.

The various employing companies throughout Canada were given permission by the Federal Government to then employ individuals from the Philippines and other areas, including Guyana, to then fill the huge vacancies.

When the construction boon began to decline, many Canadian citizens who refused to initially work at the "low-paying" jobs were then crying loudly that the foreigners are taking away their jobs.

Through the foreign workers programme, many new-comers were then able to obtain permanent residence and eventually Canadian citizenship thereby  remaining in their jobs or moved to other locations in Alberta and other parts of Canada.

DG with all respect the program was never intended for adult fillipino professionals with nursing/administrative background to displace Canadian teens from their first entry level jobs in the fast food industry.  That is what it has done.  The program was intended to fill vacant high skilled jobs in the technical, computer and engineering areas. 

Wally, the entire programme was geared to all areas.

Hence while the specific area was highlighted in my presentation, employees from all areas; and indeed professionals - engineers, doctors, nurses, entrepreneurs, individuals who are focused on developing their own businesses, etc., were part of the overall focus.

Bottom line -- foreigners were/are admitted to Canada under various specific programmes.

My sense is that both Young Trudeau and Harper are not going to shut the program down after the election is over. They both need the Asian political support. Young Trudeau is part Chinese and Harper has lots of fillipino relatives.  But the program needs to be reformed.

Oh Canada...that US state to the North