Dear Editor,
On Monday morning, Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau announced that Canada was terminating its involvement in the on-going US-led conflict in Syria regarding the use of aging F18s to defeat the radical Islamic group ISIS, or ISIL as it is also called.
Trudeau has proposed a holistic approach that includes another form of military support, a renewed effort for a diplomatic solution and an increase in humanitarian assistance and development.
It is the only way that the conflict can be dissipated and hopefully resolved.
But many myopic Conservative MPs and pundits think this is the wrong decision. They are wrong.
Even US Secretary of State John Kerry hopes that Canada will continue direct action by bombing ISIS/ISIL-held area, a move that would only extend the conflict and spread the use of terrorism throughout the world.
Trudeau wants Canada to put more resources into training Iraqi military troops to fight insurgents, a much more sensible way to resolve the conflict.
Meanwhile US Republican Party presidential hopefuls, like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, want to carpet bomb the heck out of ISIS/ISIL, an action that would only lead to a very serious conflict with Russia and its dictatorial president and Hitlerian thug, Vladimir Putin.
Carpet bombing or ‘blanket’ bombing as it is also called, stems back to World War II, when England’s RAF Air Marshall Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris implemented a bombing strategy that included civilians, such as with Dresden in northern Germany where over 25,000 civilians were killed, turning the Saxony province city Hiroshima-like months before the first use of an atomic bomb.
But, it seems, the United States has become very averse to “boots on the ground” after the 13-year-long fiasco in Vietnam, taking over where the French left off after finding that they could no longer rule the country in the years after World War II.
The United States, it seems, is still licking its wounds from the Korean Conflict (1950-1953) that has resulted in a 63-year-long truce that is threatened by its intelligence-challenged leader, Kim Jong-Un, who is threatening to use nuclear-tipped missiles to ‘decimate’ the American ‘imperialists’. And, the U.S. is still hanging its head down from flubbing the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961 let alone having to withdraw from Vietnam after a 13 year conflict (1962-1975) that saw over 55,000 Armed Forces personnel lose their lives.
If that wasn’t enough, they have ‘dabbled’ in El Salvador, weakly pushed the PLO out of Lebanon, invaded the postage-stamp Grenada to thwart Soviet and Cuban insurgency, bombed terrorist installations and military installations in Tripoli in the (then) Gaddafi-dominated Libya over the bombing death of two US soldiers at a German night club, invaded Kuwait to temporarily dispel Saddam Hussein’s Republican Troops, and the list goes on.
The conflict in the eastern Mediterranean has been going on since World War I and in Afghanistan since the 1840s and it will never end based on ‘smart’ bombing of ISIS/ISIL or Taliban troops hiding in schools and hospitals to evade people they call the ‘Infidels’.
It will only end when a more sensible approach is implemented and Prime Minister Trudeau is trying to get the US-led coalition to realize that. But the Allied countries do not want to put their forces in harm’s way, although, collectively, they spend trillions of dollars maintaining the most sophisticated air forces, armies and navies in the world since time immemorial, forces which are capable of creating mass destruction without losing many lives of their armed forces personnel.
One of these days, they will learn but between now and then, people in many countries will find that ‘war’ is no longer soldiers lining up in rows on an open field, or living and dying from dysentery in battlefield trenches or from ‘going over the top’, or suffering from poisonous gas attacks, or the onslaught of Japanese soldiers on a number of Pacific islands or from Afghani IED’s and suicide bombers, who should be really called mass murderers.
Extending the bombing attacks in Syria will only end in another form of mass murders. It will be a husband and a wife killing 14 innocent people or a trio of misguided Islamists killing over 100 young people enjoying a night out listening to music, because they have been deemed representatives of the Satan America
Listen to the wisdom of a 44 year old young man. He is wise beyond his years. It is, indeed, the right thing to do and the right way to do it.
G.E. MacDonell
Abbotsford