How do you go to war with stateless brigands? How do you bomb the locations of thieves who move about usurping the homes and authority of people weakened with years of oppression and destructive war? How do you bring ill-trained soldiers into an effective force to fight these brigands when all the conscripts know is the fear of totalitarian regimes? How do you wage war against people taught to welcome martyrdom?
But, Prime Minister Harper—being smarter than other Canadians—is leading us to war with thieves. He wants to fight people who call themselves an Islamist state and are neither true believers nor a state. He thinks an F-18 pilot flying at over 200 kilometres per hour can distinguish between a friendly or unfriendly Bedouin herding his goats.
Harper wants to be there with the big kids, kicking sand in the face of those who want to make jihad. Barack Obama of the U.S.A. and David Cameron of Great Britain are already on board. These comic crusaders think they can bomb the jihadists back to the Stone Age. The only problem is that these masked gunmen already live in the Stone Age.
And who buys the oil they steal? And who sells these criminals the weapons of war they use on defenceless populations?
You would think that over a couple thousand years we had learned our lesson about Middle East crusades. No westerner ever wins. Nobody won any of the Iraq wars. We are always welcome back to visit with the poppy growers of Afghanistan. If we want to fight more Taliban, Pakistan will produce more for us. We made a legend of Osama bin Laden. His replacements are plentiful and grow from the fields where the west has sown the dragon’s teeth.
Before Mr. Harper makes any more stupid pledges of another crusade, he needs to tell Canadians what we achieved in the first Gulf War? He needs to tell Canadians what good Canadians brought to Afghanistan—and why we left Canadian blood behind?
Air superiority matters only when there is a cohesive force on the ground to mark the target and sort out the good from the bad after the air strike. That works. That makes sense. To use air strikes alone against these brigands who call themselves ISIS without a trained force of Arabic-speakers on the ground to finish the job is sad and stupid, and a waste of time and money.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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