Listening to Defence Minister Jason Kenney doing the rounds of the news recap shows on television this weekend one thing was obvious. Kenney probably has not heard a word of what his military advisors are telling him. He set up Canadians as the biggest patsies of all when he sent those F-18s to the Middle East to fight the gangsters of ISIS.
This is not war. This is a terrible waste of Canadian money. Every time a laser-guided bomb is released over Iraq or Syria the taxes of another 20 Canadian families are wasted. And we have absolutely no idea of how effective that bomb was in slowing down those Arab hoodlums.
Whatever we are doing is obviously not working. We can maybe cut the ISIS supply lines for today but what can we do when the Iraq soldiers run away when the ISIS bogeymen threaten them?
When you go to war you need many things. To stupidly select just jet-fighter launched bombs and rockets guarantees failure. Does the jet pilot find a chocolate on his pillow when he returns to base at night?
To interdict these brigands you need to deal with them where you can see their eyeballs. If you would rather not put your soldiers at risk on the ground then use helicopter gunships, tanks, field artillery. You can reduce the risk but war is about people being willing to kill each other. If you do not understand that, you are in the wrong job.
Nobody expects the Minister of Defence to be schooled in Sun Tzu’s Art of War or Carl von Clausewitz’ On War but the blather Minister Kenney was spreading on the weekend was thin and weak. It seemed in all the video clips from his weekend in Iraq and Kuwait with the Prime Minister, he had nothing to say. He should be so wise as to shut up now.
It is becoming very obvious that the Conservatives have taken Canadians down the garden path and some how ended up in Syria. We not only do not belong in Syria but there is no side we would want to be on. The mess in Iraq is almost as bad. At least there is a political structure in Bagdad that pretends to be in charge.
If the Prime Minister got us into this mess to kiss up with the Obama administration in Washington, he has wasted our time and money. Obama is still going to tell Harper to shove his Keystone XL pipeline where the sun does not shine,
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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