It was all the fault of the Global team that had parliamentary reporter Vassy Kapelos filling in for Tom Clark on his West Block program on Sunday. She was a distraction. It started with Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion saying that we would soon know what the Trudeau government will do about bringing the F-18s home from the Middle East. And then he was heading off for Ukraine to reassure the people there that we were still on their side against the Russians.
Maybe it was just to check on that, Global brought on the Russian Ambassador to Canada. Not immune to the interviewer’s good looks, the Ambassador assured Ms. Kapelos that Canada and Russia have many important subjects to discuss and work on. And by keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the desk between them, the Ambassador was able to complete his diplomatic answer. He also had some excellent double-speak on the Syrian situation that seemed to be revealed to him by the interview desk. He allowed that the problems in Syria might be complicated. He never did tell us what is going on in Ukraine these days.
But it was our Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan who clarified that we would all know soon. He must have said it ten times that all will be revealed to us soon. And until then Minister Sajjan was not telling Vassy or her viewers a damn thing.
The only problem with all this soon business, we were becoming quite convinced that the Trudeau government has not a clue as to what to do about the Middle East mess. We might as well continue bombing the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). After three months of hearing “soon” a serious credibility gap is developing.
One of the problems we are beginning to wonder about is the extent of the war that is going to take place between the Kurds and the Iraqis if ISIL is ever vanquished. With the Americans arming and training the Iraqis, why are our Canadian troops involved in training the Kurds? While there have been mentions of some vague additional training missions, we can ill-afford to be caught between the Kurds and their long-time oppressors in Bagdad.
We should not forget that the guys in charge in Bagdad these days might not care much about the Kurdish lands but they are rather attached to the oil under those lands.
Frankly, the Canadians need to get the hell out of Dodge sooner than soon.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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