KAMLOOPS — The federal government’s move on the mission in the Middle East is one of the frustrations of partisan politics.
Both the governing Liberals and the opposition Conservatives have half of a solution, but because they can’t play nice in the sandbox, they won’t put both halves together.
The Liberals have announced the attention to do more training of Kurdish Pesmerga fighters in Northern Iraq as they battle ISIS forces.
In fact, the current contingent of 69 military special forces trainers will be tripled.
It represents a significant escalation of the danger to Canadian military personnel, so don’t let anyone tell you this is some sort of cop-out.
Canada has also announced it is beefing up its presence, both military and diplomatic, in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan.
But Justin Trudeau has announced our six CF-18s will discontinue their bombing runs later this month.
It’s the fulfillment of an election promise, but one that few people would have minded Trudeau going back on.
The Conservatives, of course, believe the bombing runs should continue, and that’s no surprise, considering they were launched under former Prime Minister Harper.
They have a point, though.
Bombing runs have successfully destroyed valuable ISIS infrastructure and put the enemy on the run.
This shouldn’t be a situation where it’s one strategy versus another.
The horrors being propogated by ISIS in the Middle East demand an answer from the West.
It’s a small mind that believes Middle Eastern problems affect only Middle Eastern people, and we in Canada have no duty to respond.
In fact, we should do everything we can to end the threat to innocent lives presented by ISIS.
And by everything we can, we don’t mean either/or.
It’s both/and.
Doubling down on training the locals is good, but leaving the CF-18s to do their work at the same time is twice as good.
