Yes, Canada Should Get More Involved

Vincent J. Curtis 

25 Feb 15

The work below was prepared at the request of Esprit de Corps magazine.

Item: ISIS beheads James Foley, Posts video of beheading.

Item: ISIS beheads Steven Sotloff, Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Peter Kassig, Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Alan Henning, Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Hervi Sourdel. Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, Posts videos.

Item: UN:  ISIS beheading children, crucifying children, burying them alive.

Item: ISIS burns Jordanian pilot alive, Posts video.

Item: ISIS sells Yazidi girls into sex slavery.  “Sold me from one man to another.”

Had enough?  These aren’t half the notorious items that could be listed as authenticated examples of ISIS barbarity that have occurred since July 2014.  And the purpose of posting videos is for recruitment.  Between June 2014, and February 2015, ISIS apparently gathered a further 20,000 “fighters.”

There is an evil afoot in the Middle East the like of which the world has not seen since World War II.  It does not matter a whit for the sake of what religion these acts are being done.  They are objectively evil.

What should Canada do about it?  What can Canada do about it?

Presently, the Canadian Army has about seventy advisors or trainers working with the Iraqi military on the ground in Iraq.  We also have a squadron of CF-18 fighters based in Kuwait that attack ground targets in ISIS controlled areas of Iraq.

The Canadian army troops have, in the course of their work, indicated targets on the ground to be struck from the air.  While doing their job, these Canadian soldiers came under fire from ISIS forces.  The skilled Canadian soldiers wiped out the threat with their own organic weapons, which technically means that they engaged in combat.  Some in Canada are saying that this amounts to “mission-creep,” since engaging in combat was not the purpose of sending soldiers to Iraq.

Canada’s mission in Iraq may need to creep a lot more in order that ISIS be annihilated.  ISIS is an evil the world does not need.  History has demonstrated time and again that the decisive answer to evil of this nature is to annihilate it.

Canada has a powerful moral position in the world.  Canada has never been an imperial power.  She has no capacity or desire to be an imperial power.  Yet Canada has been on the side of successful moral right in world affairs for as long as anyone can remember.  Canada fought the Nazis in World War II, fought to save South Korea in the 1950s, stayed out of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, invented modern UN peacekeeping and participated in numerous UN peacekeeping missions, as part of NATO defended Western Europe from the Soviet Union.  A Canadian travelling abroad sooner or later becomes aware of the high regard in which Canada is held in the world.  Only bad guys dislike us.

If Canada makes the world aware that she is so moved by ISIS savagery that she is willing to take risks and put a significant effort into ending it, that act itself would be a moral blow against ISIS.  A country with an impeccable record of making moral decisions would not be standing aside and remain aloof in a matter of no direct interest to it.  Canada would be making a serious moral statement to the world concerning the ISIS movement.

The next question would be: to what extend should Canada become involved?

The reason ISIS has survived up to this point at all is that it is remote from any serious ground military force, except that of Turkey.  For its own reasons, Turkey has stood aloof.  ISIS controlled territory consists of a road net in Syria and northern Iraq that includes several major population centers, and is held by only 30,000 men, most of whom are foreign.  Their standard of training is low, and their military staff and logistics system could not withstand a mobile battle against so much as a mechanized brigade group.  ISIS has no air defense to speak of.  Engaging ISIS on the ground would be like pricking a balloon.

The Iraqi military, however, is thoroughly corrupt; and the Jordanian army is not equipped to project power far beyond Jordan’s borders.  The United States has announced that the Iraqi army is going to attack Mosul in ISIS controlled Iraq some time this spring.  Corseting that Iraqi effort and enabling Jordan logistically are the obvious places in which a middle power like Canada can maximize its diplomatic and military effort to rid the world of ISIS savagery.

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