Plus, Coyne, Murphy, Fisher and editorial,

Justin Trudeau, would-be Prime Minister of Canada, has unwittingly opened a window on how he views Canada’s possible role in joining the effort against the terrorist fanatics ISIS. In his Thursday morning address to the Canada 2020 conference, he declared himself ardently for “humanitarian” intervention — but scorned any air support for a military effort as just, you know, the Harper boys “trying to whip out [their] CF-18s and show how big they are.”

Believe it or not, this off-

the-cuff gem was in front of a serious audience. He was being interviewed by the ObiWan Kenobi of parliamentary reporters, the venerable Don Newman.

Is this how an adult, a possible PM, talks? With its mixture of puerile condescension, its smug assurance that any vulgar reference to the Conservatives will “go over” with everyone, it’s an obiter dictum for the ages. And it is telling, in so many ways.

Why does a 42-year-old even think in these terms? The idea that every pointy, noisy, powerful machine is a phallic symbol is a dead and decomposed piece of wretched Freudian metaphor that last had currency around the time of Father Knows Best. Penis jokes are the stuff of Charlie Sheen sitcoms.

It may appease the watchtower guards of obsessive feminism to think of the military and jets as macho projections;

but I doubt very much if the Kurds and Syrians and Iraqis now struggling with ISIS, the young girls rounded up, the millions of displaced and hounded by these villains, the families of beheaded journalists, think quite so flippantly or so contemptuously of the for-

eign militaries who are, or will be, coming to their aid.

It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. (Oh, there’s a phrase he could play with.) It was the signature of an unserious mind, not to mention a mindless hit on the pilots of Canada’s military, to paint them so glibly as extensions of some macho ethos.

We should expect more —

both in class and thought — from a national leader, especially when he is speaking in the context of the miseries that have been inflicted by one of the most sadistic collection of terrorists the planet has ever offered. How will they be stopped but by force?

The Liberal leader’s glib joke about Canadian jets bombing ISIS reveals an unserious mind

As for Mr. Trudeau’s speech, he gave most emphasis to Canada’s “humanitarian” legacy, and accused Mr. Harper of seeing war as noble, and of a propensity for always thinking first of the military option.

War is to be avoided when it can. I’m not sure at all, however, that a war is something either the Prime Minister or others

are in any way eager for. Nor is it any way obvious Mr. Harper would seek war because it summons heroism and courage.

More likely is it that the nature of ISIS, and the thought of its diffuse expansion through social media and potential North American sympathizers, make this a more complex question that a simple choice between the humanitarian and the military.

In this new world of terror, to be humanitarian in some cases requires the military. There is no magic division between the two. One must often precede the other. Pretending a country can execute humanitarian missions, all free of conflict, without the need of force from the air or on the ground, is simplistic.

Mr. Harper might, plausibly, see this side of things, and with a reluctance to order people into combat at least the equal of Mr. Trudeau’s, still find it

is a choice he has to make. An argument which concedes this complexity, and acknowledges the real weight of the kind of decisions prime ministers have to make, would come well from Mr. Trudeau’s lips. But he seems to prefer less troubled avenues of exposition.

Events do not have a single dimension. The daunting complexity of world affairs, and their intertwisted moral ambiguities, is a hallmark of this new wild world of ours. Straight-line answers are available to none. Dealing with those ambiguities, having the maturity and depth to deal with them, is what we in Canada, and elsewhere in the world, want in our leaders.

Mr. Trudeau’s speech had its moments. But it was always stronger saying what the actual Prime Minister hadn’t done, than on what the aspiring Prime Minister would do. And however beguiling it was to the already fascinated, the great “joke,” besides how bad it was, threw a black shadow on all Mr. Trudeau had said before.