Are we fighting ISIL, or not?
The Canadian military got some well- deserved positive publicity this week with the announcement that a Canadian sniper team serving in Iraq set a new world record for the longest- ever confirmed kill. According to Canadian Special Operations Command, the twoman team (which was serving with the special operations unit Joint Task Force 2) successfully engaged an ISIL soldier at a range of 3,540 metres. That’s 3.5 kilometres. More than two miles. This shatters the previous world record held by a British army sniper by more than a kilometre.
It’s a good news story, and further confirmation that Canada’s snipers are the best in the world ( three of the top five long- range kill shots were obtained by Canadian troops, with an American and Briton rounding out the list). It’s also likely that the shot saved the lives of friendly Iraqi forces and civilians who may otherwise have been endangered by an airstrike.
So bravo. Well done. But doesn’t that sound an awful lot like, you know, combat?
Canadian military forces have been involved in the fight against the Islamic State for years. But in early 2016, the then-newly elected Liberal government decided to end Canada’s combat role in Syria and Iraq. CF-18 jets that had been bombing ISIL targets in these two countries were withdrawn; two refuelling aircraft and a reconnaissance plane stayed behind. Meanwhile, the Liberals rebuffed suggestions that Canada was doing less to stop ISIL, noting that it was dispatching additional ground forces to Iraq to provide training, leadership and other forms of non- combat support to Iraqi and Kurdish units. The government was emphatic: these troops would not seek to engage the enemy, but would defend themselves if it became necessary (which it did, on more than one occasion). These occasional defensive skirmishes aside, however, the role of the Canadian forces was clear: advise and assist, but do not seek to engage.
Or so the public was told at the time. If the government has amended its policy, it hasn’t said so. Which is what makes this week’s reports of incredible marksmanship by a Canadian commando so interesting. A 3.5 kilometre sniper shot is many things: a tremendous feat of arms, first and foremost. And if it saved the lives of allied troops and innocent civilians, it’s also a blessing. But there are two things it most certainly is not: training assistance or urgent defensive fire.
If Canadian troops are now actively engaging ISIL forces, helping speed the collapse of its odious caliphate, we would be delighted. We opposed the Liberals’ decision to end our combat mission and would welcome a reversal of it. Some media reports claim military sources have told them that Canadian sniper teams are actively involved against ISIL beyond this single sniper incident. If so, good.
But the government should not have kept this reversal a secret from the public.
On Thursday, the military implied that there had been no reversal. “As stated multiple times in the past, members of the Canadian Special Operations Task Force do not accompany leading combat elements, but enable the Iraqi security forces who are in a tough combat mission,” a military spokesperson said. That’s fair, but in the context of snipers, also meaningless. Snipers are not typically members of leading combat elements. That’s the whole point of snipers; they’re required tobe effective over long ranges precisely because they’re not usually deployed at the front. Hypothetically speaking, the military could deploy a thousand sniper teams to Iraq and set them loose on ISIL from miles away. The resulting devastation to the enemy would not technically require the deployment of Canadian troops to the front. But it would, of course, be absurd to then argue that combat was not occurring.
Similarly, artillery and tank rounds can kill over even longer ranges, also well back from the front. So can our CF-18s, which engage targets from such distances the pilots often never see their targets. But if the Canadian military sent artillery, tanks and CF-18 jets to Iraq and set them loose on the enemy, we would not pretend we were engaged in anything other than combat. As these examples make clear, there is no logical basis for treating sniper teams any differently. Combat is binary: you’re either in it or you’re not. And if we’re actively choosing to get involved (and not just in defensive action), we’re engaged in a combat mission.
And so we should be. Canada clearly has some of the world’s best snipers, and in ISIL, we have an enemy deserving of total destruction. The Liberals have recently spoken of Canada’s need to wield hard power, and this is exactly that. Let’s use it, but use it honestly. The public supported military action against ISIL before. It likely would again. The government simply needs to be honest about t he good and necessary work our soldiers are already doing.