National Post (National Edition)
A JUST CAUSE
‘The cruise missile strikes may not end the civil war there but they will make Assad think twice about launching more chemical attacks.’
It seems the question of who was responsible for the horrific chemical weapons attack in Idlib, Syria — not to mention the subsequent bombing of the hospital to which the injured were taken — has been answered to Justin Trudeau’s satisfaction.
The prime minister made a rare Friday appearance in the House of Commons to brief MPs about the U.S. cruise missile attack launched against a Syrian government airbase late Thursday.
An hour before the attack, he said, U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis called Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, who in turn called Trudeau.
“This morning I spoke with the president directly and emphasized that Canada agrees that Assad’s repeated use of chemical weapons must not continue,” Trudeau told the House.
Canada supports Trump’s “limited and focused action,” he said, while also backing diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria.
Yet less than 24 hours earlier, Trudeau told reporters in New York that it was still not known who was responsible for the chemical attack. Just in case they didn’t get it the first time, he said it twice.
He said Canada would be involved in the United Nations process to investigate and punish the perpetrators — whomever the miscreants turned out to be.
Chrystia Freeland, his foreign minister, went further earlier this week, saying the findings of the investigation into who was behind the attack needed to be presented at a “highly credible international fora” before blame could be assigned.
Both would, of course, have known at that point that all the intelligence evidence pointed to Assad.
Now that Trump has acted unilaterally, Canada has little choice but to fall in line and support the attack, while trotting out the fiction that this was the preferred course of action all the time.
The read-out from Trudeau’s call with Trump suggests the two leaders agreed “the repugnant chemical attacks cannot be permitted to continue with impunity.”
Yet that is exactly what would have happened had events continued on Trudeau’s preferred path — a finding of Assad’s guilt would have been referred to the Security Council and Russia would have vetoed any punitive action.
It’s understandable why the Trudeau government is squeamish about a unilateral assault. Multilateral action through the United Nations is at the heart of its foreign policy.
What’s more, the legality of the action is questionable, at best. Whether Trump has the executive power to launch such an attack is as much a matter of precedent as law. But clearly, Trump did not seek approval from Congress, as Barack Obama did when he considered his own strikes on Assad. He did not operate under the auspices of NATO, as Bill Clinton did in Serbia. Nor did he have the backing of Security Council resolution, as Obama did in Libya.
He can point to a case made by Obama’s lawyers in 2013 that the president has the constitutional authority to strike Syria unilaterally because of the “important national interests” of limiting regional instability and enforcing the ban on chemical weapons.
But this grey area would probably have been enough to provoke indigestion in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Then there is Canada’s bid for a UN Security Council seat. Senior government officials say no consideration was given to the campaign to win a temporary seat on the Security Council in making the decision to support the U.S. attack.
But this is a serious business for the government — a written answer to a question from a Conservative MP tabled last week revealed there are 10 public servants employed full-time on the campaign and the program has already racked up additional operational costs of $459,000 this fiscal year.
Turkey has come out and said it supports Trump’s action — indeed, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it didn’t go far enough. But other countries in the region whose votes Canada covets may not appreciate Trudeau giving Trump political cover.
Regardless, we are a long way from the heady days last September when Trudeau wowed the U.N. General Assembly, telling the organization that held a minute’s silence on the death of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il: “We’re Canada and we’re here to help.”
The boy scout sentiments about focusing on what brings us together, rather than what divides us, don’t carry much weight with murderers like Assad and Vladimir Putin.
There is a bronze sculpture in the UN compound of a worker beating swords into ploughshares.
Unfortunately, U.N. peacekeeping has failed in Somalia, in Darfur, in Sri Lanka and in Syria.
The cruise missile strikes may not end the civil war there, but they will make Assad think twice about launching more chemical attacks.
Despite the Trudeau government’s evident reluctance, this is a just cause and most right-thinking people in Canada and the U.S. will support Trump’s action.
THIS MORNING I SPOKE WITH THE PRESIDENT DIRECTLY AND EMPHASIZED THAT CANADA AGREES THAT ASSAD’S REPEATED USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS MUST NOT CONTINUE. — PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU