Time to admit we’re at war in Iraq

Nobody will admit Canadian troops are at war

Harjit Sajjan, a former cop, intelligence expert and Afghan war veteran, got the rock-star treatment when he was appointed minister of defence more than a year ago. He was lauded as a “bad-ass,” who made all his predecessors in the job look like pencilnecked bureaucrats. A photo of him in combat fatigues went viral.

Since then, he has presided over a series of miscues — some apparently his doing, some possibly not. Inquiring minds wonder to what extent Sajjan remains in tune with his boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the broader aims of a Liberal government for which military affairs have until now seemed an afterthought.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: Canadian military personnel are at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. They have been for two years. Yet no one in this government will say so.

Until last February, Canada’s Iraq war included bombing runs by a flight of CF-18s. Since then, it has included firefights on the ground involving special ops soldiers whose numbers have tripled since the outset, to about 200. How many firefights? We don’t know. No one in the Defence Department is saying.

This week, Gen. Jonathan Vance, the country’s senior soldier, told a parliamentary committee Canadian troops have taken pre-emptive action, firing before they or their allies are fired upon. Canadian special forces have deployed anti-tank weapons to destroy explosives-laden vehicles headed for Kurdish lines, according to their commander, Maj.-Gen. Mike Rouleau.

To be clear: any Canadian effort in the international fight against ISIL, however limited, is welcome. It is morally and strategically necessary that this country oppose genocide, slavery, mass murder and mass rape. We should be doing more than we are. The difficulty is in the hypocrisy of our public and political discussion about this mission — to which no political party has been immune.

For just as Canada’s soldiers in Iraq are not acknowledged to be at war by the Trudeau government, neither were they acknowledged as being at war — on the ground, anyway — by the Conservative government. How this can continue, month after month, in a democracy that is ostensibly transparent about its military, is anybody’s guess.

The Liberals made the wrong choice in 2014 when they set themselves against the Harper government’s decision to participate in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL. From that flowed the ill-conceived Liberal campaign policy of pulling the CF-18s from the fight. This was an affront to the Liberal party’s Pearsonian tradition and also the spirit of the Afghan mission, which the Chrétien and Martin governments launched.

The reason for the shift, plainly, was electoral. How better to cast yourself as an antidote to the “warlike” Harper Tories, those dastardly George W. Bush Republicans in sheep’s clothing, than to symbolically beat swords into ploughshares? And how better to court New Democrat supporters with a pacifist tilt?

And yet, there was also U.S. President Barack Obama to worry about, and his clearly expressed desire for Canadians to remain in the Iraq fight, and the imperative of keeping the bilateral relationship solvent and the Canada-U. S. border lubricated.

Hence, a rabbit from the Liberal hat: a revamped mission more dangerous than the bombing mission, due to the increase in the number of deployed ground troops, yet framed as humanitarian; capacity- building, peace operations, anything to avoid calling it what it is, which is modern war.

The irony here is that killing ISIL terrorists before they commit mass murder is a humanitarian act. It is self-defence by the civilized world, and no different morally from the defensive act of the soldier who fires on the inbound vehicle loaded with artillery shells. In that respect the entire debate about combat versus non-combat, on all sides, is false.

Does Sajjan, professional soldier, understand all this? Of course. He hinted early in his tenure that, left to his own devices, he would have left the CF-18s in place. But he has been reduced in the House of Commons to wanly repeating talking points, seeking to justify a position that with each passing day is more at odds with reality.

In essence, it is to avoid answering specific questions about the Iraq mission or a pending UN-mandated military mission to Africa, citing the complexity of the situation or the need for operational secrecy. But, as Conservative defence critic James Bezan noted Wednesday in question period, “Mr. Speaker, we are getting tired of waiting for those answers.”

With Donald Trump headed for the White House, this seems a particularly bad time for Canada to be anything but clear about its role in the war against Islamism, whether in Iraq or Africa. The constant shilly-shallying has undermined Sajjan.

The government would help him, and itself, by talking straight — as the Conservatives are quite rightly demanding.

THE IRONY IS THAT KILLING ISIL TERRORISTS BEFORE THEY COMMIT MASS MURDER IS A HUMANITARIAN ACT … SELF-DEFENCE BY THE CIVILIZED WORLD. — MICHAEL DEN TANDT