LIBERALS’ SILENCE ON TERRORISM IS DEAFENING
It’s early still in the life of this government. Yet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Grits closing in on 100 days since their Oct. 19 electoral triumph, a pattern begins to emerge. It’s one that does the new regime and its leader little credit. It smacks of an inability or unwillingness to perceive sentiment beyond the urban Liberal echo chamber. It bespeaks a lack of imagination — including an inability to imagine threats to the government’s capacity to endure and succeed long-term. Tunnel vision and obduracy are not supposed to set in quite so soon.
Let’s begin with this: Trudeau’s Achilles heel. Every politician seems to have one. For this PM, for the longest time, it was his tendency to blurt silly things about serious geopolitical issues at importune times. There was his tone-deaf statement in an interview with the CBC that the Boston Marathon bombers must have felt excluded; his offhand praise of China’s system of government; his curious joke about the Russians invading Ukraine over hockey. Most memorably, there was the juvenile quip about former prime minister Stephen Harper whipping out Canada’s CF-18s to “show them how big they are.”
That series of gaffes, combined with Trudeau’s decision in the fall of 2014 to vote against Canadian participation in the U.S.-led air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, was a factor in the collapse in public support that led to the Liberals entering last year’s election campaign an underdog.
That they recovered and won resoundingly is a testament to Trudeau’s political skills and the quality of the campaign he ran. None of that mitigates that his perceived instincts and judgment about foreign policy — especially as concerns the war against Islamist, jihadist terrorism — are his greatest weakness.
Tonally this manifests as an inability, or unwillingness, to emit more than the minimum necessary wattage in public responses to terrorist atrocities perpetrated by ISIL and its fellow travellers. That was on display immediately after the massacre in Paris last November. It was on display again this past weekend, in the aftermath of Islamist killing sprees in Jakarta, Indonesia and Ouagadougou, Burkina-Faso, that left seven Canadians dead.
Has the government, and Trudeau personally, condemned these atrocities? Certainly they have. Canada “strongly condemns the deadly terrorist attacks,” the PM said in a prepared statement in response to the Burkina-Faso massacre. On his personal Twitter feed, he offered his condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those murdered. In the statement, he proposed a “speedy recovery” to the injured. “We are deeply saddened by these senseless act of violence on innocent civilians,” the release went on.
My question: Where is the expression of fury at the sociopaths who chose to murder these good people in cold blood? Where is the resolve to fight back, the passion for justice?
It’s not as though this government is incapable of displaying revulsion. Two weeks ago, when a hooligan on a bike pepper-sprayed Syrian refugees newly arrived in Vancouver, Immigration John McCallum said he was “shocked and appalled” at the attack — and rightly so. It was a vile, cowardly assault. Trudeau’s personal Twitter feed immediately lit up with a condemnation of the perpetrator. Again, rightly so.
But where are the passionate condemnations of ISIL terrorists who murder innocent Canadians in the pursuit of their demented ends? Burkina-Faso was not a pepper-spraying. Surely there should be horror and fury, in addition to the now customary sadness? Former Liberal leader Bob Rae took to Twitter Sunday to call the attack “an appalling act of cruelty.” Where is the corresponding vehemence on the part of his successor and his ministers?
It looks as though two things are at work. First, the PM and his ministers are taking pains to avoid the bellicose vitriol that characterized the Harper government’s communications about ISIL, that being all-too American-Republican for their taste. Second, they are leery, with good reason, of being accused of hypocrisy due to the continuing void — intellectual, practical and moral — in their policy visà-vis combating the Islamic State.
Where is that policy? It’ll be three months this week since the federal election. The defence minister, Harjit Sajjan, has travelled to Iraq on a fact-finding mission. Trudeau and his foreignpolicy team have had ample time to consult Canada’s allies. They’ve had time to hear reports from Canadian Forces generals who understand military strategy and tactics. Canadian citizens are among the victims in the plague of Jihadist murder that seems to me to be having its intended effect — to terrorize. What is the government’s response?
A period of orientation is understandable. Three months in, the silence grows deafening. Leaving Canada’s CF-18s in place, while claiming they’re doing no good and should be pulled out? Claiming a robust ground mission is in the works, while also abjuring any suggestion that Canada will ever be involved in ground fighting?
It’s incoherent. As long as it remains so, it will weaken Trudeau, while shoring up the arguments of his critics and opponents.