A weak and disillusioned Trudeau may not have a party for long!! ================================================== When Justin Trudeau leads the Liberal Party of Canada Monday in opposing a Canadian military mission against ISIS in Iraq, he will do so against the better judgment of many of his party’s grandees, who between them have influenced Canada’s military response to global conflicts, from Rwanda and Kosovo to Afghanistan and previous wars in Iraq. Harper finally gets his Churchill moment: Iraq mission could end PMs political career This may be, paradoxically enough, Stephen Harper’s finest hour. The man who admires Lincoln, Churchill and Thatcher, at last has his opportunity to lead as he imagines they did, with unyielding conviction and no care to the political cost. Hanging in the balance are Harper’s fourth term, and his legacy. For the Conservatives now have the ultimate differentiator between themselves and their opponents; an open-ended, aspirational foreign war in which they stand alone, guardians of all that is good and true, while the “wets” of the New Democratic and Liberal parties natter from the sidelines. Next year’s Tory election ads will surely offer clips of the speeches to occur Monday as the House of Commons debates the six-month deployment, which is to include up to 600 support personnel, up to six CF-18 fighters, two Aurora surveillance planes and a refuelling plane. The PM’s speech will be charged with the gravitas he reserves uniquely for such occasions. The wrinkle – the wild card that makes this a Hail Mary pass, in political terms – is that it all may go so very badly wrong. Read more from Michael Den Tandt … . The genocidal jihadists, including Canadians and other Westerners, who fight under the banner of ISIS “have to be whacked, and whacked good,” Lloyd Axworthy, a former Liberal foreign affairs minister who aimed to put “human security” at the heart of foreign affairs, said on CTV last week. “If you really want to stop them, you’re going to have to give a full-court press.” He was not alone in supporting the action Mr. Trudeau has vowed to reject, or in undermining the leader’s rhetoric before he used it. Former interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, for example, rejected the comparison, later made by Mr. Trudeau, to the “fiasco” of the 2003 Iraq War. Former Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire dismissed a campaign of air strikes without ground troops as pointless, and former Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh calling for “robust” Canadian military action. All these comments were made before Mr. Trudeau vowed to oppose the government motion for the ISIS mission. But by accusing Prime Minister Stephen Harper of using “overheated and moralistic rhetoric … to justify a war,” Mr. Trudeau has chosen a strategy that is likely to colour his political fortunes for months to come. And by favouring purely humanitarian action over military force, Mr. Trudeau seems to have broken with many of the party’s eminences — if such a rift is already apparent, it could well go deeper. For NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, as for Mr. Harper, the strategy is less fraught. The one party can be trusted to oppose, the other to support. It is Liberals who, historically, can go either way. At least, Liberals do not universally share Mr. Trudeau’s preference for a humanitarian non-combat role. Ujjal Dosanjh, a former Liberal cabinet minister, voiced his support for a “robust Canadian mission,” and said it should be “beyond partisan politics.” With a vote coming Monday in the House of Commons that both the NDP and Liberals have vowed to oppose, however, partisan politics is already a key factor, though not determinative, given the Conservative majority. Romeo Dallaire, the retired Liberal senator and founder of Child Soldiers Initiative, best known for leading the UN mission in Rwanda, told CBC that a plan of air strikes without ground force is “inappropriate.” “There is no way that you will destroy that enemy without boots on the ground,” said Mr. Dallaire “There’s no other way around it…. It can’t be advisory. That sounds like Vietnam. It is actual, physical, reinforcement of capabilities on the ground, contain it, and build up capacity to destroy it.” ================================================== Related Rex Murphy: Trudeau’s joke about Canadian jets bombing ISIS reveals an unserious mind How ISIS horrific reign of terror is rooted in the political culture of Iraq and Syria ISIS ramping up beheadings because it’s losing, U.S. says Kurds grateful and anxious for Canada to join fight against ISIS Andrew Coyne: If Liberals won’t support limited action against ISIS , what kind of mission would they support? . The six-month mission as outlined so far is for six fighter jets, two surveillance planes, a refuelling plane, and 600 military personnel. It is not known whether any party will allow its members to freely vote their conscience, and if so, which MPs might dissent from their party line. A request to the Liberal Party for comment on the dissent, and whether it will be a free vote, was not answered by press time Sunday. Former interim Liberal leader Bob Rae took specific aim at the comparison, embraced by Mr. Trudeau, of this mission with the 2003 American invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, calling it simply “wrong.” “It is now apparent that the forces of radical violence have metastasized, and that Islamic State represents a clear and present danger to the people over whom it rules, to any minorities around the area, to the region and potentially to the world,” Mr. Rae wrote in a Globe and Mail op-ed. =================================================== He rejected comparisons to the earlier U.S.-led Iraq war, noting that the Iraqi government has asked for assistance. “This is not about “peace” versus “war.” This is about something different — the collective capacity of governments and international institutions to deal effectively with perpetrators of violence,” he wrote. Quebec Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard, whose son is in the military, gave his support to the mission before knowing the specific details, saying Canada “cannot escape its obligations.” “This is a significant threat to our society and Canada and Quebec are part of that landscape,” he said. “Let us not be so naive that we think because Quebecers have been fortunate enough to live in peace for centuries that we’re immune to this risk. The risks also exist for us. These murderous movements are mobile, they are imaginative in the worst sense and they won’t hesitate to attack those they consider enemies, which are democratic societies.” Under the law, the federal cabinet may commit Canadian Forces to action abroad without parliamentary approval or consultation. Parliament plays a key role in approving funds and support, however, and in practice has often been consulted, so much that it has become a tradition, and in the case of this Conservative majority government, a self-imposed prerequisite. It was not always this way. In January, 2003, for example, with rumours that Canada might join the American invasion of Iraq, former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien dealt with deep divisions in his caucus, some threatening revolt. “This is crazy,” Mississauga Centre MP Carolyn Parrish said at the time. “I don’t think we should be helping Americans get away with this. This is just the boys playing with their big toys and, although we can’t stop the Americans, we don’t have to legitimize this… This party is in a pretty shaky state right now, so I’m not looking to lead a parade of 50 of us across the aisle and force an election. But I’m prepared to sit as an Independent.” Let us not be so naive that we think because Quebecers have been fortunate enough to live in peace for centuries that we’re immune to this risk . Mr. Chrétien later declined to commit Canadian troops, now seen as one of his greatest moments. International approval is likewise only occasionally sought or required. Kosovo did not have UN approval, and is seen as broadly successful. Rwanda did, and was an abject failure The Afghanistan mission, Canada’s contribution to the post-9/11 war on terror, was launched by Jean Chretien’s prime ministerial prerogative, and did not go to a parliamentary vote until it came up for extension under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2006, in which 30 Liberals broke with the majority of their party to support it. The vote remains to be taken, but with an election looming and his position already undermined by a juvenile joke about the size of warplanes, it is neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition who seems to face the gravest threat to their personal political fortunes as Canada heads to war. It is Mr. Trudeau.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 21:05:38 +0000