#39 Blue Doesn't Match Our Outfits?

ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, the Islamic State. Whatever you call it, it seems pretty clear that none of us like them, and with good reason. Does this mean that our best strategy is to throw in with the biggest intervenor and ignorer of the world community and start bombing?

In the past, Canada demonstrated a preference to participate in actions sanctioned by the United Nations rather than bypassing this important world body to go the unilateral or the multilateral route outside the UN. No longer, it seems. I wouldn't actually be surprised to find out that we had done something similar to what has been uncovered in Australia in the last couple of weeks: a government that claimed to be responding to a call for assistance from the US in the fight against Daesh was shown to have begged the US to ask them for assistance.

Canada invented the idea of peacekeeping and the Prime Minister of the day won a Nobel Peace Prize for doing it. We used to be the largest contributors to that program but we have fallen to something like 51st. The Prime Minister even ridiculed the idea of putting more emphasis on humanitarian aid to the region as “dropping winter coats on them” versus his own plan of dropping bombs on them. Bombs are cold comfort to the millions of refugees fleeing their homes.

I think most of us would be more comfortable with an approach that combined force with compassion for the civilian victims of all of this, and in a context of international consensus.

Further reading here. 

We used to be known
by the blue on our helmets
Bombs have muddied that