Canada to Iraq. The Aerial Equivalent of Coals to Newcastle.

Stephen Harper wants Canada to take the war to ISIS.  Why?  Because in Beelzebub's overworked imagination such a thing would be not merely necessary but, gee whiz, noble.

That's "noble" as in upstanding, high-minded - not in the context of some hereditary, aristocratic status.

So, let's work from that - from noble and necessary.  Let's begin with necessary because that sheds some light on the noble question.

We're already finding, as is common in these grubbly little conflicts, that our side is running out of targets.  You send up strike fighters loaded for bear, you had better find some bear because unleashing all that high-tech mayhem on the random rabbit is not really necessary or desirable or useful.

The Brits conceded as much when their first five ground attack sorties ended with the aircraft returning to base with their bombload intact.  Later the Brits did show the now-obligatory video of a precision munitions attack on what looked for all the world like an AMC Pacer.

The strike was a complete success at least in as much as it disintegrated the vehicle and its leisure-suit clad occupant with it.  There's a threat we'll never have to face again.



If the Americans and Brits are reduced to squandering extremely expensive ordinance on vehicular junk, explain how Canada's involvement is necessary.  In fact it's so unnecessary that Harper had to spin a lie about being asked by the Americans to join in.  The Americans never asked us.  We asked them.  The Americans aren't suffering from a lack of warplanes.  They've got their own. They've got the Brits.  The Aussies are putting up a dozen.  Our Arab allies (pretty much the same guys who funded these Islamic extremists from the outset) are lining up to fly missions against ISIS.

Necessary?  Hardly.  Besides isn't our current mission keeping the Baltic skies swept of Russian intruders so that Putin won't make a grab on Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia?

As for noble, did you find anything noble in that video clip?  Washington jumped in, not because it was the noble thing to do, but because it had created the conditions for this very sort of uprising by tolerating the Maliki regime's excesses for so many years.  Noble connotes a grand vision, real altruism. There's no great vision here.  Obama doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't have a plan, no grand strategy.  He's playing it by ear and keeping his eyes on the polls for the rapidly nearing mid-terms.

In a nutshell, sending CF-18s somewhere (probably Iraq) to join the aerial armada already hanging around under-used, really is sending coals to Newcastle.

And don't forget that in the Muslim world's mind, Harper and Trudeau's Canada is a country that will drop to its knees at the first glimpse of Netanyahu's inseam. I'm not sure our presence would be welcome in any Arab country.