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| You can sling a lot of bombs from an F-15, eh Saudi Arabia? |
There's a split in the Liberal ranks over Canada's role in our notional air war against ISIS. Should we be bombing ISIS forces in Iraq? Should we expand our missions into Syria?
Some, like the Loudmouth Liberal see this as our moral duty, utterly unassailable. Our six CF-18s are needed to keep these monsters at bay. It's our duty as real Canadians to do our bit.
This is where a little perspective might come in handy. Now, ISIS is a fundamentalist Sunni band of brigands. These insurgent/rebels had to come from somewhere and nobody's pointing fingers at Shiite Iran. That's because they're largely from the Sunni Gulf States.
Let's have a look at some of those Sunni countries in the neighbourhood. First up is Egypt. What could Sunni Egypt contribute to this melee? Egypt is the fourth-largest operator of the F-16. They've got about 228 of those. Add to that 18 Mirage 2000s and 200-older jet fighters.
How about the Sunni Saudis? They've got even better stuff. 150 F-15s, 40 Eurofighter Typhoons, and 80 Panavia Tornadoes. That's a mittful. Next up, Sunni Jordan. The RJAF has about 60 F-16s. Sunni Kuwait has 35 F-18s and they're a lot newer than ours. Even Sunni Qatar has a dozen Mirage 2000s.
Oh yeah, I've left out NATO's Muslim member, Sunni Turkey. It's one of a handful of countries that actually produces its own F-16s and they currently operate about 260 of those multirole fighters with more coming off the line all the time.
All totaled that comes out to well over 800 combat aircraft that would be just dandy for suppressing Sunni ISIS. It's an aerial armada big enough that they could pretty much do the job by dropping bricks if there is ever a bomb shortage. There's so many of them they could darken the sky.
So, to sum up, THEY have many hundreds of modern multi-role fighters parked right on ISIS' doorstep. WE have six F-18s. Do you really think the war against ISIS needs six Canadian fighters? But, if we really are needed, what are all these Sunni Arab air forces doing exactly?
As I pointed out last evening, we know what the Saudis are doing. They're bombing the guys who are battling (Sunni) ISIS and al Qaeda fighters in Yemen.
Who will Saudi bomb if ISIS moves into Yemen to fight the rebel Shiites and help the Sunnis? This is a real possibility since ISIS has been very strategic.
ReplyDeleteSo Canada and Saudi will bomb ISIS in Iraq and Syria but help them in Yemen by bombing the Shiites?
Mind boggling to us but I suspect not to the Cons supporters who probably already are confused the moment you tell them there are different sects of Muslims and the root cause of the Middle East conflicts (besides Israel) is that they are fighting each other.
ISIS, like al Qaeda, is in Yemen and engaged in fighting the Mouthi (Shiite) rebels that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf State allies intend to destroy.
ReplyDeleteIt was for this very situation that someone conceived FUBAR - F__ked Up Beyond All Recognition.
By the way, as VICE tv revealed months ago, the Saudis have been bombing the Yemeni Shiite for a long time using munitions, including cluster bombs, of US and Israeli manufacture. The Shiite Houthi rebels have also been fighting government forces backed by al Qaeda for a long time.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going on here is a religious civil war in the divided Islamic world, one that doesn't fit our narrative so we choose to ignore.
Yep, the religious civil war began in Ottoman times when the latter declared war on the Safavid Empire in Iran who were Shiites.
ReplyDeleteThe Ottomans were afraid of the spread of Shiite Islamism to the regions they controlled. Since the Quran clearly forbade Muslims from fighting and killing each other, the Ottomans first declared the Safavids infidels to justify their military campaign. It ended, I think, with the Ottomans successfully stopping the spread of Shiite Islam but the latter were never conquered.
Thus the seeds of the enmity and hatred between Sunnis and Shiites were sown long ago and are responsible for the conflicts we are now seeing there.
Now Canadians are getting involved in this, thanks to Harper and his warmonger base.
No knowledge. Just ill defined hatred. We're operating on that basis.
ReplyDeleteWell, Anon, we're not exactly alone. The US, Britain, France and Australia are in there along with us. But have you noticed there's an almost Pavlovian drooling response every time these days someone yells out "coalition"? Hey, it's gotta be the right thing to do if we're all in on it, right? At least it is if you scrub all the awkward facts out of it first.
ReplyDelete"Coalition" is alright when Canada is part of one in attacking those nasty Muslims but "coalition" is illegitimate when the Libs and NDP form one to topple the HarperCons?
ReplyDeleteThis is what I term "Con-logic". Heads they win, tails you lose, eh? This is what Closet Leader means when he says the words mean what he says they mean, as Bill Casey found out.
I have met many Cons supporters who think (if "think" is the appropriate word) the same way. Which explains why Harper is still in power.
Seriously though, they should teach Canadians (and Americans) some world history and don't allow them to graduate high school unless they pass a real test.
The friend of our enemy is both our eneny and our friend. In fact it looks like if we want a friend in the Middle East we should get a camael.
ReplyDelete