How Long Is This Guy Planning to Live?

That's a tall order, Mohammed, even for a crown prince. A lot of people won't want you to live to see the day.

Mohammed bin Sultan, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, vows to return his country to "moderate Islam" once he gets his turn at the wheel.

In an interview with the Guardian, the powerful heir to the Saudi throne said the ultra-conservative state had been “not normal” for the past 30 years, blaming rigid doctrines that have governed society in a reaction to the Iranian revolution, which successive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with”.

“What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn’t know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.”

Earlier Prince Mohammed had said: “We are simply reverting to what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions. 70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and immediately.”

...

Central to the reforms has been the breaking of an alliance between hardline clerics who have long defined the national character and the House of Saud, which has run affairs of state. The changes have tackled head-on societal taboos such as the recently rescinded ban on women driving, as well as scaling back guardianship laws that restrict women’s roles and establishing an Islamic centre tasked with certifying the sayings of the prophet Muhammed.

At this point can Saudi Arabia really break from Wahhabism, the radical Sunni sect that has driven Islamist terrorist groups from al Qaeda to ISIS, al Nusra and Boko Haram?  Can this prince really purge radical Islam from his fellow princes, emirs and sheikhs of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States? Or will he end up like Anwar Sadat, gunned down by extremist assassins?

Justin's Folly - Selling Death Wagons to a Despotic Regime Going Broke

You remember the Saudi death wagon controversy when the Trudeau regime gave the go ahead to the sale of 15-billion dollars worth of armoured fighting vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

Well, what if those death wagons fall into the hands of the very people we've been over there fighting, radical Sunni Islamists? Justie would have a little egg on his face then, wouldn't he?

For two years now reports have been coming out about the Saudi's fiscal woes. Some say the monarchy is teetering on the edge of bankrutpcy, a function of profligate spending and low, low, low world oil prices. It's the old story - too much going out, not enough coming in. Even the IMF has predicted that the Saudi regime could be bankrupt within five years.

The Saudi royal family, the House of Saud, for whom the country is named, have managed to hold onto power thanks to what had been mountains of cash. Academics suggest that a fiscal crisis could mean the end of the monarchy and trigger anarchy and violence possibly exacerbated by Russia and Iran.


The consolidation of the Shia Belt and the destabilization of Saudi Arabia will have one of two outcomes for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the first, it will be inevitably destroyed by the Syrian army, who will be bolstered by an increase in Russian and Iranian forces in the theater. With U.S. and Western attention being drawn towards a destabilized Saudi Arabia, the Russian Federation as well as Iran will be able to increase military operations within Syria, increasing the likelihood that Assad will remain in power and both ISIS and the Free Syrian Army will be crushed.

The second scenario would be the rise of radical Salafism in a destabilized Saudi Arabia. With Wahhabism being one of the most popular forms of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia, it would seem only logical as this would be the immediate threat in the Kingdom. ISIS would undoubtedly take advantage of the destabilization of Saudi Arabia in the same manner as in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. As radical Salafism is the widely practiced form of Sunni Islam in both al-Qaeda and ISIS, it would only be a matter of time before the two powers took a more active role in the country.

Iraq and Syria have taught us what it means when al-Qaeda and ISIS take a "more active role" in a country. We can imagine what form that might take in a country where they're basically the home team.

Could Syria Become the 21st Century Sarajevo?

There were plenty of proxy wars during the Cold War only back then the principals had enough sense to avoid direct clashes. That was then, this is Syria where today we find the rival superpowers circling each other inside the same phone booth.

You could search the world over and never find one place where so many players are gathered as Syria.

First up is the Alawite government of Bashar Assad.

Then there's the original rebels, Syrian Sunnis.

Then we have the Sunni Islamists - the 'moderate' al Nusra, an affiliate of al Qaeda, and the far nastier Islamic State, ISIS.

The United States and its minions have been waging a bombing campaign against ISIS, first in Iraq and later also in Syria. It's been the standard, ineffective "whack a mole" stuff.

Turkey finally got off the fence and began its own air campaign only they're less concerned about ISIS than they are at bombing Syrian Kurds.

The United States was supporting the Syrian rebels with equipment and training until it discovered the rebels were surrendering all that gear to al Nusra and al Qaeda. Can't be having that. So the United States is now supporting Syria's Kurds which is really pissing off Turkey's Erdogan.

Recently three more places have been set at the table of mass mayhem. Here sit Russia, Hezbollah and now Iranian forces all supporting Bashar Assad.  Latest word has it that Iran has not only sent in units of the Revolutionary Guard but also a contingent of warplanes. They seem to be focused mainly on the moderate Syrian rebels but they also take on the Sunni Islamists every now and then.

It's hard to keep track of how many nations are waging air wars in Syria.  There's the Syrian air force, naturally, its strength replenished by replacement aircraft from Russia. There's the US Air Force and the League of Vassals, America's aerial Foreign Legion that, naturally, includes a Canadian contingent plus strike fighters from France, Britain, Australia and other European states plus Jordan and a half-hearted effort from a few Gulf States.

We want to battle ISIS. The other side seems intent mainly on attacking Syrian opposition rebels. The Turks prefer to bomb Syrian Kurds, the very group the US is still supporting. Nobody is bombing Assad, the guy who sparked the original fighting, and, with the Russians riding shotgun, it's hard to imagine the Western coalition going after him any time soon.

Syria, which is almost the same size as the state of Washington (just over twice the size of New Brunswick), suddenly has an awful lot of warplanes buzzing overhead at cross purposes.  The Russians have also introduced their highly lethal  S-300 surface to air missile batteries. Turkey, meanwhile, is clamoring for the US and Germany to reactivate their Patriot missile batteries in support of their NATO partner. Eventually someone may fire one of those things.

The Americans have been snookered by Putin and this is bound to have geopolitical ramifications throughout the Middle East. Will the Saudis and the Egyptians tolerate Shiite Iran's military presence in Syria? Will they pile on?

Could Syria become the Sarajevo of the 21st century, the place where a proxy war becomes a shooting war between the West and Russia? Those expert in these matters warn these eyeball to eyeball confrontations are the sort of situations in which rival powers can back into direct conflicts neither one of them truly wants to initiate.

Winning All the Battles and Losing All the Wars

Now that Canada is becoming a vassal state to America's military and foreign policy, perhaps this would be a good time to look back at how Head Office has been faring.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a must-read expert on this stuff.  A former US Army commander who came to see the light in his second career as an academic, Bacevich has written several books that take a surgeon's scalpel to dissect the malignancy of his nation's military and political leadership.

This week he tackles GWOT, the Bush-era Global War on Terror and why everything that America and her gullible allies, Canada included, have been doing in the Islamic world has been and will continue to be an utter failure.


...when the United States launched its GWOT soon after 9/11, it did so pursuant to a grandiose agenda. U.S. forces were going to imprint onto others a specific and exalted set of values. During President George W. Bush’s first term, this “freedom agenda” formed the foundation, or at least the rationale, for U.S. policy.

The shooting would stop, Bush vowed, only when countries like Afghanistan had ceased to harbor anti-American terrorists and countries like Iraq had ceased to encourage them. Achieving this goal meant that the inhabitants of those countries would have to change. Afghans and Iraqis, followed in due course by Syrians, Libyans, Iranians, and sundry others would embrace democracy, respect human rights, and abide by the rule of law, or else. Through the concerted application of American power, they would become different -- more like us and therefore more inclined to get along with us. A bit less Mecca and Medina, a bit more “we hold these truths” and “of the people, by the people.”

...History, at least the bits and pieces to which Americans attend, seemed to endow such expectations with a modicum of plausibility. Had not such a transfer of values occurred after World War II when the defeated Axis Powers had hastily thrown in with the winning side? Had it not recurred as the Cold War was winding down, when previously committed communists succumbed to the allure of consumer goods and quarterly profit statements?

If the appropriate mix of coaching and coercion were administered, Afghans and Iraqis, too, would surely take the path once followed by good Germans and nimble Japanese, and subsequently by Czechs tired of repression and Chinese tired of want. Once liberated, grateful Afghans and Iraqis would align themselves with a conception of modernity that the United States had pioneered and now exemplified. For this transformation to occur, however, the accumulated debris of retrograde social conventions and political arrangements that had long retarded progress would have to be cleared away. This was what the invasions of Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom!) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom!) were meant to accomplish in one fell swoop by a military the likes of which had (to hear Washington tell it) never been seen in history. POW!

Standing Them Up As We Stand Down

Concealed within that oft-cited “freedom” -- the all-purpose justification for deploying American power -- were several shades of meaning. The term, in fact, requires decoding. Yet within the upper reaches of the American national security apparatus, one definition takes precedence over all others. In Washington, freedom has become a euphemism for dominion. Spreading freedom means positioning the United States to call the shots. Seen in this context, Washington’s expected victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq were meant to affirm and broaden its preeminence by incorporating large parts of the Islamic world into the American imperium. They would benefit, of course, but to an even greater extent, so would we.

Alas, liberating Afghans and Iraqis turned out to be a tad more complicated than the architects of Bush’s freedom (or dominion) agenda anticipated. Well before Barack Obama succeeded Bush in January 2009, few observers -- apart from a handful of ideologues and militarists -- clung to the fairy tale of U.S. military might whipping the Greater Middle East into shape. Brutally but efficiently, war had educated the educable. As for the uneducable, they persisted in taking their cues from Fox News and the Weekly Standard.

...Rather than midwifing fundamental political and cultural change, the Pentagon was instead ordered to ramp up its already gargantuan efforts to create local militaries (and police forces) capable of maintaining order and national unity. President Bush provided aconcise formulation of the new strategy: “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” Under Obama, after his own stab at a “surge,” the dictum applied to Afghanistan as well. Nation-building had flopped. Building armies and police forces able to keep a lid on things now became the prevailing definition of success.

The United States had, of course, attempted this approach once before, with unhappy results. This was in Vietnam. There, efforts to destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces intent on unifying their divided country had exhausted both the U.S. military and the patience of the American people. Responding to the logic of events, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had a tacitly agreed upon fallback position. As the prospects of American forces successfully eliminating threats to South Vietnamese security faded, the training and equipping of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves became priority number one.

Dubbed “Vietnamization,” this enterprise ended in abject failure with the fall of Saigon in 1975. Yet that failure raised important questions to which members of the national security elite might have attended: Given a weak state with dubious legitimacy, how feasible is it to expect outsiders to invest indigenous forces with genuine fighting power? How do differences in culture or history or religion affect the prospects for doing so? Can skill ever make up for a deficit of will? Can hardware replace cohesion? Above all, if tasked with giving some version of Vietnamization another go, what did U.S. forces need to do differently to ensure a different result?


Vietnamization 2.0

For Bush in Iraq and Obama after a brief, half-hearted flirtation with counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, opting for a variant of Vietnamization proved to be a no-brainer. Doing so offered the prospect of an escape from all complexities. True enough, Plan A -- we export freedom and democracy -- had fallen short. But Plan B -- they (with our help) restore some semblance of stability -- could enable Washington to salvage at least partial success in both places. With the bar suitably lowered, a version of “Mission Accomplished” might still be within reach.

If Plan A had looked to U.S. troops to vanquish their adversaries outright, Plan B focused on prepping besieged allies to take over the fight. Winning outright was no longer the aim -- given the inability of U.S. forces to do so, this was self-evidently not in the cards -- but holding the enemy at bay was.

...Based on their performance, the security forces on which the Pentagon has lavished years of attention remain visibly not up to the job. Meanwhile, ISIS warriors, without the benefit of expensive third-party mentoring, appear plenty willing to fight and die for their cause. Ditto Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The beneficiaries of U.S. assistance? Not so much. Based on partial but considerable returns, Vietnamization 2.0 seems to be following an eerily familiar trajectory that should remind anyone of Vietnamization 1.0. Meanwhile, the questions that ought to have been addressed back when our South Vietnamese ally went down to defeat have returned with a vengeance.

The most important of those questions challenges the assumption that has informed U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East since the freedom agenda went south: that Washington has a particular knack for organizing, training, equipping, and motivating foreign armies. Based on the evidence piling up before our eyes, that assumption appears largely false. On this score, retired Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, a former military commander and U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, has rendered an authoritative judgment. “Our track record at building [foreign] security forces over the past 15 years is miserable,” he recently told the New York Times. Just so.


...Some might argue that trying harder, investing more billions, sending yet more equipment for perhaps another 15 years will produce more favorable results. But this is akin to believing that, given sufficient time, the fruits of capitalism will ultimately trickle down to benefit the least among us or that the march of technology holds the key to maximizing human happiness. You can believe it if you want, but it’s a mug’s game.

...What are the policy implications of giving up the illusion that the Pentagon knows how to build foreign armies? The largest is this: subletting war no longer figures as a plausible alternative to waging it directly. So where U.S. interests require that fighting be done, like it or not, we’re going to have to do that fighting ourselves. By extension, in circumstances where U.S. forces are demonstrably incapable of winning or where Americans balk at any further expenditure of American blood -- today in the Greater Middle East both of these conditions apply -- then perhaps we shouldn’t be there. To pretend otherwise is to throw good money after bad or, as a famous American generalonce put it, to wage (even if indirectly) “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." This we have been doing now for several decades across much of the Islamic world.

In American politics, we await the officeholder or candidate willing to state the obvious and confront its implications.

Bacevich's commentary is anything but flattering to Canada's military leadership from the Big Cod on down. Make no mistake, any country buying Lockheed's F-35 light attack bomber is mainlining America's toxic militarism. We've played this game long enough to take stock of where it's gotten us and at what cost. Failure is not an acceptable objective.

As Clear as Mud

In under 2-minutes, the BBC explains who is fighting whom in Syria. It's as clear as mud.

How America ReStructured the Balance of Power in the Middle East. Hint - Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia Came Out on Top

It was a strategic defeat when Washington failed to impose a "secular" government on Iraq and, instead, had to back off and watch a government representative of Iraq's long marginalized and brutally suppressed majority, the Shia, ascend to power with its public support. If Bush/Cheney didn't capitulate they were in for two endless unconventional wars - one with the Sunni army who were sent packing off home with the toppling of Saddam's government, the other with the Shiite militias. And so Nouri al Maliki came to power to run roughshod over a country that has never demonstrated itself capable of functioning as a state except at gunpoint.

Here's the thing. The Iraqis have never said they want to be Iraqi. They weren't Iraqis until Britain and France shook hands and drew some lines carving up what, until the end of WWI, had been Ottoman Empire territory. Voila, instant Iraq! It's probably fair to say the Iraqi people were simply living, breathing spoils of war. Without any voice in the matter they, Kurd/Sunni/Shiite were much akin to captives.

When Saddam was toppled, the Americans never consulted Iraq's ethnic constituencies to discover what they wanted. Judging by what has happened ever since that might have been a priceless lost opportunity.

The Kurds were upfront. They wanted an autonomous Kurdish state from Kirkuk to the Turkish border. They even had a constitution for such an independent state drawn up with the help of US foreign service staffer, Peter Galbraith, son on John Kenneth..

It's quite likely that Iraq's Sunni population would have been content with their own state nestled between the Kurds to the north and the Shia to the south and abutting Syria. That would have given them control of the as yet not well explored oilfields in the central area.

The Shia would have their own theocratic enclave in the south including Baghdad and the oilfields that generate most of Iraq's current wealth. They would have also had the backing of neighbouring Iran to guarantee they would never again succumb to Sunni domination.

I'm drawn back to Galbraith's observations in his 2008 book, "How Iraq Ends"

For the most part, Iraq's leaders are not personally stubborn or uncooperative. They find it impossible to reach agreement on the benchmarks because their constituents don't agree on any common vision for Iraq. The Shi'ites voted twice in 2005 for parties that seek to define Iraq as a Shi'ite state. By their boycotts and votes, the Sunni Arabs have almost unanimously rejected the Shi'ite vision of Iraq's future, including the new constitution. The Kurds envisage an Iraq that does not include them. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, 99% of them voted for Kurdish nationalist parties, and in the January 2005 referendum, 98% voted for an independent Kurdistan.

America's war in Iraq is lost. Of course, neither President Bush nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.

The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning - a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes - but by the consequences of defeat. As Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."

...Iraq after a US defeat will look very much like Iraq today - a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.

The Americans will never deign to admit it but their defeat in Iraq has led to a curious rapprochement between Washington and Tehran as the once low-grade civil war between Shiite and Sunni Iraqis metastasized into today's war with ISIS.

Despite the best efforts of the United States, Iran is now the co-dominant power in the Middle East. And rising. (Washington remains the other half of that "co.")

Another quick plunge into largely forgotten history: the U.S. stumbled into the post-9/11 era with two invasions that neatly eliminated Iran's key enemies on its eastern and western borders - Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The former is, of course, gone for good; the latter is doing better these days, though unlikely to threaten Iran for some time.) As those wars bled on without the promised victories, America's military weariness sapped the desire in the Bush administration for military strikes against Iran. Jump almost a decade ahead and Washington now quietly supports at least some of that country's military efforts in Iraq against the insurgent Islamic State. The Obama administration is seemingly at least half-resigned to looking the other way while Tehran ensures that it will have a puppet regime in Baghdad. In its serially failing strategies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, Washington has all but begged the Iranians to assume a leading role in those places. They have.

And that only scratches the surface of the new Iranian ascendancy in the region. Despite the damage done by U.S.-led economic sanctions, Iran's real strength lies at home. It is probably the most stable Muslim nation in the Middle East. It has existed more or less within its current borders for thousands of years. It is almost completely ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous, with its minorities comparatively under control. While still governed in large part by its clerics, the country has nonetheless experienced a series of increasingly democratic electoral transitions since the 1979 revolution. Most significantly, unlike nearly every other nation in the Middle East, Iran's leaders do not rule in fear of an Islamic revolution. They already had one.

For all the bluster of America's Republicans, the nuclear deal with Iran could remove the last hurdle to the country's emergence as the powerhouse of the Middle East.

While diplomacy brought the United States and Iran to this point, cash is what will expand and sustain the relationship.

Iran, with the fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves on the planet, is ready to start selling on world markets as soon as sanctions lift. Its young people reportedly yearn for greater engagement with the West. The lifting of sanctions will allow Iranian businesses access to global capital and outside businesses access to starved Iranian commercial markets.

Since November 2014, the Chinese, for example, have already doubled their investment in Iran. European companies, including Shell and Peugeot, are now holding talks with Iranian officials. Apple is contacting Iranian distributors. Germany sent a trade delegation to Tehran. Ads for European cars and luxury goods are starting to reappear in the Iranian capital. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of foreign technology and expertise will need to be acquired if the country is to update its frayed oil and natural gas infrastructure. Many of its airliners are decades old and need replacement. Airlines in Dubai are fast adding new Iran routes to meet growing demand. The money will flow. After that, it will be very hard for the war hawks in Washington, Tel Aviv, or Riyadh to put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is why you hear such screaming and grinding of teeth now.

..No, what fundamentally worries the Israelis and the Saudis is that Iran will rejoin the community of nations as a diplomatic and trading partner of the United States, Asia, and Europe. Embarking on a diplomatic offensive in the wake of its nuclear deal, Iranian officials assured fellow Muslim countries in the region that they hoped the accord would pave the way for greater cooperation. American policy in the Persian Gulf, once reliably focused only on its own security and energy needs, may (finally) start to line up with an increasingly multifaceted Eurasian reality. A powerful Iran is indeed a threat to the status quo - hence the upset in Tel Aviv and Riyadh - just not a military one. Real power in the twenty-first century, short of total war, rests with money.

The July accord acknowledges the real-world power map of the Middle East. It does not make Iran and the United States friends. It does, however, open the door for the two biggest regional players to talk to each other and develop the kinds of financial and trade ties that will make conflict more impractical. After more than three decades of U.S.-Iranian hostility in the world's most volatile region, that is no small accomplishment.

And, so, America's defeat in Iraq was not a total loss for it became, quite unintentionally, the ice-breaker between Washington and Tehran.  As for Iraq, it will eventually have to sort itself out - probably through partition.  With Iran acting as defender of the Shiite south and America as guarantor of Kurdish independence, a new Sunni state expanding westward into Syria seems inevitable.




The Balance of Power  (TruthOut).

The Final Chapter for Bashar Assad

Things are not looking up for Syrian strongman, Bashar Assad.

His first problem is the Sunni Muslim coalition of Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia (ordinarily not the best of friends) that has materialized for the sole purpose of running Assad out of Damascus.

The advances are not only a sign of the Assad regime's weakness, said Mario Abou Zeid, a research analyst with the Carnegie Middle East Centre, but also indicative of the strength of the new alliance between the three Sunni power brokers.

Their desire to force a shift in the balance on the ground in Syria before further negotiations about the country's future are held to have finally over-ridden long-held regional differences, he said.

"This regional group has forced those opposition groups and various factions fighting on the ground to fight under one umbrella," he said.

"By creating this 'Army of Conquest' and by supporting it, having the Nusra Front as its main pillar and surrounded by the remnants of the Free Syrian Army as well as groups such as Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam and others, this type of cooperation … has been a tremendous success."

The model is now being copied in areas such as the Qalamoun – the mountain ranges between Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and Syria – where opposition forces this week began a fierce battle against the Islamic State, Syrian regime forces and the Hezbollah militants fighting alongside them. This is a three-sided conflict - on one side are the Nusra Front and its allies backed by Qatar,Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on the second side are Hezbollah, the Syrian regime and Iran and on the third side is the so-called Islamic State.
Assad also faces the threat of a coup.  The president has already arrested his spy chief, Ali Mamlouk.

Mr Assad is struggling to keep together the regime's "inner circle", who are increasingly turning on each other, sources inside the presidential palace said.

Even before Mr Mamlouk's arrest, the web of intelligence agencies with which the regime has enforced its authority for four decades was in turmoil, with two other leaders killed or removed.

Last month, Rustum Ghazaleh, the head of the political security directorate, died in hospital after he was attacked by men loyal to General Rafiq Shehadeh, his opposite number in military intelligence, who was in turn sacked.
Worst of all, Der Spiegal reports that Assad is running out of troops and has been forced to recruit mercenaries, now mainly from Afghanistan.

In order to prevent the collapse of Syrian government forces, experienced units from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah began fighting for Assad as early as 2012. Later, they were joined by Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Yemenis -- Shiites from all over, on which the regime is increasingly dependent. But the longer the war continues without victory, the more difficult it has become for Assad's allies to justify the growing body count. In 2013, for example, Hezbollah lost 130 fighters as it captured the city of Qusair and has lost many more than that trying to hold on to it. Indeed, Hezbollah has begun writing "traffic accident" as the cause of death on death certificates of its fighters who fall in Syria.

The Iraqis have almost all returned home. Rather than fighting themselves, they largely control the operations from the background. The Iraqi militia Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, for example, organizes the deployment of Pakistani volunteers in Syria. But no ethnic group is represented on all of the regime's fronts to the degree that the Afghan Hazara are. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but some 700 of them are thought to have lost their lives in Aleppo and Daraa alone. What's worse, most of them don't come completely on their own free will.

It's hard to ever count a guy like Assad out but his regime does appear to be unraveling even as his opposition coalesces into something far more effective. Will this coalition dissolve once Syria is sorted out or will they continue to reduce ISIS in the field?

"Whack a Mole" is No Way to Wage War.

We spent a decade in Afghanistan playing whack-a-mole, essentially achieving nothing.  We had no coherent vision of what 'victory' might even look like much less how it could be achieved.  In the result we never committed anything remotely like the size force that would have been necessary to keep the insurgents at bay in Kandahar province long enough for the government to establish its authority there.

Now we're in for a bombing campaign against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria. What are we trying to achieve or is this just more whack-a-mole?  Now ISIS is in all sorts of places where we're not even thinking of bombing their forces - Yemen, some of the Gulf States, several North African countries, Indonesia, Pakistan, even - gulp - Afghanistan.

We're supposedly bombing ISIS because it, if anyone really knows what that constitutes, has declared war on Canada.  What, in a YouTube video?  That's all we need to spend half a billion dollars on a bombing campaign?  Oh, I know, they did mention the West Edmonton Mall and everything.  Sounds awfully ominous to me.

Just explain to me how a six pack of CF-18s flying out of Kuwait can deter an attack on the West Edmonton Mall?  Surely we would have to defeat ISIS outright to eliminate that threat.  Yet we're not even pretending that we're going to do that, nothing remotely close.  We're not bombing them in Yemen or the Gulf States. We're not bombing them across North Africa or in Indonesia, Pakistan or Afghanistan.  We're not even inflicting losses on them approaching the rate at which they're attracting recruits.

As I wrote a few days ago, our approach to fighting our declared enemy, ISIS, is very much akin to the Brits thinking they could defeat Hitler by liberating the Channel Islands.  So what in the name of Thor is the purpose of this nonsense?

If anything, we're doing just enough to get them sufficiently pissed off with us that they might actually figure it's worthwhile to bomb the West Edmonton Mall and, if they do, I'm sure I'll be sorry they got to it before I did.

Of course Harper never does anything without a collateral purpose and it's way past obvious that he's using his personal, mini-war on terror, to avoid his voters noticing just what a mess this belief-based prime minister has made of the Canadian economy.

This is not the first time that Harper has used "the troops" for his partisan, political advantage.

Oh yeah, one other thing.  Randy, the beached cod, Hillier stood up on his tail fin recently to condemn Parliamentarians who missed the vote on the ISIS mission expansion/extension.  Randy, a bit of self-criticism coming from you would be really refreshing at this juncture.  Why don't you explain how you made such a complete botch-up of our minuscule "mission" to Afghanistan?  What were you smoking when you assumed Canada could tackle the combat mission in all of Kandahar province with a piddling garrison force of just 2,500 soldiers?  Why did our numbers remain static as the Taliban's numbers in Kandahar soared over those wasted years?  What made you think you could defeat a determined insurgency with a minute garrison force anyway?  I remember when I first saw you.  It was when you were interviewed after conning the Martin government into the Kandahar combat gig when you assured Canadians we were going over there to wipe out "a few dozen... scumbags."  You were full of shit then, you've been full of shit ever since and you're full of shit now.  Sit down and STFU, if you please.

So, we're back into whack-a-mole warfare  and we're bound to achieve as much as whack-a-mole warfare ever can or does.  I think most of us cannot bring ourselves to grasp the notion that Canadian forces were decisively defeated in Afghanistan.  We did not achieve our objectives and when we fled the field, 'they' were still in charge.  Sorry, but that's defeat.

Can somebody remind me, what is it that follows Hubris anyway?

Has Harperland Made Canada a Rogue State

The Tyee's Crawford Kilian argues that Harper's Canada has become a rogue state.

Kilian disposes of the arguments of those, including several Liberals, who see a "moral imperative" in our air war against ISIS.



It's a very selective morality that attacks the Islamic State in Syria while not attacking Boko Haram in Nigeria, or Russia in Ukraine, and attacks no one at all to protect the millions slaughtered and raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, and other failing states.

The media and academic war pimps have generally fallen into line with Harper, while dutifully and objectively reporting the opposition's views far down the story. They have no truck with moral imperatives; they just want to speculate on how Justin Trudeau is handling this.

Legally, of course, Harper is jumping into the proverbial quagmire. Foreign Minister Jason Kenney on Tuesday said our current bombing of the Islamic State is at the invitation of the democratically elected Iraqi government. Then on Wednesday Kenney claimed the right of self-defence under the UN Charter's Article 51, which states:

'Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.'

The Security Council, of course, isn't authorizing air raids on Syria -- it's the member state under armed attack, not Canada. A U.N.-sanctioned war, in theory, is the only kind a U.N. member state should engage in. In practice, even those wars tend to end badly (remember Libya?).

...Harper and the Conservatives are peace babies, classic Bush-style chicken hawks. They've grown up with a volunteer-staffed Canadian Forces of around 70,000 active personnel -- roughly one Canadian in 500. Few of us are related to one of them.

...The way to sell a war, they found, was to brand it as an abstract struggle between good and evil somewhere far away. The casualties would be droves of foreign evildoers and a handful of heroes, who would get their pictures on the front page when they died. Those who came home merely screwed up or maimed could be safely forgotten.

This strategy got Bush re-elected, and his successor failed to indict him for war crimes (or to shut down Guantanamo). Stephen Harper must hope that a similar strategy will get him through a perilous spring and summer and then safely home with a second strong, stable, majority government.

How else could he sell himself to the voters? He's touted himself as the guardian of our economic interests, while running up our deficits and promising a balanced budget real soon now. As viceroy of the Oil Patch, he bet the country on exporting expensive oil, and now the Oil Patch is drowning in its own product. We get endless warnings about a housing bubble, job growth has been at record lows for over a year, and the available jobs are crappy part-time ones.

With no end in sight, the economic downturn would demolish Harper and the Conservatives in the next election. But with a sanitary, low-casualty, far-away war to distract people, and Bill C-51 to silence critics, he might just scare enough voters into giving him four more years of the same -- while also running up as big a deficit as he likes.

Meanwhile the Islamic State will be happy to cooperate, whether it inspires our mentally ill or sends its own terrorists. Each outrage will provoke more Canadian response, and damn the cost and the balanced budget. Muslim Canadians will serve the same purpose as the Japanese Canadians after Pearl Harbour: a convenient target for racist bigotry.

But it will all be just entertainment, something to watch on TV or tweet about. We'll ignore the fact that we've become a rogue state, flouting international law. We'll ignore the puzzled looks our allies give us; after all, we were among the key framers of that law after World War II.

Having bet the country on expensive oil and lost, Stephen Harper is now doubling down and betting it on an election-winning war. It's an enormous gamble, and he must know how easily it could blow up in his face. He must therefore also know how bad the economy really is, and how it will worsen by October. Sooner than face certain defeat, he prefers to gamble Canadian lives and honour on a far-away war.

Deliver Us From Evil

Why do we tolerate Saudi Arabia when the kingdom, and its Sunni state allies, seems determined to deliver Yemen into the control of ISIS and al Qaeda?

Gwynne Dyer writes that, while we wage an air war against ISIS, the Saudis are undermining our effort with their war on the Yemeni Houthi.

They’ve all shown up for this war. Saudi Arabia and the other monarchies of the Arab world (Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and even Morocco) have all committed aircraft to bombing Yemen. Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Pakistan have offered to send ground troops. And the United States (which just pulled the last American troops out of Yemen) promises to provide “logistical and intelligence support.”

In practice, however, this coalition of Sunni Arabs and Americans is unlikely to commit large numbers of ground troops to Yemen: the country has been the graveyard of foreign armies from the Romans to the Ottomans. But if they don’t do that, the (entirely unintended) result of their bombing may be to facilitate the take-over of most of Yemen by al-Qaeda and/or ISIS

Sunni paranoia about the rise of Shia power has its roots in the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. So long as the Sunni minority ruled Iraq, it limited the influence of Iran, the paramount Shia power, in the Arab world. With the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of Sunni supremacy in Iraq, Iran’s power automatically soared – and so did its influence in Shia parts of the Arab world.

Iran didn’t have to do anything particularly aggressive for paranoia to take off in the Sunni countries of the Gulf. Of the 140 million citizens of countries that border on the Persian/Arabian Gulf, about two-thirds are Shias. With a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Sunni Arab monarchies felt terribly exposed and began to see Shia plots everywhere.

...The “coalition” is now bombing the Houthis all over the country. How intensively and how accurately remains to be seen, but if they really succeed in breaking the Houthi grip on central and southern Yemen, they will create a power vacuum that will NOT be filled by the “legitimate” president of Yemen, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, whom they are allegedly trying to restore to power.

Hadi’s forces have utterly disintegrated, and Houthi fighters now occupy the temporary capital that he established in his home city, Aden. (The real capital, Sanaa, has been in Houthi hands since September.) Hadi left Aden by boat on Tuesday, which suggests that he has left the country entirely – unless he plans to create another provisional capital on, say, the island of Socotra.

So if the coalition bombs the Houthis out of Aden, but does not commit ground troops of its own, the real winners will be the al-Qaeda forces that wait just outside the city. Much the same goes for Taiz, the third city, and even for Sanaa itself: it is al-Qaeda or ISIS jihadis who stand to profit most from a Houthi retreat.

Perfect, Mr. Harper.  Just what in hell have you gotten us stuck into?  One thing is sure, if you really do intend to "defeat ISIS" as your supposed defence minister claims, you're going to need a lot more than a sixpack of CF-18s.  And don't forget to bring your chequebook.

Want Canada to Make a Difference? Let's Back Tunisia.

Face it.  There's not much hope that we're really going to achieve anything significant from our air war in Iraq, regardless of whether we get stuck into Syria also.

All ISIS needs to survive is a nation in chaos.  They weren't in on the ground floor in Syria.  ISIS moved in after the civil war was well underway.  Same thing for Libya.  ISIS moved in once the anti-Gaddafi forces had established a viable resistance.  Iraq, same same.  Yemen, ditto.

ISIS is into turf, acquiring control.  Muslim countries that are destabilized are the organization's preferred hunting ground.

Our approach to ISIS - bombing - is futile.  It amounts to "we'll bomb ISIS here but not there, there, there, there or there."  Sounds pretty rational, doesn't it?  Sort of like the Brits figuring to defeat Hitler by liberating the Channel Islands.  Then again, you can never underestimate a government that has Harper at its head and Jason Kenney as its defence minister.

If we wanted to give ISIS a setback, we could begin with Tunisia.  That's a great place to draw the line, to stop the spread of radical Sunni Islamists.   We might not get to bomb anybody but sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good.

Why Tunisia?  Because it has a population ready to turn out by the tens of thousands to denounce extremism. And these people know a thing or two because they're the same crowd that sparked the "Arab Spring" and achieved a stable democratic system for it.

Let's back Tunisia.  Let's give them at least as much support as we're squandering on Iraq to make sure they have everything they need to anchor their democracy and deny ISIS the power vacuum so instrumental to its spread.  Draw the line, stop the fanatical brigands here, and then slowly begin rolling them back.

Post script:

What I'm proposing here is a completely Canadian response.  As I've written repeatedly, the last thing this region needs is more fighter jets to bomb Iraq.  Tell you what we should do.  Let's take our six pack of CF-18s out of Kuwait and add those to the six pack we have carving holes in the skies over the Baltics.  This time, let's double down.  Bring in another dozen from Cold Lake and Bagotville. Then let's ship over half our tanks and a regiment or two of our soldiers.  Then let's set up shop somewhere in Tunisia.

Our role won't be political or cultural.  There'll be no economic back story.  It'll simply be that we, Canada, have decided that Tunisia shall not be threatened, or attacked and never, ever destroyed.  And we, Canada, (not some coalition of the feckless and compromised) will stand surety for their democracy and liberty.

We're doing this not just for Tunisia but for us too and for everyone else.  Where better but a stable, democratic and free (from both Islamic and Western dogma) Arab state to bring the Muslim world into the 21st century and show that Islam and democracy are not remotely mutually exclusive.

Tunisia should really be seen by the outside world as the true, irreplaceable gem in the crown.  Where are we if we lose that?

That Burnt Smell, That Hissing Sound? That's the Fuze.

Ready to Rumble

\Well, if nothing else, Stephen Harper might just have earned Canada a ringside seat to the outbreak of a Middle East regional war.  The way the International Crisis Group sees it, the Saudi air war on Shiite Yemeni rebels might just be the burning fuze that explodes the Sunni-Shia powder keg.

Obama and the Euros are trying to calm the situation, urging a negotiated peace between Yemen's Sunni government and the Houthi rebels but, according to the ICG, the mixed up gaggle of players aren't in the mood for talking.

No major party seems truly to want to halt what threatens to become a regional war. The slim chance to salvage a political process requires that regional actors immediately cease military action and help the domestic parties agree on a broadly acceptable president or presidential council. Only then can Yemenis return to the political negotiating table to address other outstanding issues.

The Huthi-Hadi divide is the most explosive, but it is not the only conflict. Tensions are also unsettling the recent marriage of convenience between the Huthis and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who, after being deposed in 2011, has taken advantage of popular dissatisfaction and tacitly allied himself with the Huthis against their common enemies to stage a political comeback through his party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), and possibly his son, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh. Divisions in the south, which was an independent state prior to its 1990 union with the north, are rampant as well. Southern separatists are internally split and suspicious of Hadi, a southerner who supports continued unity with the north. Then there are al-Qaeda and a nascent Islamic State (IS) movement, both determined to fight the Huthis and take advantage of the state’s collapse to claim territory.

...GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council - the Sunni Arab states] countries have lost faith as well and are increasingly committed to reversing Huthi gains at virtually any cost. Saudi Arabia considers the Huthis Iranian proxies, a stance that pushes them closer to Tehran. Throwing their weight behind Hadi, the Saudis moved their embassy to Aden and reportedly bankroll anti-Huthi tribal mobilisation in the central governorate of Marib and the south. They lead efforts to isolate the Huthis diplomatically, strangle them economically and, now, weaken them militarily. In turn, the Huthis denounce Hadi as illegitimate and offer $100,000 for his capture. They have conducted military exercises on the Saudi border and likely will harden their position in response to Saudi military intervention. They are less dependent on Tehran than Hadi and his allies are on Riyadh, but on today’s trajectory, their relative self-sufficiency will not last long. They are already soliciting Iranian financial and political support.

...Without minimum consensus within and beyond its borders, Yemen is headed for protracted violence on multiple fronts. This combination of proxy wars, sectarian violence, state collapse and militia rule has become sadly familiar in the region. Nobody is likely to win such a fight, which will only benefit those who prosper in the chaos of war, such as al-Qaeda and IS. But great human suffering would be certain. An alternative exists, but only if Yemenis and their neighbours choose it.

This is a perfect example of what's being called "new war."  It's a furball of state and non-state actors.  Governments, including outside nations, rebels, insurgents, militias, terrorists and criminal organizations.  It's a very fluid type of warfare that commonly features shifting alliances among the parties and widely differing and at times irreconcilable political and territorial objectives.  In the context of a negotiated peace, it really is the equivalent of herding cats.

We're not built for this stuff.  We like our combat "old war" style.  Good guys versus bad guys; winners and losers; war and peace.  We don't know what to do when peace is not a realistic option, certainly not an outcome we can dictate. That's when we do what we Westerners have been doing since Algeria and Viet Nam.  It's what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's partially responsible for the hot mess that is the Middle East today.  We go into a place, toss it over, hang around for a decade or so and then leave.  We cannot accept, despite our persistent lack of success, that we're on a path to near certain failure.  It's right there in the user guide - our side gets to win.  End of story.  What, can't these people read?

UPDATE - The United Nations has thrown in the towel, pulling all UN personnel out of Yemen, a measure that's seen as dashing all hopes of a negotiated deal of any sort.

One other thought.  If this business in Yemen is the opening salvo in a grand, Sunni versus Shiite regional war, let's hope Harper has plans to get our people out of the Middle East on short notice.  If this thing blow up, everyone might start looking like the enemy.

What Has Jason Kenney Been Smoking?

Seriously.  I'm wondering if our fledgling defence minister was high, high, high, when he proclaimed that, after we defeat ISIS,  Iraq and Syria better not look to Canada to create a model democracy in those states.

That's sort of like me asking the confirmed bachelor if he's stopped beating his wife yet.  Apparently, though, Mr. Kenney foresees that we are going to defeat ISIS.  Where?  How?  When?

He's an amicable little shit but I think minister Kenney is in way over his head on this portfolio.  Fortunately for Kenney, Canada has already outsourced most of our foreign and defence policy decisions to Washington.  All he has to do is listen for America's dog whistle.

It's really not all that bad so long as you don't expect Jason Kenney, ISIS Slayer to make a whole  lot of sense.

It's a Muslim Religious Civil War and We're Going In Blind.

When we see one of our closest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, go after a Shiite bunch engaged in combat with ISIS and al Qaeda forces, the same groups we're supposedly fighting, then it should be obvious that all is not as it seems. Suddenly this entire anti-ISIS coalition smells off.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar are up to their arses in modern strike fighters, over 800 among them, and they're within easy flying range of ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria.  Stationing a penny packet of 6 CF-18s in that territory is literally sending coals to Newcastle.

I assume Obama has any number of geo-political reasons for delivering yet another Western air armada to fight ISIS but c'mon it's the tail wagging the dog as usual. We, however, seem to be there because somebody blew the "coalition" dog whistle.  That's life in America's Aerial Foreign Legion.

Harper is utterly Pavlovian about these gigs.  It's the equivalent of yelling "squirrel" to a setter.



We get in, not knowing what we're going to achieve or how or what we're going to do when things go sideways which is often the result of going into these things in such a half-arsed manner.

Finally, a Mulroney We Can Believe In.

David Mulroney served as a deputy minister in charge of Canada's Afghanistan task force.  It seems he learned a thing or two from the experience, enough to know that we're at risk of repeating the same mistakes in our rush to war in Iraq.

"When I recently saw Foreign Minister [Rob] Nicholson musing that we'd apply some of the lessons of Afghanistan to our engagement, I kind of sat bolt upright because I think one of the problems is we haven't spent much time learning the lessons of Afghanistan," Mulroney said in an interview to air Saturday at 9 a.m. on CBC Radio's The House.

He said the lack of discussion about Afghanistan toward the end of the 10-year mission has kept Canadians from learning key lessons, which include being realistic about how much Canada doesn't know about a region and setting "often very modest" goals.

Mulroney also said Canada needs an exit strategy.

"When does it happen for us and who's around to pick up the pieces of what we've put in place. Until we've really talked honestly about that, I'd be very worried about our ability to pull something off in a place that's as challenging as that nexus of Iraq and Syria."

Readers of this blog may be familiar with how often we have decried the failure of our political and military leadership to have a full, candid and, above all, open post mortem on why so few things went right and so many wrong from our adventures in Afghanistan.  The lives lost and broken bodies of our soldiers will have been squandered if we don't come clean and learn the real lessons of their sacrifice.

Tony Blair and his "Bloody Crusades"

Tony Blair's former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, thinks he can explain the radicalization of Britain's Muslim youth - his former boss Tony Blair's "bloody crusade" to topple Saddam Hussein.

The outspoken former deputy PM, who was recently appointed as an unpaid adviser with special responsibility for climate change by Labour leader Ed Miliband, said he believes Blair was wrong for invading Iraq in 2003.

"They told us it wasn't regime change. It was. And that's exactly what the Americans have had,” he was recorded saying.

"Now Tony, unfortunately is still in to that. I mean the way he's going now, he now wants to invade everywhere.

"He should put a white coat on with a red cross and let's start the bloody crusades again."

He went on: "When I hear people talking about how people are radicalised, young Muslims. I'll tell you how they are radicalised.

"Every time they watch the television where their families are worried, their kids are being killed or murdered and rockets, you know, firing on all these people, that's what radicalises them."

Mr Prescott’s remarks come amid growing fears over the number of young men, women and teenagers from Britain fleeing the country to join Isis in Syria or Iraq.

Forget Iran, This Is What We Should Worry About.

What if ISIS, the Islamic State, Daesh - call it what you will - becomes a serious presence in Pakistan?

Why should anyone worry about that?  Because, first, ISIS is already making inroads in Afghanistan and, second, a senior Pakistan army general says there's nothing to worry about, ISIS does not present a threat to Pakistan.

Corps Commander Lieutenant General Hidayat-ur-Rehman on Saturday said Middle Eastern terrorist group Daesh (also self-styled as the Islamic State) poses no threat to Pakistan.

Speaking to journalists alongside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Mehtab Khan Abbasi, Gen Hidayat said there was no need to fret about Daesh or its potential emergence in the country.

“For us it’s just a change of name, and there is no need for Pakistanis to worry. There are several defections in the Taliban now, which are becoming part of Daesh. But we’re well aware of the situation and are able to tackle them effectively,” said the Peshawar Corps Commander.

Gen Hidayat rebuffed the perception that the terrorist group was silently spreading across the country, saying that the army and security forces were in control of the situation.

He added that security forces had been dealing with the Taliban for over 12 years, and Daesh was no different to the TTP.

Meanwhile, Today In ISIS News....

These guys are really getting around.  They're in Syria and Iraq.  They're in Libya and environs.  They're becoming established in Afghanistan.  Now they're engaging Egypt and Israel.  Yes, that's right, Israel.  This ISIS outfit is on the move.

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reports that the Israeli Defence Force is preparing for an ISIS attack out of the Sinai peninsula.  The Sinai branch of ISIS has announced on Twitter (naturally) plans to launch a barrage of 150-rockets into Israel.  This is the same bunch that's been attacking Egyptian forces with some success.

The threat of the Islamic State on Israel's southern border "is of great concern to the army and influences our preparedness for any incident that might occur," Col. Arik Chen, deputy commander of the 80th Territorial Division, said yesterday in a briefing for reporters.

The IDF "knows the intentions and the abilities" of the Islamists in the Sinai and is prepared for any aggression, whether it is aimed at the Egyptian security forces or whether "it becomes a threat to Israel in the future," Chen said.

The number of casualties from attacks on Egyptian forces by the Sinai branch of the Islamic State has increased drastically since last September, he added.

...The group calling itself Ansar Bait al-Maqdis announced its allegiance to the Islamic State last year and is now regarded as the Sinai branch of the organization. The group is attempting to get its hands on sophisticated weaponry, including anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and explosives.

Meanwhile Egyptian president al-Sissi took to FOX News to plead for more American help.  FOX News shill, Bret Baier, had little difficulty getting al-Sissi to criticize Obama for cutting off military aid to Egypt in the wake of massacres.

It sounds like the Saudis and Egyptians are forming some sort of military alliance but they still want the US and its allies to do their fighting.  Quelle surprise.

To So-Called Liberals Who Slam Trudeau Over His ISIS Policy

Sometimes even I have to stand up for Justin Trudeau.  He has been attacked recently for his less than bloodthirsty views on ISIS.  Some of these attacks come from self-identified Liberals who apparently can't get a paid gig from Team Trudeau but are they fair?  MSNBC's Chris Hayes helps make Justin's point.



These days it's becoming harder to tell some Liberals from redneck Conservatives.  That, perhaps, is Ignatieff's lasting Liberal legacy - the unquestioning pro-Israel stance, the "muscular foreign policy" that just keeps falling on its face, the neoliberal contagion that has sent many progressive Liberals packing.

You'll Need More Than a Six-Pack for That Job.

Well, that was the idea anyway.

Brace yourselves.  In a move that could send chills down the spine of every member of ISIS, it's been revealed that Canada is 'considering' expanding its war effort to Syria and, gasp, Libya too.

Libya?  That's that place that Gaddafi guy used to run.  We bombed the hell out of him three or four years ago.  It was "mission accomplished" all around.  We even had a victory flypast over Ottawa brought to you by the ever-triumphalist Harper government.

I know we won because Steve and Mrs. Steve and Peter MacKay and that Army guy and Steve's ceremonial valet all gathered on the front steps of the Centre Block to bask in the glory of our great victory.

Except it turns out that the Canadian Armed Forces, under Steve's management, proclaim victory a lot more than they achieve it.  But how were they to know that, by dragging out the air war in Libya by a staggering 161-days, they would leave the place in a state of chaos just perfect for al Qaeda and, eventually, ISIS to get established in North Africa.

So now we're tossing the idea around of another grand victory in Libya, Syria too, in an expansion of "our" war against ISIS.  I know because our newly minted Defence Minister, the oh so martial Jason Kenny, said as much to CBC's Evan Soloman.

Not only that but our Closet Clausewitz says there's 2,000 other countries ready to stand up with us.

"Obviously there are practical limits to our ability to operate around the world, but we will look at our options to see where we can have the most impact, where we're most needed," he said. "That requires ongoing consultation with our allies. We don't just decide these things unilaterally."

"Obviously we're in Iraq at the invitation of that government in a mission of, I think, over 2,000 countries being coordinated by the United States. If we can help meaningfully in the fight against ISIL elsewhere we'll give that consideration," the minister said.

Jason, this one is for the luxury lawn furniture set and the Caribbean cruise. Name 500 of those 2,000 countries and their capitals. (psst - don't tell Wiki.  they think there's only 206 countries, the damned fools.)

Yes, Jason, you hit it on the head when you pointed out that, "there are practical limits to our ability to operate around the world."  Your government has slashed our defence budget to levels not seen in generations.  You have given Canada a navy smaller than at any time since prior to WWII.  Our aircraft and helicopters are old and worn out.  When we do go to defend the Baltics or bring the Hammers of Hell down on the heads of ISIS, we send a paltry six-pack of CF-18s because it's all we can afford. There are practical limits and your government's neglect has been setting most of them.