PM should back down on jet withdrawal
Rosie DiManno
Toronto Star
18 Jan 2016
In Libya, airstrikes under a Canadian general's command chased Muammar Gaddafi's tanks from the gates of besieged Misurata, preventing an all-out massacre of civilians.
In Afghanistan, intense aerial bombing by American B-52s pounded Taliban fighter formations in the desert, ultimately allowing National Alliance militias to advance southwards and take Kabul.
In Iraq, "shock and awe" bombing obliterated Saddam Hassan's Republican Army troops prior to ground forces crossing the Kuwait border, which is why fewer than 175 American and British troops lost their lives in the six weeks before the Saddam Hussein regime fell.
The world can debate the merits of all three military interventions - the what-came-next part, as each country descended into internal chaos, tribal and sectarian violence, the exponential growth of terrorist organizations and a colossal failure of politics - but the screeching jets did their job.
Air power doesn't win wars, not without boots on the ground. But coalition air power - primarily American sorties, with escalating participation by British and French jets - was crucial to recent gains made by Iraqi and Kurdish forces in taking back between 25 and 30 per cent of territory that had been controlled by the Islamic State group (ISIS), including the liberation of Sinjar and Ramadi.
Armoury depots were smashed, resupply routes severed and hundreds of ISIS fighters killed - from the air, because the Islamic State mimics a conventional command-and-control structure; troops usually deployed in formation, easier targets to hit.
Canadian military assets were involved. Last Friday, according to most recent data available on the Operation IMPACT website, two CF-18s "successfully" struck an ISIS fighting position east of Mosul using precision-guided munitions. The day before, Canadian pilots hit a fighting position northeast of Tikrit. In the previous week, the conducted bombing missions against a staging facility for vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in Ramadi took out three VIEDs outside Haditha and a rocket emplacement near al-Baghdadi.
As of this past weekend, those CF-18s had flown 2017 sorties, while Canada's Polaris aerial refueler - which helps fighter jets operate 24/7 - had delivered 20,522,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft. Meanwhile, our CP-140 Auroras, outfitted with sophisticated radar and optical systems which identify ISIS militants on the ground - conducted 378 reconnaissance missions since arriving in-theatre two years ago as part of Joint Task-Force Iraq.
Canada isn't a major player in the operations: six CF-18s, one Polaris, two Auroras, support personnel for the aircraft and 69 special operations forces in an allegedly noncombat role to help train local forces - but they've definitely engaged in some direct fighting. Two per cent of the military load is better than 0 per cent of the military load for a highly regarded and professionally experienced combat air force.
This is the military component that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to withdraw by March when he was campaigning - a deployment that, under Stephen Harper's government (and extended) was scheduled to conclude in April anyway. Trudeau has said almost nothing publicly about those intentions since his triumph at the polls, at least not since a phone call to President Barack Obama one day after the election, reiterating Canada's military pullout. What Obama might have said privately to Trudeau in their November face-to-face - what Obama may have asked of Canada - is open to speculation.
Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, a three-tour veteran of Afghanistan, stated last week that the withdrawal plans haven't changed as Trudeau presumably ponders what contribution Canada can make instead in rolling back ISIS. He likes the soft feel-good options of humanitarian assistance and possibly augmenting the training mission. He doesn't like whipping out our jets "to show how big they are." Yet polls show two-thirds of Canadians support the military mission.
Trudeau has never actually articulated why Canada should abandon the task force - abandon our allies - at what might very well be a tipping point of the military mission. If it's the prospect of Canadian casualties that sickens the prime minister, those fighter pilots in the sky are far safer than training forces close to the action down below. It makes no sense, strategically or otherwise, to bug out of Iraq's blue yonder while contemplating an insertion of more Canadians on the ground.
If Trudeau can't provide a logical explanation it's because there isn't one. His objection is more visceral, rooted in a de facto repugnance of military ugliness. But if not Iraq/Syria, against the scourge of ISIS, then where and when? And what therefore is the point of buying a new fleet of fighter jets to replace the aging C-18 Hornets - Liberals rejecting the Tories' procurement plan for stealth capability F-35s from Lockheed Martin (a heavily criticized and purportedly rigged bidding process) - or spending billions on a new training program for military pilots?
ISIS, as Obama has said, is not an existential threat to the West. But it is a brutalizing menace seeking to establish its fantastical caliphate across Iraq, Syria, Libya and beyond. Its ruthlessness is unprecedented, its ambitions empirical. Accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees who'd doubtless rather return to their own country (with an end to a ruinous civil war and protected by no-fly zones) is a passive response to a kinetic catastrophe.
Trudeau was forced to readjust his grandiose refugee pledge because the timeline was unrealistic and everybody knew it. He was quite rightly forgiven for overreach. Canada answered the bell, in humanitarian terms.
That claxon is now clanging for a reappraisal - a full reversal, to be blunt - on the military front.
Canada's CF-18s are still conducting sorties over Iraq, two months after the Liberals were sworn into office. It would appear, at the least, logistically impossible to call off the mission by March. It would also be a gross abnegation of Canada's military and moral obligations.
Trudeau should stand up by standing down on a foolish election promise.
