Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to pull the CF18s out of Syria is not a display of cowardice, as the Conservatives would have you believe, but a demonstration of wisdom. As US Vice President Joe Biden put in very candid terms, the only way to defeat the Islamic State is to stop mollycoddling the terror group’s backers: Saudi Arabia,Turkey, and Qatar.
The Saudi Arabian Wahhabis, with the full backing of the ruling House of Saud, are on a self-described ‘crusade’ against the the Shia Muslims. The Saudis nurtured a fledgling ISIS as agents to carry out genocide against Shia populations in Syria and Iraq. They continue to fund and arm the al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, the so called al-Nusra front. But our former Prime Minister Stephen Harper sold $15 billion dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and tried to keep the deal secret.
Meanwhile, Qatar is eager to build a pipeline to Turkey to get their natural gas to Europe. This proposed pipeline had to cross Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rejected the proposal “to protect the interests of [its] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.” The Syrian government, instead, gave the go ahead to the so called ‘Islamic gas pipeline’ which would supply Europe with gas from Iran. The Qatar-Turkey pipeline is backed by the US, the Iran-Syria pipeline by Russia.
Turkey has two motives for supporting the Islamic State. Firstly, they stand to benefit from the Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Secondly, ISIS terrorists have been massacring Kurds in Syria and Iraq. Turkey has escalated the crackdown against the Turkish Kurds who are demanding independence from Turkey.
We have, in Syria, three proxy wars for the price of one: the Wahhabis vs Shias, the Qatar-Turkey pipeline vs the Iran Syria pipeline and Turkey vs the Kurds.
For the civilians caught up in the conflict, the Syrian war is an Alien vs Predator situation. If ISIS wins the Syrians lose. If President Assad wins, the Syrians still lose. Although the President Assad started out as a reformer after the death of his father, the brutal dictator Hafez al-Assad, absolute power has corrupted junior absolutely. The son has shown himself to be as much of a butcher as his father was.
As we so tragically witnessed in Paris yesterday, Beirut the day before, and over the skies of the Sinai a week earlier, the tentacles of the gruesome conflict that has claimed over 250,000 lives, and displaced six million more in the Middle East is spreading to other corners of the globe.
While some world leaders are baying for blood, PM Trudeau has come to the conclusion that you can’t bomb your way out of a conflict as convoluted as the one in Syria. For each terrorist a bomb dropped from the sky kills, it has the potential to create a dozen more. You can’t win a game of chess by checkmating pawns. You have to go after the king. In this grotesque chess game, they’re many kings and an unlimited supply of pawns.
On election night, Justin Trudeau declared to the world: “Canada is back.”
PM Trudeau has stayed true to his words and taken the first correct step in bringing peace to the wretched region by pulling the CF18s out of Syria. He must now use his international début at the G20 summit in Antalya to rally the world leaders to take stern action against the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the summit’s host nation Turkey.
