i don’t understand your argument that polarizing a society like Canada is good for terrorists. considering 99.9999% of the country is centrist, the centrists will rise up and lay the smackdown on religious extremists. i mean, the bulk of our society is caucasian, black, asian and south asian, none of which culturally or religiously associate with or like radical islam at all. increased surveillance on “risky” arabs and more shakedowns for all arabs is not good strategy if you’re a badman arab, period. all this brings about is that our tolerant society has to take a firm stance and not be tolerant of hatemongers and murderers. you think this environment would be easier to grow a terrorist network than 2 days ago when there was no surveillance and privacy was still a thing of pride?
i can’t disagree with your Saddam statement. probably wasn’t the best idea to clip his wings. the U.S. blew it on that one. basically, as a rule of thumb, the U.S. shouldn’t enter or continue a war without Canadian combat support. all wars without Canadian combat support have been notoriously unsuccessful (2003 Iraq, Nam).
^ Quebecois is what they call themselves and in a bilingual country, they are correctly doing so I suppose. I see your point, though. And FT: Agreed the area was better with strongman dictators in charge, keeping the real wackos at bay. But that ship has sailed. The world urgently needs a police-like action to stop immediate crimes against humanity. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine (actually a Canadian led initiative initially, Michael Ignatieff was a big part of it) is something I strongly believe in. And I think it applies more clearly to Iraq/ISIS today then perhaps any other event in the last decade. That’s not GWB anger (though I am angry at these punks), that’s a sense of responsibility towards others.
I think there should be some international treaty where we all agree to begin to refer to countries in their native tongue. It will likely take a generation to fully materialize, but it will make life much easier for the rest of human existence. It will also make it much easier to follow the opening cermony at the Olympics.
In Japanese, other than the countries that Japan has had a long history with ie China and Korea, most of the countries’ names are fairly faithful to the origin. The one exception is UK which is basically called “England” but in J pronunciation. Makes WC games difficult to follow.
^I was making light of the fact that a lot of Americans who would find it un-American to change the way they pronounce another country’s name. Can’t always express sarcasm well by message board post.
The day you’ll realize that these fanatic organizations want the West to be involved in the Middle East is the day you will understand the strategy. If the West ignores them they will lose 90% of the propaganda materials they use to brainwash new recruits. Their whole survival depends on people sacrificing their lives for their cause. If they can’t find a constant supply of bodies, they can no longer continue their operations. They don’t have nor need heavy weaponry. They need bodies willing to die.
They are also very adept at using social media. That’s how war is changing and we can no longer use tools of older wars. Show images of the West destroying and bombing innocent Arabs. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Vivid images will always be more convincing than rational arguments.
I have a different take. The West likes to meddle in other countries’ bidness all the time, at least since the colonial times. Britain and Russia were in the Middle East when Arabs had no oil. Now the West meddles because of oil and Israel.
However - ISIS is basically trying a coup to establish the One True Caliphate, have nothing but Islam, kill or enslave minorities like yezdis (zoroastrian sect) and women, and in general out-Qaeda al-Qaeda itself. After they have done that they would have a permanent terrorist base from which to launch attacks on the non-Islamic world. West, Israel, India, China, Russia. That is why there is so much alarm in the West about ISIS.
Except most recruits are desperate psychopaths and there aren’t all that many of those. If they’re not psycho, they’re borderline retarded. ME born ISIS members will likely do little damage in the long run whereas ISIS recruits from the US, Canada, UK and other a Western countries could do real damage within these countries and on the battlefield, but only if they have their passports and can blend in in the meantime. Attacking Canada and raising security concerns there takes away one of your best terrorist recruitment and terrorist activity launching grounds without any gain. Why prevent the ability to wage real war on Western soil by calling for random attacks in Western countries? Saying rationality doesn’t work to justify your rational argument is wholly ineffective. Who cares if their force grows to 100,000 from 10,000 today when we sacrifice none to do away with them. I’m much more concerned about the 5 ISIS guys in a US basement than 100,000 guys in rural Iraq and Syria.
^ To get 5 ISIS guys in a US basement you need 100,000 guys in rural Iraq because if you only have 5 guys in rural Iraq you won’t have any ISIS guy in a US basement. The more rural Iraqi guys die, the more resolve these psychopaths have. This conflict is a free advertisement for ISIS.
The 2 attacks this week were from men that got their passports seized because of heightened security concerns. These men would be fighting in Iraq and dying in Iraq if they still had their passport. So I’m not sure I get your point.
I get that. But Canada is not going to convince the US not to meddle. It’s only going to convince the US to be less hard-line about it. And that makes the US more vulnerable on many levels. Who’s easier to kill… the guy with the big gun? Or the guy with the big gun and a friend tugging at his arm saying “don’t shoot, you should try talking to these guys over tea on our nice Chesterfield”???
I agree that psychopaths are often not strategic. For them, it’s like trying to make rational calculations when you’ve got a hard-on and someone nearby who’s interested. Those guys (the psychopaths) are the ground troops. But there’s still an organization and there are people in command (even if their capacity to control people further down is restricted). Those people still need to be strategic, and getting Canada all riled up is just a bad risk/reward ratio.
The west is going to be involved in the middle east as long as 1) oil is a key world commodity, 2) there is a Jewish/Israel lobby (for good or ill) in the US, 3) the Suez Canal is a major trade route, 4) there is a liklihood of nuclear proliferation in the region, 5) possibly other stuff too. So we’ll be there for a long time no matter what, as long as the US is a quasi-globla-hegemon. There is zero risk of the west not being involved if you don’t attack Canada, but there is a risk of the West being more united and bringing larger collective firepower on ISIS. As long as the West stays out of Mecca and Medina, it’s hard to imagine large numbers non-Arab muslims running to side with ISIS.
I seem to recall a Quebecois colleague in grad school that talked about how Quebec encouraged immigration from francophone countries in order to keep the percentage of french-speakers high, but then pretty much abandoned them in every other respect as soon as they arrived and got counted in the census. Although there were some African francophones and Southeast Asian ones, the bulk of those taking up the offer came from North Africa and the Levant. To the extent that this is true (something I’m not really in a position to evaluate), I can imagine that those people might feel a bit P.O.-ed at Quebec and Canada after a generation of this, and are potentially radicalizable.
I was struck also that the guy talking about this was basically a Quebec nationalist (though not a hard core one), so the fact that this not-all-that-positive story came from someone who was pro-independence made me give it more credence than I would to a tranditional anglo-Candaian saying the same thing.
It is true that we have had massive immigration from Norht Africa in the last 25 years or so ; the Levant immigration was rather in the 80’s.
As far as I can tell these guys are rather well-integrated (except for the odd group that requires a prayer room at university) and there are no major problems with them.
Most of them watch Hockey and all speak French and that’s pretty much all you need to blend in in QC
EDIT : I do recall hearing pretty often about something close to what you are describing, but it pertains to foreign students. Quebec universities market themselves massively in French-speaking countries. Many foreign students feel a little bit fooled by the whole “education tourism”. But these are usually kids from wealthy families, most of whom leave after finishing their education. Certainly not raw material for ISIS.
I enjoyed this article, kind of. I want to adopt his now orphaned dogs. But the slideshow at the bottom showing how newspapers around the world reported the tragedy is pretty interesting.
