The big guys with the beards aren't ISIS jihadis or Iraqi "soldiers". They're Canucks! You can tell because they have better camoduds, with their maple leaf flag (cleverly died green) on the shoulders. They are pictured "advising and training" Kurdish Peshmerga "fighters" somewhere in northern Iraq.
"Gee whillikers, Walt! You mean there are Canadians fighting alongside the brave American forces in Iraq?" Well, not exactly, Bobby. There are Canadian Armed Forces personnel in Iraq, all right, but not all of them are, errr, fighting. There are intelligence officers (as in that great oxymoron "military intelligence"), a helicopter detachment and a medical contingent based in Erbil, the Kurdish capital. Separately, in Kuwait, there is a surveillance plane and an air-to-air refueller.
But yes, there are several dozen Canucks out there in camos, holding guns and other implements of destruction. By way of apology for not jumping at the chance to join the first Iraq fiasco, the government of former Canuck Prime Minister Steven Harpoon in 2014 sent roughly 200 Canadian commandos to "provide advice and assistance" on the ground in northern Iraq in an effort to help defeat ISIS militants. This summer, when it looked like the war was finally going to be won, the alleged government of Junior Trudeau extended the mission for two years.
And then, just as Walt predicted (lifetime pct .991) the war against ISIS took a sudden but not unpredictable turn in another direction. Having cleared the Islamists out of Mosul, the Kurds decided that it was time to consolidate their victory and assert their independence from the rest of Iraq. They held a referendum of sorts and voted to declare their own republic, a formalization of the autonomous state which already existed (in theory) in northern Iraq. The so-called national government of that wretched country, dominated by Shia Muslims, did not take kindly to the challenge to its authority, and sent their army, along with Shi'ite militias, to put the Kurds in their place... or out of their place, looking at it from the Kurds' point of view.
The Arab Iraqis seized the northern oil city of Kirkuk from the Kurds, with surprising ease, a few days ago, and are expected to move against Mosul and the Kurdish capital, Erbil, at any time. That puts the Canadian special forces in an awkward position, since they are based in Erbil and, if the Kurds take a stand against the Arab Iraqis, would be expected to lead their "trainees" into battle against the Iraqi forces whom the Canucks have also been "training".
What would you do, if you were the peace-loving Canadian Minister of Defence (who happens to be a Sikh) or his pussified boss, Justin Trudeau? Would you take the side of the "national" government of Iraq or the separatist Kurds? (See "Gulf Wars drag on: Walt's guide to who's fighting who", WWW 16/10/17.)
Perhaps you have already guessed the answer. It is not the Canadian way to offend anybody... anybody! Canadians, or their government at least, see themselves as the great peacemakers who can bring sanity and stability to a world dominated by crazy warmongers like Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. (That's M Trudeau's view, not Walt's!) So, rather than take sides, the clever and peace-loving Canadians have decided to do... errr... nothing, "until greater clarity exists".
That's the word from Col. Jay Janzen, the director of military strategic communications for the Canadian Armed Forces, in a brief statement made while everyone was watching the World Series last night. "Given the fluidity of the current situation, Canada's Special Operations Task Force has temporarily suspended the provision of assistance to various elements of Iraqi security forces," he said. "Once greater clarity exists regarding the interrelationships of Iraqi security forces, and the key priorities and tasks ahead, the task force will resume activities."
Monitoring the situation without taking sides might seem like the sensible and moral thing to do, but, as with everything the Trudeau government does, there is an agenda behind the decision to put a temporary hold on their training of Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the wake of fighting between the two factions. The Canadian government is deathly afraid of two connected ideologies: separatism and nationalism.
Almost since the day of Canada's creation, just over 150 years ago, the federal government has been fighting to keep the people of Québec --
distinct ethnically, linguistically and religiously from the rest of Canada -- from seceding. In the most recent referendum on the question, in 1995, the people of La Belle Province voted by the narrowest of margins to not become un état -- an independent state. But the spark of separatist sentiment is hard to extinguish, and now it is being fanned into flame by the rise of separatist/nationalist movements in Scotland, Catalonia, and, yes, "Kurdistan".
Just yesterday, Junior Trudeau affirmed his support for a united Spain. Statements by Canadian politicians on the Kurdish question show that the only support for the ideal of Kurdish independence comes from the (federal) Bloc Québécois and the (provincial) Parti Québécois. If the independence of the new Catalan republic is recognized, if the Kurds succeed in driving the Arab Iraqis out of their region, Canada's Liberals will have yet another battle to fight to uphold their ideal of a post-national society. Stay tuned.
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