Editor:
Re: Watts’ terror warning ‘fearmongering’, Sept. 23.
Is the federal Conservative party the only one serious about confronting aggression?
Thirteen years ago, the Liberal government sent troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. Later, high casualty rates shocked both the Liberals and Conservatives.
What are we to make of Canada’s current engagement in the Middle East? Canadian military advisors work with Iraqi Kurds to fight ISIL. Yet initially, Canada and the U.S. did not intervene in Kurdistan until the threat to global energy companies was intolerable.
Paradoxically, Canada has lined up with Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah in confronting ISIL in Syria, launching air strikes a couple times a day. Now, Russia has deployed warplanes, tanks, air-missile systems, helicopter gunships and troops on the ground to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar Assad; it is, among other things, a clear message that Moscow will root out terrorism if the west won’t. But it complicates global politics, in the sense that the Russian annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine may suffer inattention.
What will be the response of Canadian political parties if the Ukraine conflict widens?
And what of the fate of Syria?
So far in 2015, the Assad regime has caused seven times more Syrian civilian deaths than ISIL has. Assad uses sarin and chlorine gas against his own people with impunity, causing millions to flee. Ask a Syrian, and they’ll tell you Assad is the terrorist-in-chief.
The next government faces an ever-complicating foreign situation.
Bob Burgel, Surrey
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I, too, received the flyer distributed by the Dianne Watts election team – the same one that has been described as “fearmongering”.
It is easy to ignore a reign of terror, murder and ethnic cleansing when it is half-way around the world, and mainstream media does not show the gruesome images of the brutal results, such as butchered Christians, splayed crucifixion-style.
ISIL has slaughtered many thousands of people – countless really – and we need to take note.
They have declared war on many western countries – including our own – and have said they will bring their war to these countries. They are recruiting young people from these countries for the distinct purpose of training them in terrorism, to be sent back home as weapons. Their leaders have, in fact, said “you will not be safe in your bedrooms.” We have had two terrorist attacks in our own nation, inspired by ISIL, and I fear they will not be the last.
Those that pay attention to what is happening with ISIL in the Middle East, and warn people about it, are not fearmongers. They are trying to get people to wake up to the danger that has called Canada out by name.
Michael J. Klaver, White Rock