Harper's Iraq War Plan: Save People by Killing Them?

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Published on Monday, 10 November 2014 20:22

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1054 .... November 11, 2014
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Harper's Iraq War Plan:
Save People by Killing Them?

Gregory Shupak

The Harper government's plan to send Canadian air power to help combat the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, and possibly Syria, and for Canadian special forces to continue operating there is homicidal, won't achieve its supposed goals and needs to be opposed. Legislation tabled by the federal government on October 3 says that "unless confronted with strong and direct force, the threat ISIL poses to international peace and security, including to Canadian communities, will continue to grow." There is plenty of evidence to suggest that exactly the opposite is true.

James Comey, director of the FBI, told the U.S. Congress that support for IS has increased since the U.S. began the 2014 chapter of its bombing of Iraq. The Guardian puts the number of fighters who have joined IS since the bombing campaign began at 6,000 fighters.

Moreover, there had previously been a split between IS and al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, but the two groups have reconciled in the face of the west's bombing of Syria, which will strengthen both groups and sectarian jihadism more generally.

To say that western states should not be bombing Iraq and Syria is not isolationism and neither does it indicate indifference to the thousands in Iraq and Syria that IS has slaughtered, raped, assaulted and ethnically cleansed. Rather, this position is the only tenable one for people concerned with the inhabitants of the region.

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