You Think They'd Give Us Something Classier To Bomb

But I think there's a 12 plane minimum before you get anything good, like Amir al-Mu'minin's Lamberghini.   Next up I hear we've been offered a couple of sewage treatment plants and a paint recycling center.

Iraq Debate: The Center Of Gravitas Shifts

...to Jean Chretien.  Mind you, I'm not particularly set in my opinions re Canada's contribution to the fight against ISIS.  These thoughts still apply, more so, perhaps, now that the tide seems to have turned in Kobani.  But JC's main point, that there are more roles to be played in this situation beyond bomb-lobbing, and that being among the bomb-lobbers now may preclude taking up certain other roles later, is a sound one.  It's is certainly nice to hear an adult voice in this debate, rather than kooks like Terry Glavin, who seems to be dabbling a bit heavy in some kind testosterone replacement therapy.

Why Not Bomb ISIS?

Nine planes for six months; no ground fighting.  Why not?  As a matter of history, many things went wrong with the Arab Spring, but the nature of The West's commitment: providing air-support for indigenous resistance movements (I'm thinking of Libya specifically) was not one of those things. So it might work again, as in Libya.  ISIS's pattern has been to press forward until resisted, and then pull back and try elsewhere when  U.S. bombs start falling.  Like water sloshing in a bucket, back and forth between Iraq and Syria, but in smaller and smaller sloshes as their movements have been gradually constrained.  Six months from now a few of their leaders will have been killed, and their successes will have become less and less. Hopefully the movement will therefore have lost some of its savage allure, and recruiting and fund-raising abilities will be negatively effected.

Michael Ignatieff: A Liberal Idealist With Neo-Conservative Impulses?

It being a slow news day, I have nothing to offer but this article on Iggy's foreign policy from Embassy Magazine. It offers nothing in the way of new information, but does go some way to explaining why many within the Liberal party view Ignatieff with discomfort.

Incidentally, of all the reasons to criticize Iggy's support the invasion of Iraq, one that doesn't get alot of play is the fact that he had already seen several years of things going wrong in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Empire Lite is an extended bitch against the same kind of mismanagement (nation building "on the cheap", he calls it) that has afflicted the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

One might argue that: fool me once, shame on you; fool me thrice, shame on me.

(Although as fodder for attack ads I think this stuff is mostly water lone gone under the bridge. I suspect now the line of attack will be his "installation" as Lib Leader, which won't work, and his status as an "intellectual", which might cut a little more sharply.)

A Great Victory

"For the independence of the country, saying no to the Americans on the war was a great moment for Canada," Chretien says.

It was, and Stephen Harper and Ralph Klein and Mike Harris and every Conservative in the country should be force-marched to Montreal (or wherever he keeps these days) and be made to kiss his ass.

Repeat after me: they're our neighbor, not our nation; they're our neighbor, not our nation; they're our...