Who is Justin Trudeau?

Damned if I know.  Lawrence Martin takes a stab at answering the question, here.  It’s a really good piece, but I found the very last sentence bewildering.  It’s like he didn’t know how to end it, and just tacked it on.

Anyway. When my Dad died, twelve years ago this Spring, Justin Trudeau – who I didn’t really know – reached out to me, and gave me some good advice that I followed.  He sent beautiful flowers to the church, and was very kind.  He was a regular reader of this web site, it turned out.

(Stephen Harper,  by the way, was similarly kind, calling me and my mother to offer condolences and support.)

How does any of this matter? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.  Maybe it was just politicians being political.

But in Trudeau’s case, however – and particularly in light of some recent experiences I’ve had with the man – I actually think he isn’t (per Martin) an open book, at all.  I actually think he is even more of a mystery than I had previously considered.

Being enigmatic – being a riddle – sometimes works to your political advantage (cf. his father) and sometimes it doesn’t (cf. Richard Nixon).  It depends.

We will all see how it works out for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in the fullness of time.  But, increasingly, my suspicion is that the selfies – the Twitter, the Instagram, all of that – are a deliberate distraction, a sleight of hand, designed to distract us from…what?

I actually don’t know, which may be the point.

 

 

 


Inside the Islamic State – and Canada

Outstanding (and frightening) investigative reporting work by the Times, here.

What I found most interesting was this section:

Intelligence officials in the United States and Europe have confirmed the broad outlines of the external operations unit: It is a distinct body inside ISIS, with its command-and-control structure answering to Mr. Adnani, who reports to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.

The unit identifies recruits, provides training, hands out cash and arranges for the delivery of weapons once fighters are in position. Although the unit’s main focus has been Europe, external attacks directed by ISIS or those acting in its name have been even more deadly beyond Europe’s shores. At least 650 people have been killed in the group’s attacks on sites popular with Westerners, including in Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia, according to a Times analysis.

Within the hierarchy, Mr. Abaaoud was specifically tasked with mounting attacks in Europe, according to the French police report and intelligence brief.

If Adnani’s name sounds familiar to Canadians, it should.  He is the IS leader who had very specific things to say about Canada in the Fall of 2014, just after the assassinations of two CAF members.  He said “what lies ahead [for Canada] will be worse — with Allah’s permission.”

He went on to say his network would “target the crusaders in their own lands and wherever they are found.” He said they would use explosives, guns, knives, cars, rocks “or even a boot or a fist.”

“Indeed, you saw what a single Muslim did with Canada and its Parliament of shirk [sic], and what our brothers in France, Australia and Belgium did, may Allah have mercy upon them all and reward them with good on behalf of Islam,” he said.

“And there were many others who killed, ran others over, threatened, frightened and terrorized people, to the extent that we saw the crusader armies deployed on the streets in Australia, Canada, France, Belgium and other strongholds of the cross.”

As in my Hill Times column, this week, we are at war with the Islamic State.  You can call the war, and the Islamic State, whatever you like.  But no one should be under any illusion about who they are, or what we are doing.


In this week’s Hill Times: if it isn’t war, what the Hell is it?

The first casualty of war isn’t truth. It turns out it’s meaning.

Ipso facto, is “Canada” in a state of “war” with “the Islamic State?” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion emphatically state that we are not.

Said the Prime Minister on CBC radio: “A war is something that can be won by one side or the other and there is no path for ISIL to actually win against the West…They want to destabilize, they want to strike fear. They need to be stamped out.”

Said Dion, outside the Commons: “If you use the terminology ‘war,’ in international law it will mean two armies with respecting rules and it’s not the case at all. You have terrorist groups that respect nothing. So we prefer to say that it’s a fight.”

So, are they right? Trudeau’s argument is somewhat existential, or at least philosophical: he seems to believe that a war is only a war if it can be won. Dion is more preoccupied with semantics: it can’t be a war, because the Islamic State isn’t a state, and wars can only be waged by warring states.

Let’s dissect Dion’s assessment first, shall we? The Islamic State – which itself (naturally) lacks a name upon which all can agree – has many names. It has been variously referred to as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), Daesh (an acronym derived from its Arabic name), terrorists, the enemy (my personal favourite, because it is truest) and so on. When our side cannot even figure out what to call the other side, confusion is inevitable.

But leave that aside for a minute. The trickier challenge is this: what, exactly, is the best way to describe what exists between us and Daesh/ISIS/ISIL/the enemy? Are we at war with them? Is it war’s lesser variant, an armed conflict? A mere “fight,” as Dion suggests? Is what Daesh/ISIS/ISIL/the enemy are doing properly classified – as Messrs. Trudeau and Dion do – as “terrorism,” stirring up fear, destabilizing, and so on? How about this: is it safe to say that we have a really strong disagreement with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the putative head of the caliphate-to-be? No? Are we cross with him, yet?

It could be that the Canadian government – unlike many of its allies – does not want to describe our disagreement with Daesh/ISIS/ISIL/the enemy as “war” because that would confer status on the other side. It would ascribe legitimacy to them.

In international law, as our Foreign Minister implies, “war” has a very specific meaning. Its etymology is Old English (wyrre) and Old French (werre). Merriam-Webster (likely Messr. And Trudeau’s preference) says it is “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations.” The Oxford people (properly, in my view) state that it need not be between states – they say it need only be “a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country.”

If a tour of dictionaries isn’t sufficient, the United Nations – which is an authority in war, because it is the entity theoretically most preoccupied with preventing war – provides us with insight into why Canada’s Liberal government is so insistent that we are not in a state of war with Daesh/ISIS/ISIL/the enemy. The UN Charter specifically forbids war, except for self-defence, or if authorized by the Security Council itself. Which explains why so few nations, Canada among them, describe themselves “at war” with anyone anymore.

The United Nations (and, unsurprisingly so, to conservatives) is ultimately of no help in our definitional quest. The U.N. doesn’t even use the word “war” in the relevant section of its Charter. It is instead only concerned with what it calls “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression.”

There. We have met the U.N. threshold, then: Daesh/ISIS/ISIL/the enemy have repeatedly threatened our peace, they have breached our peace, and they have committed acts of aggression against us. And, as much as we do not want to admit it, the Islamic State meets the definition of “state” – they are politically organized, and they control territory.

So, we are at war with the Islamic State, the circumlocutions of the politicians notwithstanding. What now? Does anything really change?

No. The word games, at day’s end, are just that: games. This is indeed a war, with combatants, and casualties, and myriad horrors. There is a body count, and it grows.

Dance on the head of semantical pins if you like, politicians. Indulge in your preference for interminable semiology and exegesis. The rest of us know full well what this is.

We don’t, however, know how it will end.


Who is going to be a terrorist?

The New York Times, here, attempts to answer that question, and comes up short, I think. 

I have made a few attempts at doing likewise – as here – and I always find myself turning back to demographic profiling (as I learned in politics) and youth subcultures (as I learned in punk rock). Ipso facto, the things which the radicalized share is that they are almost always:

  • male
  • young (teens to early thirties)
  • unsuccessful (at love or life)
  • unemployed (often after post-secondary study)
  • angry (at everything and everyone)
  • alienated from family (who often have lost contact)
  • involved in petty crime

From skinheads to jihadists, they become incandescent balls of rage. They are looking for a replacement family, a new beliefs system, a sense of belonging, a higher calling, a culture that rejects the popular culture, a new religion, even a uniform to wear. And along come manipulative older men, practiced in deception, who give them all those things. They give them a manifesto of hate. 

Want to stop terror and extremism? Create a society where these angry young men get hope, where they get support, where they get jobs. Where they get a sense of purpose. 

Desperate young men do desperate things, as we are now seeing almost every single day. We need to get to them before the haters do. 


Why you’ll never see a selfie of me with Trudeau, or anyone else for that matter

Robyn Doolittle’s bit on Rob Ford made me remember this.


It’s over 

  
Let’s summarize, shall we?

  • National Enquirer releases highly detailed report on Evangelical favourite Ted Cruz, just as Holy weekend begins
  • Trump way, way ahead in California, which has 172 delegates at stake
  • Every front page is filled with stories about how the Islamic State is expanding the battlefield to the West

This thing is over, folks. Trump is the nominee. 

So, if you’re like me, you’re going to do all you humanly can to get Hillary Clinton elected president.