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Marc Garneau, the foreign affairs critic, appeared on CBC Thursday to do some more explaining. Far from opposing the troops efforts, he said, the party has always been supportive. Its view was always been that training Kurdish peshmerga troops to do the ground fighting was “very, very important.” So if they were in favour of the mission, why did they vote against it?

“The part we had the problem with was the CF-18s” said Mr. Garneau. “And the reason for that was because there were nine other countries providing strike aircraft and it was overkill, and I think if you look at the number of sorties and dropped bombs, there was a better way to use the Canadian military resources.”

Wait… “Overkill”? How can you have overkill when you’re trying to stop a marauding enemy army? Gen. Grant used superior numbers to wear down and defeat Gen. Lee during the U.S. civil war. Gen. Montgomery was always holding up attacks while he built up an advantage in men and equipment. Is it considered bad form to drop more bombs on the enemy than they can conveniently deal with? Would the Liberals have advised Gen. Patton to leave some of his tanks behind as the allies headed for Berlin, since the Russians, French, Canadians and all those other allies were also using tanks?

You have to wonder where the Liberals get their military strategy. Did Mr. Trudeau think it up himself? “Hey Marc, it’s really not pukka bombing those poor ISISI chaps with so many planes, all at once. Let’s back off on the CF-18s and give the poor devils a chance.” Just what is the correct number of countries to bomb an enemy before it becomes overkill?

The Liberals have to work harder at this stuff. Mr. Garneau is a sensible man. He must hate having to try and make his leader’s policy positions look sensible.

National Post

KellyMcParland<