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By keeping our refuelling tanker in the region and making it available to our allies, Canada will be directly complicit in continued allied bombing attacks

It also can’t simply be an aversion to bombing, or a squeamishness about Canadian military personnel killing the enemy. After all, the prime minister has been in office for three months without grounding the jets — and they’ll still be bombing for two more weeks. Further, by keeping our refuelling tanker in the region and making it available to our allies, Canada will be directly complicit in continued allied bombing attacks, and all the unpleasantness — mangled bodies, horrific injuries, the risk of collateral damage — that that entails.

It certainly can’t be out of any sense that there should be no fight against ISIL, or a misguided belief that a diplomatic solution is somehow in reach. Far from it. The prime minister is clear that our training personnel will be there specifically to help local forces retake their country, “kilometre by kilometre,” from ISIL. Ground fighting is savage. It is horrific. It chews through men at horrifying rates. One of the best ways to minimize its horrors, at least for friendly troops, is to provide timely and overwhelming air support, destroying targets that would otherwise need to be cleared out by ground troops.

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Will Canada do that? No. We will help others provide it, we just won’t do it ourselves. Why? We don’t know, because the Liberals can’t explain.

The six jets Canada sent to bomb ISIL were, in the grand scheme of things, symbolic. But symbolism matters. It showed ISIL, our allies, the world and the millions living under ISIL’s brutal rule that we took seriously our solemn obligation to stand with our allies and against savagery. Pulling those jets out is equally symbolic, and sends the opposite message. It is a major decision, one far greater than what to do with a mere six airplanes. That the new government of Canada needed months to arrive at a conclusion as muddled and incoherent as this is deeply troubling.

National Post

mgurney@nationalpost.com

Twitter.com/MattGurney

Matt Gurney is an editor of, and columnist for, the National Post Comment section. He hosts National Post Radio every weekday morning from six to nine Eastern on SiriusXM’s Canada Talks, channel 167.