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No one should have been surprised when Stephen Harper announced that the Canadian combat mission against ISIL will be renewed, or perhaps even expanded, next week. After all, the Prime Minister is a warmonger.

I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’m just observing a fact. Harper is pro-war. He thinks that war is something worth doing. He thinks that war has numerous redeeming qualities.

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Various commentators have pointed this out. After all, how many political leaders go out of their way to celebrate the beginning, rather than the end, of the First World War? Or who thinks that the War of 1812 is more worthy of commemoration than the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? The Harper government is constantly sending out weird press releases, celebrating the anniversary of some battle or skirmish that no one has ever heard of.

And yet, the basis of this enthusiasm is difficult to pin down. There is some level at which Harper clearly likes war, and would very much like to see Canada get involved in more of them. And yet he is a peculiar sort of warmonger, in that he also doesn’t seem to have a lot of stomach for the reality of it. For instance, he has none of the grudging respect for men like Vladimir Putin that one finds on the right wing of the U.S. Republican Party. His reaction to the Ukraine crisis was more like “Oh my God, how could you?” rather than “This is how the great game is played, we must learn to play it better…”