For better or worse, the West is being drawn into another war in Iraq.

This time, Canada is involved.

The last war was against Saddam Hussein. This one is against forces (including former Saddam supporters) coalescing around Islamic militants.

The last began with a bang — literally shock and awe.

This one is more gradual and more reluctant. It started with targeted American bombing against militants and Washington’s decision to send 350 soldiers to guard U.S. personnel in Baghdad.

Over the week, the number of American troops has more than doubled to 820. As the Star has reported, these American forces appear to be operating not only in Baghdad but in battle zones to the north.

During the last Iraq war, many nations, including Germany, France and Canada, officially chose to stay aloof.

This Iraq war is supported by a large array of Western nations including France, Britain, Italy, Australia, Germany — and Canada.

Ottawa has dispatched two cargo planes to Iraq to ferry weapons to forces fighting those allied with a group that calls itself the Islamic State.

So far, Western involvement in this new war remains largely uncontroversial.

In 2003, Canada’s Liberals and New Democrats vocally opposed going to war in Iraq. Eleven years later, both opposition parties seem onside.

Indeed, senior MPs from both opposition parties joined Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird this week in a trip to Baghdad aimed at showing Canadian support for the embattled Iraqi government.

So far, there has been little debate anywhere as to where this particular war will go.

In part, that’s because public opinion has been inflamed by the militants’ monstrous acts — most notably the beheading of two American journalists.

While it is natural to want justice for such crimes, two things should be kept in mind.

First, the world contains many monsters. The West studiously avoids direct military involvement in Congo’s brutal civil war for instance, even though the atrocities committed there are equally barbaric.

Africa’s current Ebola epidemic arguably poses a greater threat to the West than any number of Islamists. Yet Western governments are not mounting the kind of co-ordinated public health operation needed to bring the virus under control.

Second, Islamic State militants are deliberately trying to draw the U.S. and its allies into the quagmire of Syria and Iraq.

Provoking America into overreaction was Osama Bin Laden’s aim in 2001. He succeeded masterfully, provoking not only the West’s ill-fated adventure in Afghanistan but George W. Bush’s subsequent and even more ill-fated invasion of Iraq.

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In 2011, NATO’s military attacks on the forces of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi gave Islamic militants another victory.

Not only did NATO warplanes leave Libya in political chaos. They also allowed militants to seize weapons from Gadhafi’s well-stocked armories — weapons that have been used by Islamists throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

Given this history, it would be reasonable to assume the West might move with some care in the new Iraq conflict.

Indeed, compared to Bush, U.S. President Barack Obama is the epitome of caution.

But we are still being lured into another conflict we barely understand.

Western audiences like their wars to be black and white. We know who the villains are in this conflict. But who are the good guys?

Is Syrian dictator Bashar Assad now on our side? He, too, is fighting the Islamic State. What about the ayatollahs of Iran? Ottawa shuns them. Yet they, like Canada, are supporting forces fighting Sunni rebels.

Right now, Iraq’s Kurds are treated as the heroes of the moment. But will that last? The Kurds, too, have their own agenda. What if they use this war to push for an independent Kurdistan that includes chunks of Turkey, a NATO member?

As the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes points out, fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an organization viewed as terrorist by Canada and the U.S., provide some of the fiercest military opposition to Islamic State militants.

The biggest question of all: Where does this war go? Obama admits he has no strategy yet for battling the Islamic State in Syria. But chaotic Syria is where the bulk of these fighters operate.

Do our leaders know what they are getting us into?

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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