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But when Milewski put the very obvious question to Trudeau of why we have these jets if we’re not going to use them against ISIL — “if you don’t want to bomb a group as ghastly as (ISIL), when would you ever support real military action as opposed to training?” — Trudeau responded as quoted in the Conservative ad: “That’s a nonsensical question.”

And he went on: “The Liberal party has always, and I have always been, supportive of Canada standing up for its values and taking action when necessary. The question I have for this government, which has failed miserably to do this, is to demonstrate why the best mission for Canada is to participate in a bombing mission.… I truly believe that Canada has a tremendous role to play on the world stage, including with our military, but also around development and diplomacy.”

That sounds more like business as usual … just not against ISIL, for some reason.

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The pithiest expression of Trudeau’s position seems to be, “we must engage ISIL; we have finite resources with which to do so; Canada should use them to train allied troops and help the victims.” The question is: why? Accepting that we’re pretty good at training soldiers and providing humanitarian aid, we’re also pretty good at dropping bombs on baddies. Why shouldn’t Canadian pilots perform that function as part of an overall mission that Trudeau says he supports?

There are philosophical reasons one might arrive at that position: there are those who simply think Canada is genetically undisposed towards violence, for example. But that’s not what Trudeau’s pitching. It’s hard to tell what he’s pitching. The 2015 election campaign will feature a dedicated foreign policy debate. Trudeau should aspire to perform better than he did with Milewski.

National Post

cselley@nationalpost.com

Twitter.com/cselley