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When the Conservative government committed to sending Canadian troops to combat ISIL in Iraq, there was a clear strategy and goal in mind. Our air and special forces were to “significantly degrade” the death cult’s capabilities, “specifically its ability to either engage in military movements of scale or to operate bases in the open,” which would, it was hoped, allow ground forces – largely Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters – to recapture large swaths of the country controlled by militants.

As we reach the end of our initial commitment, there should be two options for Canada: if we’ve accomplished our mission, we should wrap up our operations and bring our troops home. If we haven’t, the prime minister should explain why not, and what we can expect to gain from 12 more months of costly warfare in Iraq.

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What Stephen Harper did instead on Tuesday was argue that it’s time to push on into Syria. This is extremely problematic, because we have yet to hear anything resembling a coherent strategy for tackling the problem there, let alone for dealing with the very real chance we’ll serve as inadvertent allies of Syrian President/Butcher-In-Chief Bashar Assad. Without the support of tens of thousands of ground troops, there’s little we can do to contain ISIL in Syria – heck, new sectarian tensions are already bubbling in Iraq, and we at least sorta, kinda know what we’re dealing with there. Who exactly are we expecting to step in and battle ISIL on the ground in the middle of a massive, complex and bloody civil war in Syria? Is that the next step for the coalition?