Should they stay or should they go now?

Weighing in on the CF-18’s role in the Middle East.

     

This is getting confusing; Besides the song “should I stay or should I go” by The Clash; keeps playing in my head when I hear this topic of discussion.   I can just imagine the amount of “Change parades” the Canadian Airforce pilots are having to do right now because of the political back forth the Liberal government keeps swaying the pendulum on a controversial subject as this.  My thought is that they made the statement to remove the jets hastily and NOW don’t want to break yet another promise to the Canadian people.   But in light of recent events(like Paris, Lebanon), there is a lot of pressure to commit to the fight on ISIS with several Allies ramping up their commitments to the cause.  Can we make a decision?  Have we even got a real answer as to why the jets have to leave?

                                              

Our  Defence Minister Hon. Harjit Sajjan is in Iraq this week speaking with officials and getting crucial information necessary to make a long and winded decision that we thought was already made back in October 2015. I hope he is asking hard questions because Canadian want answers.  Now, the Liberal Government has retracted its position on removing the CF-18 jets right away and the Defence Minister has even pushed the stay of our Boys in the air for a minimum of six months.  This also contradicts a second statement our Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion stated the Jets would be coming home by March 2016.

But I am concerned about another comment our Defence Minister stated the other day which seems to be kinda “swept under the CBC rug”.  On Power & Politics show on 18 December, 2015, they asked a great question to the Canadian Government: Should the Liberal Government rethink their position on pulling out the jets from Iraq?.  I will give a little background before I tell you what’s really troubling me.  In Afghanistan(where I was deployed and served 2 tours of combat) we never had Canadian Air support.  The tours I operated on all had front line FOB’s(forward operating bases) which were occupied by Canadian Infantrymen on the ground, we also had training detachment which helped train the indigenous ANA(Afghan National Army).  I can recall several of my brothers in arms in training roles being encountered, blown up, attacked, injured and killed just from being a training force in a war torn country.  My concern lies with this statement the Defence Minister himself told a reporter “I wish we had Canadian Air support in Afghanistan when I was there…”. I was there and I agree with the Defence Minister on this whole heartedly.  My question to Canadians, my military colleagues; and the Liberal Government is:  If we cancel our jets; we will just lost more air support.  With our Spec-ops team training Kurdish forces; won’t this just be like Afghanistan again if we bring in a training task force?

ISIS conducted several ambush like attacks on several fronts in Northern Iraq, all of which started with planned coordinated suicide bombing attacks. One of these attacks of 500 insurgents attacked a Training task force base that the Canadian troops were occupying.  Our Canadian Special Forces returned fire last week and our very own Canadian Jets flew into aid our troops in contact to fend off and destroy the enemy; leaving Canadians with  zero injured; but the ISIS insurgents were not so lucky with several killed in action.

If we transition our role into a training task force, will this just not leave our Men & women at arms defenceless; without Air support?  Are we really setting up our troops for success?  These terrorists in these countries have thrived on killing, beheading and suicide attacks as an everyday normal occurrence for years.  We must give our troops every opportunity to survive; and a fighting chance to come back home safely.  I have been there, and I say leave the jets. But I will just “Hurry up and wait” just like the rest of Canada to see what the outcome will be.

What do you want to see happen?

Nicco Keith-Charles Harper