ON TARGET: U.S. Is Out Of Control In Middle East

United States President Donald Trump

Photo: Chip Somodevilla

By Scott Taylor

Last Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the declaration that American troops will remain in Syria indefinitely. Tillerson’s remarks came on the heels of the recently announced defeat of Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) evildoers in both Iraq and Syria.

The reason given for U.S. soldiers remaining in Syria was not limited to the prevention of another Daesh movement; these troops are admittedly staying in order to counter the power of both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran. Of course, the buzzwords used by the U.S. State Department are that their combat soldiers will be used to bring “stability” and “security” to the region.

The sad fact is that no one even thought to question Tillerson as to just what the hell American soldiers are doing in Syria in the first place, and under what legal authority were they deployed?

There was never a declaration of war against Assad’s Syrian regime, even though from the outset of the uprising in the spring of 2011 the U.S. wholeheartedly sided with the anti-Assad rebels. In fact, the U.S. poured in weapons and advisors to assist the so-called ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels until it was revealed that they weren’t so moderate after all.

The U.S.-funded Syrian opposition leadership debated policies in Istanbul cafés while the actual Syrian rebels battled Assad’s loyalists in the country’s urban centres. It did not take long for these rebel groups’ true Islamic extremist nature to be revealed, and in 2014 they emerged as the Daesh scourge. As this Sunni Muslim faction poured out of Syrian bases and captured large swaths of central Iraq in the summer of 2014, the U.S. was compelled to rush military assistance back into Iraq to prop up the impotent regime in Baghdad.

Once they were back in the neighbourhood, the U.S. forces helping to battle Daesh in Iraq took the opportunity to take that fight across the Syrian border to battle Daesh there as well. Now, since Daesh was technically fighting Assad in Syria, any U.S. military operations against Daesh rebels would have indirectly assisted the embattled Syrian president. However, unlike the Russian and Iranian militaries that were invited into Syria by the recognized official government in Damascus, the U.S. simply authorized its troops to start killing people in a foreign civil war. All in the name of security and stability. And now they say they will stay in Syria indefinitely as they have learned their lesson of premature withdrawal from the fiasco that befell Iraq after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces in 2011.

For the record, the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq in 2003 on the false claim of self-defence from a fictional arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never possessed. During the eight-year American occupation of Iraq, that country was plunged into an orgy of interfactional bloodletting that the American military proved powerless to curtail.

The Daesh onslaught in 2014 into Iraq’s Sunni Triangle was not an isolated operation, but simply a continuation of the perpetual cycle of violence that the U.S. started with their illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Now their plan is to remain in northern Syria’s Kurdish separatist region, which has successfully freed itself from Assad’s authority. It is America’s stated intention to create a 30,000-strong unified Kurdish security force from the various splinter groups and factions that have been fighting against a variety of foes in the multifaceted Syrian civil war for the past seven years.

This sounds good in theory, but many of those Kurdish fighters have links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the notorious terrorist organization that has been active for decades just across the Syrian-Turkish border. Naturally, Turkey has immediately decried the plan to create a Kurdish military force on its border while Turkish security forces are actively engaging PKK fighters in the eastern Kurdish-majority region of Turkey.

If that is Tillerson’s recipe for stability and security, I would hate to see what he could concoct if his objective was to sow chaos and reap violence.

ON TARGET: Sometimes Trump Is Right & The News Is Fake

United States President Donald Trump

By Scott Taylor

Whenever U.S. President Donald Trump hears facts and figures that he does not agree with, he simply dismisses them with his catch-all phrase “fake news.” This of course only serves to delight both the mainstream media and late night talk show hosts who have made a virtual industry out of harpooning Trump for his childlike capacity for self-delusion.

However, as much as we might want The Donald to be wrong about all things all the time, the truth is that Western media does pump out an incredible stream of fake news items in what used to be correctly labelled as propaganda.

In recent years we have seen a ferocious rekindling of the former Cold War, with Western media trying their level best to portray Russian President Vladimir Putin as an evil mastermind bent on nothing less than world domination.

It is for the very purpose of thwarting Russian aggression that we are told it is necessary for Canada to deploy 450 combat soldiers into Latvia.

Similarly, when we now deploy our Royal Canadian Navy frigates on routine missions alongside our NATO allies in the Mediterranean, we are doing so as part of the ongoing Operation Reassurance. In case any of you missed the obvious, that would be as in we are somehow reassuring Western Europe that we are containing Russian aggression.

Western leaders, military tub-thumpers and media cheerleaders have repeated the concept of Russian expansionism so often that it has now simply become an unquestioned fact.

The cornerstone of this argument stems from Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea and their ongoing meddling in what remains essentially a civil war in Ukraine.

So if looked at in strict isolation, power-mad Putin gobbled up a strategic piece of geography on the Black Sea and he is supporting pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway Ukrainian territories along his own border. Sounds pretty evil.

Now, ask yourself what steps the U.S. would take if a similar situation involved them and one of their overseas bases?

The Crimea is the main naval base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia had secured long-term leases for this territory from Ukraine.

Following the Western-supported overthrow of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, the Kremlin was taking no chances on a new Kiev regime revoking that lease, so they annexed it. However, they did conduct a referendum first and the latest polls show an 80 per cent approval rating among Crimea residents who still approve of Russia’s annexation.

As for interfering in the Ukraine civil war, if Putin is wrong for supporting the pro-Russian faction — and he is — then we in the West are equally at fault for pouring in military assistance to the current Kiev regime.

For the record, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko’s current approval rating has been compared to milk because it presently sits at just 2 per cent. If the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens do not support Poroshenko’s corrupt cabal of comic-opera oligarchs, then why are Canada and the U.S. rushing to send them military aid?

One of the big announcements over the Christmas holidays was the fact that the U.S. will now start shipping sophisticated anti-tank weapons to prop up Poroshenko’s regime.

This news was of course applauded by the usual chorus of anti-Russian Ukrainian hawks. Their rationale for welcoming these anti-tank missiles was the rather startling claim that Russia currently has more tanks in eastern Ukraine than NATO has in all of Europe. This claim went unchallenged and thus became yet another fact to support Russian expansionism theories.

Unfortunately, as scary as this scenario sounds, it simply is not true. A little fact finding from public sources puts the number of NATO main battle tanks (MTBs) in Europe — not including any U.S. armoured vehicles — at well over 7,000. The highest estimate of tanks within the pro-Russian rebel-held territory in Ukraine is around 680, not all of which are considered serviceable.

So not only is it not true that Russia has more tanks on disputed territory than all of NATO in Europe, that false claim was exaggerated by a full tenfold. To give an even clearer perspective, the Ukraine military loyal to the Kiev regime has apparently 2,700 tanks — or roughly a four-to-one advantage over the pro-Russian rebels.

Trump is not completely wrong. Sometimes news is fake.

ON TARGET: Let's Not Jump On The Iran Bandwagon

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

By Scott Taylor

The only thing that is clear about the recent outbreak of civil unrest in Iran is that absolutely nothing is clear. The absence of foreign media outlets, the government crackdown on social media and in the case of Canada and numerous other western countries, the suspension of all diplomatic ties has made Iran a virtual black hole of information.

The dribs and drabs of news that was reported in the west were often contradictory and almost entirely skewed through the self-delusional prism wherein we see complex foreign political equations through our own value system.

Initial reports claimed that the anti-government protests taking place in a multitude of Iranian cities were in response to rising food prices and a stalled economy. However in all of the shaky video footage of these demonstrations, the agitators appeared to be young men hurling rocks at police vehicles. Typically one would expect anger over food costs to be projected by a much more family-centric demographic, and throwing objects at security forces is not a clever tactic when trying to make your point peacefully.

Then came the bombshell report that these angry mobs were in fact chanting “Death to Khamenei!”

As Ayatollah Sayyid Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of the religious theocracy that rules Iran, the immediate conclusion jumped to by U.S. President Donald was that this is the beginning of the long awaited freedom revolution in Iran.

As fast as his thumbs could bang out the tweets, Trump professed his “respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government” and he pledged the Iranian protestors “great support from the United States.”

Trump’s immediate and wholehearted support for the Iranian protesters illustrates the presumption that if the U.S. administration despises the regime in Tehran, then any Iranian opposed to the ruling theocracy must hate them for the same reasons, and are therefore entitled to our full and unquestioned support.

This begs the question, have we learned nothing from the recent fiascos in Libya and Syria wherein we were equally quick to jump to the same false conclusion?

One of the key things to remember here is that the slogan of these freedom loving Iranian demonstrators is “Death to Khamenei!” They are not asking for lower taxes, increased freedom or greater representation from elected officials, they want the current leader dead.

When the uprising began in Libya in the spring of 2011, Canada was one of the leading western nations encouraging the rebels to overthrow President Moammar Gadhaffi. While Canadian officials talked of ‘regime change’ the multi-factional Libyan rebel forces openly and bloodthirstily called for the death of the Libyan leader.

On October 20, 2011, with the assistance of the NATO air armada and Special Forces advisors, the Libyan rebels captured Gadhaffi alive outside of his last stronghold of Sirte. The mob then proceeded to beat Gadhaffi to death.

As history has unfolded, we now realize that in our eagerness to overthrow one Gadhaffi, we threw our support behind a hundred murderous scoundrels who have since plunged that once prosperous North African nation into a failed state awash in violent anarchy. One clue as to the true nature of the Libyan ‘freedom fighters’ should have been their unrepentant bloodlust.

In 2012, Canada was still backing the rebels in the Syrian uprising and vowing that embattled President Bashar al Assad ‘must go!’ By that point in the conflict it was already widely understood that the anti-Assad forces in Syria were Islamic extremists groups with links to al-Qaeda, and eventually Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL).

They too were not calling for the simple ouster of Assad and the implementation of democratic reforms, they were instead calling for Assad’s death and promising to enforce Sharia law.

In Canada people frequently take to their streets to express their displeasure with the government of the day, but I have yet to ever see any demonstrators calling for the death of our Prime Minister. Even in the U.S. where politics have become extremely polarized and divisive, no one is calling for the death of Donald Trump.

If those disgruntled Iranians think the key to democratic reform is the murder of the incumbent leaders, then I suggest they are reading the wrong handbook.

ON TARGET: Daesh Fighters Are not All Terrorists

Daesh Fighters

Corbis/Medyan Dairieh

By Scott Taylor

Now that Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) forces have been all but completely defeated in Syria and Iraq, fears have risen in the West as to what will happen to all those foreign fighters who took up arms to assist the Daesh evildoers.

With their self-proclaimed caliphate having been pounded into a mound of rubble by the U.S.-led allied air force, it is wildly feared that the foreign Daesh volunteers will return to their native or adopted Western countries wherein they will continue to wage a deadly campaign of terrorism.

Canadian authorities estimate that there are as many as 250 individuals connected to Daesh who also have some form of official link to Canada. It is believed that, of that number, roughly 60 Daesh-affiliated individuals have already returned to Canadian soil over the past two years.

Fanning the flames of fear has been the Conservative Party with its claims that the Trudeau Liberals are soft on terrorists and, as a result, we are all in mortal danger. According to the Conservatives, dozens of Daesh already walk among us, hundreds more are poised to return to Canada, and all Justin Trudeau can do is make available counselling to reform these would-be evildoers.

At the root of their argument is Trudeau’s statement that “we have methods of de-emphasizing or de-programming people who want to do harm to our society.” Taken in isolation, Trudeau’s words do sound very naïve particularly when one is talking about former members of Daesh.

However, Trudeau also mentioned the more practical steps being taken by Canadian security forces regarding these individuals, which include increased surveillance, the issuing of peace bonds, and the revoking of passports.

These measures are still not harsh enough to placate the truly frightened tub-thumpers who herald British Secretary of Defence Gavin Williamson’s directive to “kill British ISIS fighters.” Without offering up any specific legal jurisdiction, which would authorize such extrajudicial executions, Williamson vowed to hunt down those Britons who left the UK to fight for Daesh.

Critics were quick to point out that Williamson’s tough guy comments are far easier said than done once you factor in the complex legal ramifications of such assassinations, but his rhetoric proved to be a widely popular sentiment in both the UK and Canada.

Part of this phenomenon can be attributed to the wildly successful PR machine of Daesh itself. In the early days of 2014, when Daesh first burst onto the scene in Syria and Iraq, its leaders were able to magnify the group’s evilness through widespread distributions of videos on the Internet. Mass beheadings, deaths by fire and threats to come and kill us in our beds, all professionally edited for maximum drama, turned the spectre of Daesh into something far larger than life. They became the epitome of terrorism, in that the infinitesimally tiny threat they posed to us in the West became an irrational source of fear. Daesh became the fictional bogeyman.

Western media played into Daesh’s hands by labelling everything they did as terrorism, which in turn made every member of Daesh a terrorist. The fact is that as Daesh fought to establish and then defend its self-proclaimed caliphate, its members fought as conventional military forces: they used conventional weapons such as small arms, military vehicles and artillery, and they fought from clearly identified defensive positions. They may have fought with fanatical resistance, but in terms of training and equipment, they were at best a third-rate guerrilla army.

Those Canadians and other Western volunteers who misguidedly chose to support Daesh’s skewered Islamic teachings would not have been trained to become some sort of super terrorists; they would have instead been given rudimentary training in basic infantry weapons and tactics.

Their crime is to have violated Canada’s 1937 Foreign Enlistment Act, which prohibits Canadian citizens from volunteering to fight in foreign wars against friendly nations.

To let our misplaced fear of Daesh cloud our judgment to the point that we would condone automatic death sentences for all these individuals only serves to illustrate just how effective the Daesh terrorism campaign has been.

ON TARGET: Canada's Defence Planning Is Adrift

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with Canadian troops

By Scott Taylor

As 2017 comes to an end and we plunge forward into a brand new calendar year, it is a good time to take stock of just where Canada sits in terms of international military commitments.

From 2002 until 2014, the sole focus of the Canadian military was the mission in Afghanistan. That failed intervention ate up a fortune in terms of human and equipment resources, propping up a corrupt, despotic regime in Kabul. However, the very longevity of that campaign coupled with the fact that there was never any hope to achieve an actual ‘victory’ made things extremely simple for those planning our military operations.

We simply trained and equipped battle group after endless battle group to deploy into Kandahar to continue waging the counterinsurgency that never ends. Hell, we even built a full-scale mock Kandahar training area at CFB Wainwright, complete with actual Afghan actors, to prepare our soldiers prior to every deployment.

However, with the termination of the Afghan mission, that sense of focus has been lost.

The appearance of the Daesh (aka ISIS) scourge in Iraq in 2014 created a new bogeyman on the scene and Canadians were supportive of the Harper Conservative government’s decision to send in some fighter jets and a handful of special forces trainers to help battle the Islamic extremist evildoers.

That same year saw the onset of the political crisis in Ukraine, which resulted in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Crimea. The Harper government became one of the most strident anti-Russian voices among the NATO alliance and to demonstrate Canada’s resolve, a number of token military assets were committed to NATO’s collective Operation Reassurance in Eastern Europe.

When the Trudeau Liberals came to power in 2015, they pledged to get Canada out of shooting wars and to make Canadian peacekeeping great again.

That all sounded good, but it proved to be far easier said than done. Trudeau did finally withdraw Canada’s CF-18 fighter planes from the anti-Daesh mission in Iraq, but to appease our U.S. allies he also agreed to boost the number of Canadian Special Operations Forces trainers to 200. We also agreed to provide a 50-person field hospital to treat those wounded in the fight against Daesh.

This past June, Canada took the bizarre step of announcing a further two-year extension to our anti-Daesh commitment in Iraq. At the time of the extension announcement, Daesh diehards were fighting a last-stand battle in the city of Mosul, one of their final strongholds in Iraq.

By August, Mosul had been liberated, and the war in Iraq moved into a whole new phase. Those Kurdish fighters that our soldiers had been training to battle Daesh began fighting the Iraqi security forces that Canada’s foreign policy purports to support.

As a result, since late October Canada’s ‘advise and assist’ role has been suspended. That’s right, we currently have over 200 of the best Special Operations Forces soldiers in the world sitting idle on the edge of a civil war, without a clearly defined role, until the arbitrarily announced deadline for withdrawal of March 31, 2019.

We are also spending $134-million annually to maintain 450 Canadian soldiers in Latvia to deter a possible Russian invasion. While no one in their right mind actually believes Russia would invade the Baltic states, Article 5 of the NATO charter makes the entire deployment of Canadian troops a needless expense and a dangerous provocation. As full members of NATO, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are guaranteed the collective defence of the NATO alliance regardless of whether we have soldiers on the ground or not.

As for the long-awaited Liberal promise to return to UN peacekeeping, this amounted to a lot of sizzle but no steak. The mid-November announcement of Canada’s new peacekeeping policy named no specific mission or troop numbers, simply a few planes here, a couple of helicopters there.

We also pledged to use our long-dormant peacekeeping expertise to train the militaries of other countries prior to deploying their soldiers into harm’s way, and we set up a $15-million trust fund to act as incentive for other countries to send their female peacekeepers into global hotspots.

Not exactly a classic case of leadership by example.

ON TARGET: Canada’s Warmongering In Ukraine Is Dangerous

Chrystia Freehand - Kiev’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa

By Scott Taylor

On December 13 Canada quietly undertook the decision to include Ukraine in our Automatic Firearms Country Control List.

With all the news cycles focussing on Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the ongoing nuclear sabre-rattling between the U.S. and North Korea, this seemingly minor change in Canada’s legislation made barely a ripple on the domestic media front.

The few stories that did appear to have put a very positive spin on things with virtually no context as to what this policy revision will actually mean. In a nutshell, Canada is now authorizing the provision of lethal military aid to Ukraine. One CBC article heralded this as a good-for-business saga under the title “Canada arms makers get OK to sell to Ukraine.”

In Kiev, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko hailed Canada’s decision and welcomed the promise of providing him with additional weaponry. What Poroshenko loves most about Canada’s assistance is the fact that we are giving him and the Kiev regime he represents unconditional support.

This is not the case with those spoilsport Americans who are dangling a whopping $500-million worth of weaponry under Poroshenko’s nose. For some crazy reason, the Pentagon wants to see progress made towards curbing the Ukrainian military’s rampant corruption before they simply hand over a massive arsenal of modern weaponry.

As for Canada’s European NATO allies, despite all of the anti-Russian hype and propaganda centred on the crisis in Ukraine, none of them are following our lead and pouring more weaponry into the region. This is easily understood as no matter where one stands on the issues, this conflict is in their backyard and it behooves no one to reignite what is presently a frozen civil war.

The spin that Canada has put on this provision of lethal aid is that we will be supporting Ukraine with “defensive weapons.” It’s time to call ‘bullshit’ on the term ‘defensive weapon.’ A machine gun is a machine gun and a rocket launcher is a rocket launcher. Period.

There are presently two self-proclaimed, pro-Russian breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — that are held by the rebels. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has made it abundantly clear that Canada regards these illegitimate rebel territories to be in violation of Ukrainian territorial sovereignty.

Therefore, should Poroshenko use the Canadian-provided “defensive weapons” to launch an offensive against Donetsk and Luhansk, he would still be ‘defending’ Ukrainian territory.

Freeland’s partisan fervour in support of Ukraine in this crisis should be tempered with the fact that Poroshenko and his Kiev cabal presently have just a two per cent popular approval rating. Factoring in a minimal margin of polling error, that amounts to about zero, yet Freeland is giving him a 100 per cent vote of confidence, and throwing in an arsenal of deadly weapons to help keep this corrupt oligarch in power.

Since the outset of the military clashes and unrest in Ukraine in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been labelled by the Western media as an evil provocateur, fighting a proxy war that victimizes Ukrainians. His alleged crimes are the provision of weaponry and instructors into eastern Ukraine to assist the rebel forces.

The question begs: If Putin is guilty of interfering in a foreign civil war, how can Canada not be just as guilty for doing exactly the same thing, albeit for the other side? Not that long ago we prided ourselves as being the world’s peacekeepers, and now we are actually in violation of the internationally brokered Minsk II treaty which prohibits the military escalation in the frozen Ukraine conflict.

Freeland is rushing in where even Donald Trump fears to tread. That is scary.

ON TARGET: Canada Bears A Share Of Responsibility For Ukraine's Comic-Opera Hijinks

Mikheil Saakashvili

KOMMERSANT PHOTO

By Scott Taylor

Last Tuesday there was a bizarre incident in the streets of Kiev. Ukrainian security forces had descended on an apartment building with the intent of arresting Mikheil Saakashvili on charges of having taken money with the intent of destabilizing Ukraine.

Rather than submit quietly to authorities, Saakashvili took to the roof of his eight-storey apartment block and threatened to jump. Eventually, the police were able to forcibly bundle the defiant Saakashvili into a van, but by that time thousands of protestors had arrived to block the street.

After an hour-long violent standoff between riot police and Saakashvili’s supporters, the prisoner was released from the van and herded through the crowd.

Not content with simply having secured his temporary freedom, this chap Saakashvili then proceeded to lead the crowd to the Ukraine parliament buildings where he gave an impassioned speech. He called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko a “traitor to Ukraine” and accused him of being “the head of an organized crime ring.”

As for the police trying to arrest him, Saakashvili denounced this as the Kiev regime “trying to get rid of a loud voice telling them they are thieves.”

The crazy part about all of this is that Saakashvili is the former president of neighbouring Georgia, and a former close friend and ally of Poroshenko. The allegations levelled by Saakashvili against Poroshenko are not some Russian media ‘fake news’ story, but rather insight from someone who was, until recently, part of the Kiev regime’s inner circle.

Educated in the U.S., Saakashvili was America’s strongest ally in the Caucasus when he ruled Georgia from 2003 until 2013. He was elected on an anti-corruption platform, but his popularity waned as his methods became increasingly authoritarian.

Saakashvili’s failed military operation against the breakaway territory of South Ossetia in 2008 resulted in Russian intervention and a huge setback for the Georgian armed forces.

By the time he lost the 2013 parliamentary elections, Saakashvili was himself facing charges of corruption.

Opportunity for resurrection soon knocked when unrest unfolded with the December 2013 Maidan Square protests in Kiev. With the United States’ blessing, Saakashvili became an ardent supporter of the anti-Russian movement, which eventually ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

In 2015, Poroshenko rewarded Saakashvili by appointing him as the governor of Odessa. To assume the post Saakashvili had to become a Ukrainian citizen, which in turn meant renouncing his Georgian citizenship as his home country does not allow dual citizenship.

It was a bit of a no-brainer choice for Saakashvili, as any return to Georgia will see him arrested on the outstanding corruption charges. However, by the end of 2016, Saakashvili made a bold statement by resigning his post as governor. He publicly blamed Poroshenko for the continued corruption in Ukraine and threatened to create his own opposition political party.

While Saakashvili was back in the U.S. earlier this year, Poroshenko returned Saakashvili’s favour by simply issuing a presidential decree revoking the ex-governor’s Ukrainian citizenship.

Despite now being publicly stateless, Saakashvili made a grand — albeit illegal — re-entry into Ukraine this past September with the help of a crowd of supporters.

Less than three months later in another comic opera drama, Ukrainian crowds have now once again intervened to secure Saakashvili’s freedom.

Canada has played a role in the Ukraine crisis from the outset when Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird marched arm in arm with protestors in Maidan Square. Since February 2014, we have sunk millions of dollars into not only initiatives aimed at democratic reforms, but also military training of the Ukraine military forces used to prop up this Kiev regime.

At present, Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, herself being of Ukrainian descent, continues to offer Canada’s 100 per cent carte blanche support to the government of Ukraine.

While Freeland purports to support the people of Ukraine, it must be noted that Poroshenko presently has just a two per cent approval rating; allowing for a margin of error, this equates to zero. Then there is Saakashvili, who is presenting himself as his adopted country’s anti-corruption saviour, while unable to return to his own country where he is himself wanted for corruption.

And somehow this is all Russian President Putin’s fault?

ON TARGET: Canada Does Not Share Common Values With Corrupt Kosovo Regime

Hashim Thaci (left) circa 1999, celebrating NATO’s victory in Kosovo

By Scott Taylor

Last Tuesday there was a story in the Toronto Star wherein Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci gave a warning to Parliament during his visit to Ottawa that Russian meddling in world affairs will have consequences for Canada.

It was Thaci’s assertion that Russia has been spreading “fake news” in an attempt to depict Kosovo as a failed state.

In a massive leap of logic, Thaci claimed that “by attacking [our shared] principles and values, [the Russians] are attacking Canada as well.”

As is all too often the case, the media coverage of Thaci’s “blame Russia, praise Canada” comments were stated without providing any context as to the man uttering them, or the failed state he represents.

Simply put, Hashim Thaci is a career criminal and a ruthless thug. Back in 1993, at the age of 25, Thaci became a member of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at that time was listed by the CIA as a terrorist organization.

Thaci’s self-given nickname was “Snake” and he was responsible for trafficking drugs and weapons for the KLA. In 1997, he was convicted in absentia for committing acts of terrorism and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

However, in 1998, as KLA Albanian separatist forces were openly waging an insurgency against Yugoslav security forces, the U.S. State Department had a change of heart. The former terrorist organization KLA suddenly became the freedom fighter KLA, and Thaci was propelled into the unlikely role of statesman.

In March 1999, NATO forces, including Canada, intervened in Kosovo on the side of the KLA separatists, waging a 78-day bombing campaign to force a Yugoslav capitulation.

Thaci and his fellow KLA compatriots, also ruthless thugs, emerged as the dominant political force in post-war Kosovo. Elected as prime minister in 2007, Thaci announced a unilateral declaration of independence on February 17, 2008.

Despite the fact that the U.S. immediately recognized this new state and heavily pressured countries such as Canada to do likewise, Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council continues to prevent Kosovo’s official membership and recognition. Likewise, Kosovo has been blocked from joining both NATO and the European Union by member states that have concerns about separatist movements within their own countries.

For Thaci to blame his fledging state’s woes entirely on Russian “fake news” takes the term “fake news” to a new low.

The German Intelligence Agency BND conducted a recent investigation into Thaci and his regime and concluded that “the key players (including Thaci) are involved in inter-linkages between politics, business, and organized crime structures in Kosovo.” In other words, they are openly running a narco-criminal enterprise.

Another report prepared for the Council of Europe implicated former KLA commanders of serious human rights abuses. The most serious allegations against Thaci’s cronies included drug trafficking and the hideous crime of human organ trafficking. Innocent victims — both ethnic Serbian and Albanians — were allegedly executed for the purpose of harvesting their organs for sale on the black market.

As for Thaci blaming the Russians for circulating fake news about the current economic situation in Kosovo, the non-fake facts speak for themselves.

Kosovo is presently the second poorest state in Europe, sitting just ahead of impoverished Moldova. Its 2016 GDP per capita is merely $10,000 (US) compared to Canada’s $46,400 (US). Overall unemployment is over 33 per cent, with youth unemployment sitting at 60 per cent. Since the declaration of independence in 2008, tens of thousands of Albanian Kosovars have joined the ranks of migrants flowing into Western Europe.

These numbers are not from Russian media sources, but rather the CIA World Factbook.

Canada and the rest of NATO failed the Albanian Kosovars when they intervened militarily in 1999 to liberate them from Yugoslav authority, only to leave them in the hands of criminals like Thaci and his KLA henchmen.

To bring Thaci to Ottawa, forgive him his past and present sins, and then trumpet his anti-Russia rhetoric as sage advice is folly in the extreme. For Thaci to suggest that his values and those of his corrupt Kosovar regime are the same as Canadian values is an insult to Canada.

ON TARGET: Corrupt Afghan Regime Does Not Deserve Any More Military Support From Canada

Afghanistan’s Vice President, Abdul Rashid Dostum (left) faces multiple allegations of sodomizing his political rivals.

By Scott Taylor

At the recent Halifax International Security Forum (HISF), Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah echoed previous calls from NATO and the U.S. for Canada to return militarily to the international mission in Afghanistan.

Abdullah lamented the fact that Canada, along with most contributing NATO nations, had withdrawn from combat operations in 2014. Since that juncture, the internationally trained, equipped, and paid for Afghan Security Forces have proven woefully inept at containing resurgent Taliban and Daesh (aka ISIS) forces.

The Afghan military’s steady reversals have forced U.S. President Donald Trump to increase American troop levels from 8,000 to 14,000 in a desperate attempt to simply hold the line. Trump has also authorized a far more aggressive policy towards the use of allied airstrikes, which have predictably increased the number of Afghan civilian casualties dramatically. Not exactly a successful recipe for winning over Afghan hearts and minds.

In addition to his presentation at the HISF, Abdullah told the CBC that he had personally met with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan to request Canada’s renewed support in providing military trainers. One has to hope that Abdullah’s request fell on deaf ears.

It is worth remembering that the international effort to equip and train the Afghan Security Forces to become self-sufficient began back in early 2002. Nearly 16 years and $70-billion (U.S.) later, hundreds of thousands of Afghan recruits have received weapons and training at the hands of some of the best soldiers in the world, and yet the Afghan National Army remains a demoralized rabble.

A recent U.S. report identified that the Afghan army lost over 5,000 personnel in the past year alone due to a combination of combat deaths, desertion and, in all too many cases, defection (with their weapons) to the Taliban. The Afghan National Police force lost another 4,000 recruits for the same reasons.

For Abdullah and Trump to conclude that the answer to this problem is to send in more Canadian troops to train more Afghan youths to become soldiers, is akin to that Three Stooges episode wherein the mentally challenged trio drill a hole in the bottom of their rowboat to let the water out.

If motivated for a cause they believe in, Afghans have demonstrated over the centuries that they are unconquerable. As the Soviets discovered during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, disillusioned Afghan conscripts on the other hand are virtually useless.

Over the past 16 years, NATO has yet to learn that even well-paid Afghan army volunteers — soldiers in Afghanistan make three times the salary of a high school teacher — their dubious motivation is to stay alive to cash their paycheque rather than wilfully die for a cause.

Ironically, Abdullah — the man begging for more foreign troops to prop up his hated regime — is very much a part of the reason that the Afghan military is so inept.

Abdullah’s title — Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan — was created when the 2014 presidential election failed to produce a verifiable result. Rather than admit their experiment with democracy had failed, and with Abdullah refusing to concede to his rival Ashraf Ghani, the U.S. brokered a power-sharing deal. Thus, Ghani became president and Abdullah got the title of CEO.

To placate Afghanistan’s Uzbek minority, controversial warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum was name first vice-president.

Over the years Dostum has been accused of numerous war crimes involving the execution of prisoners. However, he is currently in Turkey in temporary exile as a result of allegations that he tortured and sodomized Ahmad Ishchi, a provincial governor and political rival.

Seven of Dostum’s bodyguards were recently tried in absentia and found guilty of raping Ishchi. This is not something new for Dostum; when I last interviewed him in Kabul in 2013, he was under house arrest for having tortured and raped Akbar Bey, a Turkmen rival. That was during the election campaign, and despite his current exile, Dostum remains vice-president of Afghanistan.

Why would Canada even consider putting our soldiers back into harm’s way to train soldiers to prop up this corrupt regime?

ON TARGET: Trudeau’s Peacekeeping Strategy: Pay Other Nations To Send Their Women Into Harm’s Way

By Scott Taylor

Last Wednesday, the Trudeau government used the backdrop of the United Nations peacekeeping summit in Vancouver to make what amounted to a non-announcement on Canada’s future role as a peacekeeper.

This is something that Trudeau and the Liberals had campaigned hard for during the 2015 election. It was music to the Canadian public’s ears to hear that Canada was going to move away from contributing to U.S.-led military interventions and get back to the good old days of monitoring ceasefire lines in bright blue UN helmets.

Then the Liberals were swept into power and those promises to make Canada a great peacekeeper again suddenly weren’t so easy to implement. In August 2016, Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance told the media that the Canadian Army would soon be embarking on a peacekeeping mission to Africa.

This bombshell was supported by statements from Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan. The details announced were pretty specific as we were told this future mission would involve 600 soldiers, 150 police and cost as much as $400-million.

What was never decided was where exactly in Africa this expeditionary force would actually be deployed. In an almost comic opera farcical skit, poor old Sajjan and a number of top military officers flew around the world — not just Africa — seeking a viable role in any one of the ongoing UN peacekeeping missions.

Fifteen months later, we found out that the answer to that question is ‘none of the above.’ Instead, Canadians were told that we will be contributing a grab bag of expertise and equipment to various other nations that will actually conduct the dangerous operations in actual war zones.

Yes indeed Canada has a fleet of C-17 Globemaster III strategic airlift transport planes and 15 brand new heavy-lift Chinook helicopters now available to fly other countries’ troops into conflict zones and keep them supplied.

However, when it comes to us offering up training to other nations’ peacekeepers prior to them deploying into theatre, that begins to stretch credulity just a little bit.

Canada has not engaged in any large-scale UN missions since the conflict in the former Yugoslavia ended with the signing of the Dayton Accord in the summer of 1995. That would be before most new Canadian recruits were even born, and any veterans of those Balkan missions would now be well into the twilight of their military careers.

How exactly are we supposed to instruct others in something we have not practiced for over two decades?

Even more bizarre was the announcement of a special $15-million fund that will be used as an incentive to get other UN nations to contribute a higher percentage of females to peacekeeping missions.

This is all part of Canada’s new ‘feminist’ foreign policy, and it is also something which the UN has been paying lip service to for quite some time. In fact, to shed some light on the dearth of women deployed by the UN to ceasefire lines, celebrity actress Angelina Jolie personally addressed the summit in Vancouver.

Of the 13,000 UN police officers currently deployed, only seven per cent of that force are women, and when it comes to the 87,000 combat soldiers wearing blue helmets, a mere two per cent are female.

The UN has long sought to double those percentages, but over the past 21 years virtually no progress has been made to achieve that goal.

So it will now be Canada to the rescue with a big tempting pot of money meant to encourage other countries to send a higher percentage of their own women into harm’s way.

The ratio of women in the Canadian Armed Forces currently stands at 15 per cent and Canada prides itself on having one of the highest female-to-male ratios of any military in the world.

I have frequently stated that, in my opinion, Canadian soldiers are not among the best in the world, they are the best in the world. Why then are we not actually leading by example and demonstrating to the world what a difference professional female peacekeepers could bring to a UN mission if deployed in sufficient numbers?

Instead we are using our nation’s wealth to encourage more impoverished countries to deploy far less capable female soldiers into harm’s way in order to advance the Trudeau Liberals’ domestic feminist agenda.

ON TARGET: Ukraine Crisis: Backing A Corrupt Kiev Regime Does Not Benefit Ukrainian People

President Petro Poroshenko

By Scott Taylor

Last week there were all sorts of rumblings in Ottawa that Canada is considering a proposal to implement a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

First it was a statement from Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland stating that the Liberal government “has been at the heart of international efforts to support Ukraine, and we are working hard to ensure any peacekeeping effort guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Then it was the turn of Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, who declared that, if he were prime minister, he would support the peacekeeping proposal from Ukraine’s government. “This mission would allow Ukraine to restore control over its eastern border with Russia, ensuring the Russian military stays within its own country, and out of Ukraine’s,” stated Scheer.

It is clear from Freeland’s and Scheer’s statements that either they know nothing about peacekeeping or they know nothing about the current conflict in Ukraine.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan only added to the collective ignorance when he confirmed Canada is considering a peacekeeping proposal from Kiev, which would “respect Ukraine’s original borders.”

There is no way that the pro-Russian rebels in the breakaway Donbass region of Ukraine are simply going to surrender their hard-fought-for territory to a Canadian soldier in a blue helmet. Similarly, Canada officially recognizes the Crimea to be sovereign Ukraine territory, which would mean somehow expelling the Russian troops that annexed the region in 2014.

Defeating rebels in a civil war and starting a territorial war with Russia is not peacekeeping. Russia’s counterproposal — to have international peacekeeping troops patrol the current ceasefire lines between the rebels and Ukraine government forces in advance of demilitarizing the area and conducting negotiations — seems to fit the traditional model of peacekeeping. Sajjan, however, has rejected this offer for the reason that it would “freeze” the conflict along the current lines.

Unless I missed something, I thought the idea of freezing the bloodshed was the whole rationale behind peacekeeping.

The whole premise is mute as long as Russia has a veto at the United Nations Security Council, and the timing of this discussion comes on the eve of the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Conference in Vancouver on November 14 and 15.

Trudeau’s Liberal government has not kept its 2015 election campaign promise to make Canada a great peacekeeper again, despite an August 2016 announcement of an imminent UN mission to somewhere in Africa.

As that deployment of 600 troops at a budgeted cost of $400-million never materialized, Canada’s current paltry commitment of just a few dozen peacekeepers on UN duty does not meet the minimum entry requirement for the upcoming defence ministers’ meeting.

That’s right folks, if we were not the host nation, we would not be allowed to attend the gathering in Vancouver. Which is what makes this bluster about a Ukraine peacekeeping mission so interesting.

Canada can claim it wants to participate in a robust mission to bring peace to Ukraine, but by adding the proviso that this means restoring all sovereign territory to Kiev’s control ensures a Russian veto. This of course will allow Canada to unleash a new wave of anti-Russian rhetoric while breathing a sigh of relief that we will not have to actually deploy troops.

The Canadian delegation can strut around at the Vancouver conference and look like we are fire-breathing peace activists prepared to put Putin in his place … if only he wouldn’t use his UN veto to thwart our plan.

For the approximately 1.4-million Ukrainian-Canadian voters, the Liberal government’s restated pledge to respect and recognize Ukraine’s original borders will be music to their ears.

For the long-suffering people of Ukraine, however, Canada’s blank-cheque approach to supporting the regime of President Petro Poroshenko must be greeted with incredulity. Under Poroshenko’s corrupt leadership Ukraine’s economy has failed to recover, and the president’s personal approval rating is at a mind-blowing two per cent.

Like Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Poroshenko is a billionaire oligarch and both countries rank 131st out of 176 nations in terms of corruption. That is where the similarity ends as Putin has an 81 per cent personal popularity rating and Russia’s economy — despite the international sanctions — continues to grow.

If Canada truly wanted to assist the Ukrainian people and not the despised regime that runs it, we would focus more on eradicating the rampant corruption in Kiev before trying to force more Ukrainians in a breakaway territory to submit to it.

ON TARGET: When Is A Terrorist Not A Terrorist

Syfullo Saipov

By Scott Taylor

In the wake of the Halloween day terror attack in New York City, we had the immediate media overreaction the minute it was gleaned that the perpetrator, Sayfullo Saipov, was inspired by none other than Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS).

U.S. President Donald Trump was at his twittering best as he denounced Saipov as a “degenerate animal” and he vowed a tenfold vengeance upon Daesh evildoers.

The fact that Saipov had immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan led Trump to tweet out his long-stated opposition to the United States’ diversity visa lottery program. It was through this lottery selection process that Saipov was admitted into the U.S. in 2010. Despite every indication Saipov became radicalized after he immigrated, The Donald insists that his ban on Muslim immigration is the only thing that will keep America safe again.

Stephen Paddock

As for Saipov’s connection to Daesh, well we know that he requested an ISIS flag to decorate the hospital room in which he is recovering from the gunshot wound he received when New York police ended his killing spree.

Then there is the claim made by Daesh in their own Al Naba newspaper wherein they describe Saipov as a “caliphate soldier.” That would of course be the same self-proclaimed caliphate that has now been reduced to a couple of hard-pressed pockets in Iraq and Syria. In fact, one has to wonder just how those last few fanatics can still have a newspaper in which to claim credit for Saipov’s rampage.

However, just in case there is any doubt, U.S. Homeland Security officials are telling us that, while Saipov received no direct training from Daesh, his methods were “straight out of the ISIS playbook.” That particular guide to terrorism is entitled “Just Terror Tactics” and was published late last year by Daesh evildoers.

So, just to quickly recap Saipov’s attack: he rented a truck at Home Depot and drove it down a crowded bicycle path, killing and injuring all that he could. In the truck he had a bag of knives for beheading people, but failed to grab it when he rolled the vehicle. Instead, he grabbed a pair of imitation handguns, which he brandished while shouting “Allah Akbar!” (God is great) until the NYPD shot him and took him into custody.

If U.S. Homeland Security is to be believed, then we can conclude that the Daesh handbook on terror attacks is not very sophisticated, and relies upon the perpetrator’s suicidal fanaticism.

The immediate response from New York City and State officials was that they would not give in to such acts of terrorism. This has become the common response to any terror-related incidents by both U.S. and Canadian officials.

It is of course a ridiculous statement as there is no alternative. We cannot surrender to a handful of zealots.

What we can do instead is let the terrorists alter the way in which we conduct our lives and that is exactly what U.S. officials have proposed in the wake of Saipov’s attack.

Transportation departments are tasked with installing barricades and additional safety measures to prevent future vehicular attacks. One cannot fathom how many sand trucks and concrete barriers it would take to make that even possible, not to mention the disruption that will cause to already congested city traffic.

On the flip side of all of this is the U.S. reaction to Stephen Paddock’s October 1 non-terrorist attack in Las Vegas.

Using a rental van, a bag of kitchen knives and two fake guns, Saipov was able to kill 8 and injure 11 innocent people. Using an arsenal of legally purchased assault rifles, non-terrorist Paddock killed 58 and caused injury to another 546 innocent concertgoers.

Saipov’s attack sparked an immediate demand from Trump to tighten immigration controls and federal officials have already ordered increased safety measures.

Paddock’s shooting rampage created 31 times the carnage, but there has not been a single change nor even a pledge to change America’s ridiculous gun laws.

ON TARGET: Canada’s Links To Ukraine’s NAZI Past Are Not ‘Fake News'; They’re Real!

14th SS  Galizien Division

By Scott Taylor

A story last week in the National Post revealed the disturbing fact that there are actually monuments in Canada that glorify Second World War Nazis. There is no denying the truth of these allegations as they were accompanied by photographs of two offending statues.

One is in Oakville, Ontario and it is dedicated to all those who served with the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division. The second, located in Edmonton, Alberta, honours Roman Shukhevych, the wartime leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

The original source of these revelations was a series of tweets from the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. This led to an immediate response from the Canadian Ukrainian community denouncing the Russians for attempting to incite divisiveness in Canada with “fake news.”

We saw a similar response back in March when it was first reported that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War. Instead of admitting that this was true, Freeland attempted to portray herself as a victim of Russian disinformation.

The problem with the simplistic ‘blame Russia’ excuse is that it does not change history.

Freeland’s grandfather was indeed a Nazi collaborator who, as the editor of a Ukrainian-language newspaper, published anti-Semitic rants and encouraged volunteers to join the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division. This is the same unit that is immortalized and honoured by the statue in Oakville.

Despite the chorus of Ukrainian apologists who claim otherwise, members of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division were no Boy Scouts. Notorious SS General Jurgen Stroop was one of the Division’s early instructors. Stroop is perhaps best known for his annihilation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

Following Stroop’s example, the Galizien Division was involved in the punitive destruction of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka in 1944. Men, women and children were executed in cold blood. One surviving witness described how children were killed by having their heads smashed against trees. The crime committed by the residents of Huta Pieniacka was that they had been harbouring Jews.

The gory details of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division’s atrocities are catalogued in the book Hitler’s Foreign Executioners: Europe’s Dirty Secrets, written by award-winning historian Christopher Hale.

Then there is the controversy about the true nature of Roman Shukhevych, the Ukrainian wartime leader who is presently immortalized with a statue in Edmonton. To many Ukrainians, Shukhevych is a hero who only fought alongside the Germans initially as a matter of practicality while in pursuit of an independent Ukraine. When the Nazi fortunes were reversed and the Soviets were again advancing into Ukrainian territory, Shukhevych did indeed turn the guns of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on his erstwhile German allies.

SS Leader Heinrich Himmler inspects the Galizien division 1944

However, there remains the sticky issue of Shukhevych’s role in the 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews in Lviv. At this juncture, Shukhevych was commanding a militia unit that he called the Nachtigall Battalion. Shukhevych’s band of eager volunteers, working alongside German military troops, was responsible for the murder of between 4,000 and 6,000 Jews.

Even if Shukhevych and his men later fought against the Germans, this cannot possibly exonerate him from his role in the Holocaust.

While the Canadian government may wish to show absolute solidarity with Ukraine during this current crisis with Russia, we cannot do so by rewriting history.

Freeland’s grandfather was a Nazi.

Shukhevych is a mass murderer and perpetrator of the Holocaust even if he later presented himself as a simple patriot.

The 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division was not a ‘national liberation army’ as Ukrainian apologists for the unit would have us believe. According to author Hale, “Both the formation and the conduct of the ‘Galizien’ reflect its origins in the German plan for mass murder.”

Selectively denying any aspect of the Holocaust is still denial.

It is not fake news if it is true, and the Russians couldn’t use the existence of Nazi monuments to embarrass Canada if such tributes did not actually exist. And they do.

ON TARGET: Current Mess In Libya: How Much Is Canada To Blame?

John Baird Minister of Foreign Affairs

By Scott Taylor

It has been six years since the NATO-supported Libyan uprising murdered President Moammar Gaddafi and toppled his regime. Canada was proud of the fact that the big boys – namely the UK, U.S. and France — had let us appear to be leading the charge against Libya.

Canada’s then Foreign Minister John Baird was the loudest among the chorus of NATO voices bellowing for regime change, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard was publically named as the allied force commander, our CF-18 fighter jets were among the first in operation in the skies above Libya, and the RCN frigate HMCS Charlottetown plied the Mediterranean coastline to enforce the UN arms embargo.

While it was never admitted at the time, the fact that members of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) marched in the November 24, 2011 victory parade on Parliament Hill would appear to confirm that we also had special forces boots on the ground during that conflict.

In addition to that parade, complete with a ceremonial flypast of fighter jets and helicopters, Canada also fast-tracked the Order of Canada process to bestow this honour on LGen Bouchard in recognition of his glorious victory in the desert.

That is an awful lot of glory for such a one-sided martial contest, which pitted the world’s most capable military alliance against a fourth-rate developing-world African security force. It was also a very premature exercise in self-congratulations.

It quickly became evident that what NATO achieved was not regime change — in the absence of a replacement administration, we plunged Libya into a state of violent anarchy.

The disparate militias that had fought together against Gaddafi loyalists refused to disarm and they immediately began fighting among each other.

A British parliamentary report into the Libya intervention was tabled last September and it was a scathing indictment of UK Prime Minister David Cameron. The report concluded that the collective intervention of the UK, France and the U.S. (no mention of Canada) resulted in Libya’s “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL (Islamic State) in North Africa.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama summed it up much more succinctly when he described the 2011 Libyan intervention as a “shitshow” and called it the low point in his foreign affairs legacy.

To be fair to Obama, Libya was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal pet project. Anyone doubting this need only watch the famous video clip of Clinton during her October 20, 2011 CBS television interview. At one point during the taping the Secretary of State learns that Gaddafi has just been murdered in the street by a rebel mob. She throws her head back, laughs and says triumphantly, “We came, we saw … he died,” followed by more unrestrained laughter. Laughing at news of a murder — any murder — is clinically sociopathic. But I digress.

Although Libya is not in the news much these days, there have been some significant developments in that war-ravaged country of late, not the least of which is the release of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi from captivity this past June.

Gaddafi’s second oldest son had been held prisoner by a militia group in the city of Zintan since his capture in the waning days of the civil war. Saif had always been seen as the heir to his father’s throne. Those familiar with the Libyan uprising of 2011 know that it was primarily an inter-tribal affair, aided and abetted by Islamic extremists and the might of NATO.

The six years of subsequent anarchy have left Libya a failed state, with a citizenry longing for stability. For this reason alone, Saif has already become a political force on the embattled Libyan landscape.

Last week he announced his intention to run in next year’s presidential election. With the backing of the Warfalla and Qadhadhfa tribes — Libya’s two most powerful tribes — and former loyalists of his father flocking to his banner, Saif has a strong shot at winning at the ballot box.

If that scenario does evolve, Canada will have to do some serious soul-searching into our own allegedly lead role in that disastrous 2011 intervention. It is never too late for us to follow Britain’s lead in conducting an extensive parliamentary review into how we could have gotten it so wrong in Libya. So wrong that it looks like Gaddafi’s son will get the last laugh.

Video of Hilary Clinton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM

ON TARGET: Is 'Victory' In Iraq Even Possible?

Destroyed city of Mosul

By Scott Taylor

With more than 800 Canadian troops presently deployed in what is still recognized internationally as Iraq, one would think that there would be a lot more news about the ominous developments in that war-ravaged country.

The problem is that, when Canadians first entered the fray back in 2014, the Harper government of the day had virtually no understanding of the complexity of the long-raging conflict in that region.

The Canadian public was coming fresh off a 12-year costly failure in the form of our doomed intervention in Afghanistan, but Harper was keen to get our troops back in action against Islamic extremists … somewhere, anywhere. Daesh’s sudden offensive out of Syria and into central Iraq was the perfect solution to the problem.

These evildoers were so, well, evil, that Canadians had no objection about sending our soldiers into harm’s way if it meant destroying these fanatical psychopaths.

To keep things politically saleable, Harper promised combat aircraft would bomb the bejeezus out of Daesh’s (aka ISIS or ISIL) bulldozers and dump trucks from the safe altitude of 20,000 feet, and the initial 200 Canadian special forces troops deployed on the ground would only be used in a training role, which they misguidingly labelled ‘Advise and Assist.’

The mainstream media, like old fire station horses hearing the alarm bell, rushed into action to breathlessly sell this new mission to the Canadian public. In those heady early days, no one was asking questions such as, Just who are our soldiers fighting for? What will final victory look like in Iraq? Nobody seemed to even care.

The focus was on killing those bad guys known as Daesh.

No one wanted to acknowledge that this meant our soldiers were on the same side as President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces that were also battling Daesh in Syria. Canada had cut all ties with Assad in 2011 and John Baird, the Foreign Affairs minister of the day, had bellowed, “Assad must go!”

By sharing the same enemy in Daesh, this meant that Canada was also aligned with Assad’s Hezbollah and Iranian allies.

Closer to home in Iraq itself, Canada was in direct military support of Iranian-mentored Iraqi Shiite Arab militias with a notorious reputation for committing atrocities against Sunni Arabs.

Minister Baird and the Harper government had also cut off all diplomatic ties with the evil Iranian regime. Even bad old Russia was under sanctions for annexing the Crimea from the Ukraine. But in the skies above Iraq, the Russian air force flew alongside the brave combat pilots of the RCAF.

All very confusing, but as long as Daesh remained a common threat then this polyglot collection of disparate factions could put aside their vast differences in pursuit of a single goal.

That objective has now been almost fully realized, as Daesh has been driven back into just a few tiny strongholds in both Syria and Iraq. Now it is time for that unholy alliance to turn on itself.

When the Trudeau Liberals were elected in 2015, they kept their campaign promise to bring home the CF-18 combat planes from the Iraq mission. However, public sentiment remained supportive of a continued role against Daesh, so Trudeau bolstered the number of special forces trainers and everyone turned a blind eye to the fact that ‘Advise and Assist’ was a joke. Our soldiers were in direct combat alongside the Kurdish militia they were sent to train.

This is where things get a little tricky. The Kurds our soldiers trained and fought for have never lied about their ultimate goal of achieving an independent state. Against the wishes of the U.S. and western allies, including Canada whose official policy supports a unified Iraq, the Kurds held a successful referendum on September 25 that delivered an overwhelming victory for the separatists. As everyone predicted, this has led to negative responses from neighbouring Turkey, Syria, and Iran, all of them dealing with their own Kurdish separatist factions.

More importantly, it has led to a full-scale showdown between the Baghdad regime’s military — the one Canada purports to support — and the Kurdish militia our soldiers have spent three years training.

On June 29 Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that Canada would extend the military mission in Iraq by two more years. What is still not clear, especially as civil war between these factions appears imminent, is who exactly our soldiers will be assisting for the next two years. And even more unclear is what we think eventual victory will look like.

ON TARGET: Afghanistan: Where Did We Go Wrong?

By Scott Taylor

There were news stories out of Afghanistan last week detailing how the U.S. is expanding and entrenching the so-called ‘Green Zone’ in the centre of Kabul. 

An ambitious two-year construction project will bring together currently isolated outlying facilities into one massive protected zone. In addition to U.S. military and diplomatic posts, the ‘new and improved’ Green Zone will now house all embassies and most of the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This full-scale investment in building an even stronger set of fortifications reveals that, while the U.S. obviously intends to remain in Afghanistan for decades to come, it no longer has any false hope that it will eventually win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. 

The corrupt and demoralized Afghan Security Forces have proven woefully inept at containing the Taliban and other active insurgent groups which now include Daesh (aka ISIS).

Canada cut its losses back in 2014 when it ended a 12-year military commitment to the mission in Afghanistan. However, that mission came at a considerable cost, with 158 soldiers killed, another 2,000 wounded or injured physically, and an estimated 4,000 suffering the unseen mental wounds known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Worse still is the fact that Canada’s withdrawal from the mission did not stop the suffering for many of our veterans. An estimated 130 soldiers have taken their own lives since returning from that war.

To their credit, last Thursday the Department of National Defence in conjunction with Veterans Affairs Canada announced a joint strategy to better track the mental health of veterans after they leave the military. While care and comfort for our suffering soldiers is a positive step, an even bigger gesture to demonstrate that veterans’ lives matter would be to start investigating just how we could have gotten Afghanistan so wrong for all that time?

When Canada jumped on the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force bandwagon in 2002, the plotline was that we would commit a 600-man battle group until the Afghan Security Forces were self-sufficient and Afghanistan staged national elections in 2004. In 2002 we were told that the hated Taliban had been deposed, Afghan women were liberated from their burqas, and the U.S. was bringing democracy to a fun-loving bunch of thankful Afghans. Who would not want to be part of that success story? 

Even once it became a shooting war in earnest and Canadian soldiers found themselves targeted and killed by fanatical insurgents, the media dropped the ball by taking on the role of unquestioning cheerleader instead of diligently reporting the truth. 

The regime of President Hamid Karzai was elected by an illiterate population that is ignorant of what democracy even means. However, it was glaringly apparent that this regime was composed of the same ruthless warlords who had driven suffering Afghans to support the Taliban. It was for this corrupt cabal – the most corrupt in the world — that Canadian soldiers fought and died. 

To keep Canadians on side with the war effort, Prime Minister Stephen Harper claimed that to question the mission was to question our soldiers. Others, like former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander, repeatedly claimed that we were one schoolhouse away from success, and he chastised the media for focussing on the negative. 

When Canada concluded its military commitment in early 2014, the apologists and tub-thumpers claimed that it was “too soon” to reflect on whether Canada’s expenditure of blood and gold was worth it. They still held out hope that Chris Alexander’s final schoolhouse would finally turn the tide in the war. 

Now, almost four years later, the U.S. is digging deeper bunkers instead of schools.

Last year Britain established the Iraq Inquiry under the direction of Sir John Chilcot. The results tabled last July savagely criticized UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for his decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. While Blair shrugged off the findings, the Chilcot report nonetheless mauled his reputation and shone some light into heretofore very dark corners. 

Canada should do the same sort of official examination of how we ended up sending our soldiers into a war they could not win; and one in which they should never have had to fight. Holding our politicians, diplomats and senior military accountable for the fiasco might go a long way to reassuring our soldiers that it won’t happen again.

ON TARGET: Canada Is No Longer A Peacekeeping Nation

The peacekeeping monument in Ottawa seems out of place now that were out of the peacekeeping game

By Scott Taylor

One of the persisting myths in Canada is that we are a nation of peacekeepers. Hell, we practically claim that former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson invented the concept of deploying neutral troops to enforce ceasefires between belligerents during the Suez Crisis in 1956.

A certain nostalgia exists for those days when Canada was front and centre around the globe, our troops wearing the distinctive blue berets and attempting to stop factions from killing each other.

It was this sentiment that Trudeau’s Liberals tapped into during the 2015 election campaign, when they promised a foreign policy that would make Canadian peacekeeping great again.

The problem is that, after two years in power, there has been no movement whatsoever towards fulfilling this promise. Ironically, this November Canada will be hosting a United Nations peacekeeping conference for international ministers of defence in Vancouver. What makes it ironic is the fact that, were we not the hosts of this event, our own Harjit Sajjan would find himself barred from entering.

That’s right folks. In order to attend this conference each of the national representatives must have a minimum level of skin in the game, and Canada’s paltry current contribution of a token handful of UN observers is not even close to the requirement.

To be fair, there has been talk — lots of very specific talk — followed up by absolutely zero action.

Last August, it was Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance who first teased the media with the notion of a peacekeeping mission. Hours later, via teleconference, MND Harjit Sajjan confirmed Vance’s cryptic comments and all signs pointed to the African continent.

More details soon followed with it being announced that the mission would involve 600 soldiers, 150 police officers and all for a budget of $450-million. However, this very specific force was never allocated to any particular mission. Fourteen months later, still no decision has been made regarding into which country they will be sent.

While Canada has gotten completely out of the peacekeeping game, we have continued to deploy our combat forces to global hot spots for the purpose of training foreign belligerents.

Instead of sending Canadian soldiers in to disarm, demilitarize and stabilize disputed territory, we are actually deploying our troops to train young men on how to better kill.

Between 2002 and 2014, during Canada’s military commitment to Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers trained and mentored tens of thousands of Afghan males — some as young as 16 — on how to handle weapons. These members of the Afghan Security Force have been tasked with propping up what remains arguably the most corrupt regime on the planet — the one the U.S. installed in Kabul. Not surprisingly, the demoralized cannon fodder that the Canadians trained continue to flounder in the face of the far more motivated Afghan insurgents.

Based on the self-professed ‘success’ of the Afghanistan training mission, Canada deployed special forces operatives into Iraq in October 2014 to ‘advise and assist’ Kurdish militia.

The Kurds are honest about their motivation in fighting against Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL), which remains the eventual creation of their own independent state. They are so open about this end goal that they wear the flag of Kurdistan, not Iraq, on their uniforms. Now, these Canadian-trained Kurds have pulled out of the fight against Daesh as they prepare to fight against Iraqi security forces in their quest to secede.

Neighbouring Turkey, Iran and Syria have all vowed to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdistan, as this will only embolden the Kurdish separatist movements in their own countries.

If Turkey, a NATO ally, does militarily intervene against the Kurds in northern Iraq, it will now be doing so against Canadian-trained Kurdish militia. The Iraqi central government, which Canada’s Global Affairs department purports to support, has also indicated it will mobilize its Shiite Arab militia to prevent Kurdish independence.

In other words, Canada has gotten as far away from peacekeeping as possible. Instead of curbing conflict, we are actively enabling it by creating legions of warriors in complex conflicts, whose ultimate objectives all too often do not match Canada’s desired end result. Training more soldiers to end wars is like drilling holes in the bottom of your rowboat to let the water out.

ON TARGET: Switching Sides In Iraq

Canadian special operations forces in Iraq

By Scott Taylor

Last week there was a brief news release from National Defence entitled “Canadian Armed Forces now Advising, Assisting Iraqis near Hawija.” It garnered little media attention as it seemed like a simple relocation of Canadian troops following the U.S.-led alliance’s successful capture of the city of Mosul earlier this summer.

Canadian soldiers are still battling Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) — albeit it is not officially called combat — but now we are taking the fight to them in their last stronghold in the town of Hawija.

The DND news release deliberately blurs the complexity of the Iraq conflict by generically stating that we are continuing to support “Iraqi Security Forces [ISF].”

This falsely implies that the ISF is one big happy family, when in fact it is an unholy alliance of diverse factions, each with their own very divergent objective in a post-Daesh Iraq.

The closest the news release comes to stating the truth is in one vague sentence: “The CAF has continued to shift its contribution to ISF elements involved in ridding other Iraqi centers of Daesh’s control.” What is not said is that by shifting our support between elements of the ISF, we are in fact switching sides prior to the next round of fighting in Iraq’s multi-sided civil war.

Since 2014, when they first deployed, Canadian special forces trainers have been advising, assisting and fighting alongside Kurdish peshmerga militia.

These Kurds have enjoyed absolute autonomy from Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. They call the region Kurdistan and have proudly flown the Kurdish flag over their cities and towns for the past 26 years.

The peshmerga also wear that bright red, white and green flag with a yellow sunburst on their camouflage uniforms even though such a bright patch defeats the purpose of wearing camouflage.

Instead of instructing the Kurds to remove the tactical hazards, Canadian soldiers must have thought they looked cool and our general officers misguidedly gave them official permission to wear the flag of Kurdistan on Canadian uniforms.

I say misguidedly because Kurdistan is not recognized as an independent state and Canada’s official foreign policy supports a unified post-Daesh Iraq under a central Baghdad authority. 

The future status of the Kurdish region is the battle line for the next round of clashes in this war-weary country.

In the upcoming fight against Daesh in Hawija, the Kurds have already opted out of the fighting, hence Canada’s ‘shift’ to other elements of the ISF.

Instead, the Kurds are digging in and preparing to repulse any other Iraqi factions from entering the territory that they presently control. That territory just happens to include the city of Kirkuk and the oilfields of Baba Gurgur.

This rich resource was seized by the Kurds back in 2014 as Daesh swarmed through central Iraq. While the ISF fled from Daesh, the Kurds took advantage of the chaos to push their peshmerga south to seize Kirkuk.

Those oil fields pump approximately 40 per cent of Iraq’s total output and are seen as the economic engine necessary to support an independent Kurdistan. The problem is that Kirkuk was never a Kurdish city. It has always been known throughout Iraq as a Turkmen centre with an Arab minority.

The Turkish-speaking Turkmen are Iraq’s third largest ethnic minority — behind Arabs and Kurds — but they rarely warrant even a passing reference in mainstream media reports.

Furthermore, Baghdad has made it clear that they will not simply relinquish such a vast economic resource to the Kurds.

Despite tremendous pressure from the Iraqi government (which rejects its legality), neighbouring Iran, Turkey and even the U.S., Kurdish Regional President Masood Bazarni is proceeding to stage his independence referendum on September 25, 2017.

While considered non-binding, a “yes” result is not in doubt. Now all that remains to be seen is just how much Kurdish independence will ignite within Iraq and how far it will extend into the Kurd-populated neighbouring countries of Iran, Turkey and Syria.

The Canadian soldiers were advised by the Americans last May to gently remove the flag of Kurdistan from their sleeves. However, we still have trainers advising, assisting and fighting alongside both the Kurds and the central Iraqi Security Forces.

Before they end up fighting each other, Canada needs to pick a side or, better yet, get the hell out of Iraq. Daesh is finished there, so our work is done.

ON TARGET: Build A Missile Defence System – And Let The U.S. Pay For It

Donald Trump

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Drumpf.jpg

By Scott Taylor

A couple of related events last week were added together by the usual cast of fearmongers in yet another attempt to scare the bejeezus out of the Canadian public.

First off it was North Korea’s megalomaniac President Kim Jong-un (aka Dear Leader), who test fired yet another long-range missile harmlessly into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It flew well over Japan and, as the Chicken Littles were quick to point out, it fell from the sky at a distance that now puts the U.S. base on Guam Island within crazy Kim’s range. Scary stuff.

Then we had a bombshell dropped by none other than Lieutenant-General Pierre St- Amand, the Canadian officer who currently serves as the Deputy Commander of NORAD at Peterson Air Base, Colorado Springs. St-Amand told a parliamentary committee that in the event of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack against North America, “The extent of the U.S. policy is not to defend Canada.”

St-Amand’s revelation visibly shocked the parliamentarians in attendance and he hastened to soften the blow by suggesting that any decision regarding the protection of Canadian targets would be made by the Americans “in the heat of the moment.”

The news stories aimed for the maximum shock value, focussing on the fact that Canada is not under the U.S. missile umbrella — at a time when North Korea is disturbing fish in the Pacific as far away as Guam.

To give St-Amand’s comments more gravitas, media reports noted that NORAD,  of which the good general is deputy commander, has the responsibility to defend the skies and maritime approaches to North America.

However, in an interview just weeks earlier, St-Amand pointed out the fact that, while NORAD monitors threats, if that threat is from an ICBM then it becomes the responsibility of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and U.S. Space Command. In other words, not NORAD.

The usual suspects took St-Amand’s comments to heart and immediately renounced the Trudeau Liberals for continuing to reject participation in the U.S. missile defence system.

Despite all the partisan political jabs, the fact remains that while Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin chose to opt out of missile defence in 2005, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had nine years in power to reverse that decision, but wisely chose not to.

I say wisely because there is no present or foreseeable future scenario wherein a rogue nation would target Canada with such a weapon. If North Korea or Iran should ever actually fire a long-range nuclear warhead at North America, it would only do so in a defiant gesture of suicidal finality.

Their objective would be to hurt the U.S. knowing that the retaliation would be swift and apocalyptic.

Should that rogue rocket’s trajectory be faulty (so far Kim can only hit ocean-sized targets in his own backyard), Canada could indeed end up on the receiving end.

However, it would have to be one heartless S.O.B. in USNORTHCOM that would see a missile meant for the U.S.A. going astray and “in the heat of the moment” decide not to protect Canada because we didn’t help pay for missile defence.

Canada is not the U.S.A. We are not a superpower wielding military might around the globe. We do not profess to be the world’s policeman. Canada does not have anything akin to the CIA which actively engages in destabilizing foreign countries and overthrowing hostile regimes.

In fact, at the same Parliamentary hearing that St-Amand dropped his “we are unprotected” bombshell, Mark Gwozdecky, the Assistant Deputy Minister for International Security at Global Affairs, told everyone to relax about North Korea. “There’s no direct threat to Canada,” said Gwozdecky. “In fact on the contrary, in recent contacts with the North Korea government … the indications were they perceived Canada as a peaceful and indeed a friendly country.”

We are not the target, but we live next to the target. That said, if U.S. President Donald Trump can build a wall to keep the Mexicans out — and make Mexico pay for it — surely we can tell The Donald to build a missile defence system that protects Canada from threats aimed at America. And yes, America can pay for it.

ON TARGET: Nazis Are Bad ... Period.

Just because Latvian SS kept fighting Soviet Communism after WW2 does not make them heroes. 

https://megingjord88.deviantart.com

By Scott Taylor

There is a controversial new video out on NATO’s official YouTube channel entitled Forest Brothers. The gist of the 8-minute film is to lionize the brave Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian fighters who took to the woods to resist the Soviet Union’s 1945 occupation of the Baltic States. These desperate guerrillas were supported by many of the local population and were thus able to continue resisting the Soviets until the 1980s.

This is a virtually unknown chapter of the Cold War, as it occurred within the Soviet-occupied territory. No one talked about armed resistance by nationalist groups, as the Soviets presented themselves to the world as one big happy family.

The theme of this new piece of NATO propaganda is to liken the resolve and heroism of these historical “Forest Brothers” to the current special forces units of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. According to the film, the modern-day Baltic warriors, like their “Forest Brother” forefathers, are facing overwhelming odds — this time at the hands of President Putin and his murderous Russian horde. The timing of the release of the NATO short film is no doubt aimed at magnifying the threat posed by Russia conducting major military exercises this summer on their side of the border.

Unfortunately for students of this era, the film totally rewrites history with the purpose of demonizing Russians. The bigger problem is that the movie is also exonerating Nazis, many of whom were complicit in the atrocities of the Holocaust.

The narration in the film claims that, in 1945, Baltic fighters “who had fought on both sides” during the Second World War took to the forests to fight for their national interests. This statement makes no sense and it is patently false. The Baltic states had the unfortunate geographical situation that put them between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

In the famous 1939 non-aggression pact signed between the two, Hitler allowed Stalin to occupy and annex the three Baltic states. When Hitler broke that pact in June 1941, his troops quickly pushed the Soviets out of the Baltic.

Very few Latvians, Lithuanians, or Estonians chose to withdraw and fight for Stalin, but in a dark chapter of Baltic history, they volunteered in droves to fight for the Nazis. Anti-Semitic militias quickly and aggressively rounded up the Jewish population for extermination.

One of the most ruthless of these militias was the Latvian Arajs Kommando unit. In 1943, Germany formalized the alliance by forming Baltic volunteers into Waffen SS troops. Latvia alone provided enough volunteers to man both the 15th and 19th Waffen SS divisions.

As the fortunes of the war turned against Hitler, the Germans and their allies were forced back. The 15th Latvian SS Division was able to surrender to Western allies, but the 19th found itself trapped on the Courland Peninsula battling the Soviets to the very end. Once Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin and the dream if his Third Reich was extinguished, those Baltic volunteers in SS uniforms took to the woods to avoid capture. Because of their affiliation with the Waffen SS and, in particular, the hard-core Arajs Kommandos who perpetrated the Holocaust on the Baltic Jews, they faced either the Soviet Gulags or execution.

To be fair, the re-enactors in the NATO Forest Brothers film clearly show these Soviet resistors using German weaponry and wearing German-style uniforms. To say that they fought on both sides of the war is untrue, and to lionize those who were in any way involved in the Nazi Holocaust is abhorrent.

Canada currently has 400 soldiers forward deployed in Latvia to provide a deterrent to Russian aggression. Next March 19, the Latvians will stage their annual parade in Riga to commemorate the glory of their WWII Waffen SS Legion. That’s right, Canadian troops will be present as Latvians pay tribute to Nazis.

Latvians are at least honest enough to commemorate their past openly. For NATO to retell history and to glorify the Waffen SS as anti-Soviet heroes is simply wrong — no matter how much they want to demonize Russia.