fwiw, we were a part of the initial bombing attack on isis. that was a choice made by harper. trudeau actually ran on withdrawing (like his father should have...), and what happened was that we did a kind of juggling act - we pulled the planes out and shifted support to "training the kurds" instead, which meant we had a small contingent of special forces there. at the time, it seemed like the liberals were doing two things - (1) listening to the experts on the ground, that argued that bombing was not sufficient to actually defeat isis and (2) upholding their historical position on requiring a un mandate to actually fight.

i did support the bombing campaign on isis, which is very rare for me. and, when the commanders said "we need boots on the ground", i supported that, too, as was required. i opposed the 2003 invasion. there are only two imperialist wars i've ever supported, and the other one is wwII. that means i'm drawing a clear parallel between nazis and islamists, but, in fact, i do that all of the time and am actually baffled that others don't see the obvious similarities. what exactly is the difference between a nazi and an islamist? they seem like the same thing, to me. hence, the only good islamist is a dead one! bombing the shit out of them sounded like the right idea, to me; i listened to the generals when they said they need ground troops, too.

over time, it became less clear what was actually happening on the ground. where we fighting isis or supporting it? the liberals had pr reasons for shifting to a support-the-kurds mission, but the whole thing was always shady,

apparently, this ended some time last year. they were pretty quiet about it, because i don't remember hearing about it. but, it kind of just upholds the point - canada left syria 15 months ago, because we decided we'd won. why, exactly, are the americans still there?

and, why is chrystia freeland pushing saudi talking points on the matter, in apparent contradiction to her government's own policies?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-no-longer-training-kurdish-troops-in-iraq-amid-fight-against/

the liberals are supposed to do better than this