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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-03-30, Page 44 Lucknow Sentinel • Wednesday, March 30, 2016 www.lucknowsentinel.com e m Lucknow Sentinel PUBLISHED WEEKLY P.O. Box 400, 619 Campbell Street Lucknow Ontario NOG 2H0 phone: 519-528-2822 fax: 519-528-3529 www.lucknowsentinel.com POSTMEDIA JOHN BAUMAN Group Manager, Media Sales john. bauman@sunmedia.ca JOYJURJENS Office Administrator lucknow.sentinel@sunmedia.ca LINDSAY THEODULE Media Sales Consultant I indsay.theodule@sunmedia.ca CURTIS ARMSTRONG Group Director of Media Sales - Grey, Bruce and Huron County Postmedia carmstrong@postmedia.com P: 519-376-2250 x514301 Publications Mail Agreement No. 40064683 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO SENTINEL CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT P.O. 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The Sentinel is available on microfilm at: GODERICH LIBRARY, (from 1875) 52 Montreal Street Goderich ON N7A 1 M3 Goderich li brary@huroncounty.ca KINCARDINE LIBRARY, (from 1875 to 1900 & 1935 to 1959) 727 Queen Street Kincardine ON N2Z 1 Z9 The Lucknow Sentinel is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent ethical organization established to deal with editorial concerns. For more information or to file a complaint go to www.mediacouncil.ca or call toll free 1-844-877-1163. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canadian Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. Ca n ocna Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and the Ontario Community Newspapers Association Den Tandt: Liberals are wrong in saying Canada isn't at war with ISIL Canada is not atwarwith the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Of course not. It's a police action. A law-enforcement and public - safety issue, to address a perni- cious threat, one being met with utmost seriousness by the federal government, which has applied a range of remedies across the span of policy, with- out resorting to fear -monger- ing that would ... where was I? "A war is something that can be won by one side or the other and there is no path for ISIL to actually win against the West," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the CBC Wednesday. "Theywantto destabilize, they want to strike fear. They need to be stamped out: Stamped out! Excellent wording, that Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion calls it a fight. This is progress. But they're both wrong, demonstrably and clearly wrong, in saying it's not war. It is precisely that. Let's dispense first with the too -easy cliche that Trudeau and his Liberals are "soft on terror." They're not. No govern- ment in its right mind would be or could be, given events. This is why, as reported by the Ottawa Citizen's Ian MacLeod, it is moving on several fronts behind the scenes to block ter- rorists before they strike again in Canada, including via infor- mation -sharing enabled by the former government's Bill C-51. Column Michael Den Tandt Good. That much is reassuring. Trudeau's contention that the new anti-ISIL mission launched by his government, even sans CF -18 fighters, can provide invaluable help to the U.S.-led coalition, is well taken. It's true that other countries, especially the United States, have a comer on air power. It's also true that Canadian sol- diers are good at training allied ground forces in hostile envi- ronments, having acquired this skill in Afghanistan. And it's equally true that military power alone cannot "defeat" an enemy such as ISIL in a 21st -century, asymmetrical insurgent conflict that col- lapses and conflates previous categories of warfare. OK. But no one ever said otherwise, that I know of. And it's all beside the point on the question of what is, and is not, war. The conflict with ISIL is war in the sense that French Prime Minister Manuel Valls used the term after Tuesday's bombings in Brussels. Valls said this: "We are at war:' France is not at war in a Napoleonic sense. There are no clear battle lines. The French Foreign Legion is not (yet) poised to move in great numbers into northern Iraq. Yet France is at war, because the seat of its society and one of the shining beacons of global society, Paris, was attacked and is under threat of further attack Brussels has been attacked, no doubt because of its symbolic heft as the European capital. Europe — the very idea of a free society, multilingual, mul- ticultural and borderless — is shaken to its foundations by the inflow of refugees, partially (though only partially) caused by ISIL. All that makes this a war. Ah, but ISIL is a non -state actor, says the technician. It's not "war" because one side can never win. Calling it war gives ISIL too much credit! They're unhinged, degenerates and sociopaths to be viewed with contempt, not elevated to the status of combatants. And that's true, as far as it goes. Of course they're unhinged. Based on a literal reading of ancient prophecy, these men seek to catalyze a global confla- gration that will bring about their own mass death and ulti- mately Armageddon. To say they're unhinged really doesn't cover it. But let us be clear about a couple of things. First, ISIL holds territory. It has a capital city, Raqqa. That makes it different from al-Qaida, which never did that, rather choosing to infest failed states and cling to them parasitically. As I and many others have written, the fact of ISIL's holding land and administering institutions of government, albeit in demented and criminal fash- ion, is its principal drawing card. Land gives the self - anointed caliph, Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, legitimacy, by radi- cal Islamist lights. Therefore the land he con- trols must be taken back. The peshmerga and Iraqi ground forces doing that, at great cost to themselves, believe they're at war, one suspects. It would be astonishing, indeed, if Canadian special forces risking their lives to help them don't feel the same way. In 2002, the Liberal govern- ment launched the Afghan mission against a rag -tag band of illiterate opium farmers who fought with looped -up Soviet- era artillery shells buried in roadways. Yet most Canadians, particularly the estimated 30,000 soldiers who served there, likely now consider that to have been war. It's an absurd descent into technocracy for the PM and his top foreign policy hand to suggest the conflict with ISIL, which poses a far greater threat to Canadian citizens than the Taliban ever did, is anything but. Lucknow News returns after a week off Here I am, back again, after our little sojourn to Toronto. There are limes I really miss eve- rything in Toronto, but then I drive there and after about an hour trying to get around through the traffic and all the construction, I wish I weren't there. It seems there are twice as many one-way streets and no - left turns than there were when I lived there. It sure seems like it anyway. Despite the traffic, my great- nephew Nick and I had a great time. We spent some time visit- ing an old friend Susan (a retired french immersion teacher), my cousin Pat, her daughter Kim and two of Pat's grand -daughters Jordan and Katie. We of course took in a few of the sights around town, such as the Aquarium and the Zoo. It was a foggy, wet week in Toronto, so to keep dry, I took Nick on an underground tour of the city from Dundas Street south to Union Station. Boy have things changed, I hardly recog- nized anything down there. Life seems to be going on as always around Lucknow. Many churches in the area held Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and of course Easter Sunday ser- vices. I hope everyone had a joy- ous and blessed Easter. The Lucknow Chamber of Commerce held their annual Easter egg hunt for the children last Saturday and many were out to take part in looking for those elusive eggs left by the Easter Bunny. It's always great fun watching the children see who can find the most Easter eggs. Lucknow United Church recently held a successful "Trop- ical Paradise Beef Supper and Variety Evening." Late congratulations to Hamish Black on his bid to join the Canadian Olympic speed skating team, we'll look forward to watching him win gold. Sympathies of the community to the families of: William (Ron) Crich, 66, Lucknow; Earl Elliott, WWII Vet, 92, Wingham; Marga- ret Mowbray, 101, Lucknow; Wil- liam (Jim) Hunter, WW II Vet, 93, Lucknow; Margery (Betty) Ritchie, 90, Lucknow; Allan McFarlan, 67, Teeswater; Sadie Ireland, born to heaven, Toronto; Thomas Hermeston, 85, Teeswa- ter; and Gordon Donaldson, 88, Teeswater.