In Defence of Moral Challenges

"A country like Canada is perfectly suited for this, and this has to happen right now. Canada is playing a key role in the coalition [U.S.-led bombing coalition against Islamic State], but the coalition isn't dealing with the main source of the problem."
"Assad's barrel bombs have been killing seven times more Syrians than anyone else. Canada should step up."
Anna Nolan, organizer, The Syria Campaign, New York

"The time has come for this conflict to stop. Canada dreamed big in the last century. Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Prize for ending the Suez Crisis. There is no reason why Canada can't step up to the plate right now and be the voice for the millions of Syrians who are literally trapped in hell."
"Canada is well placed to be the country that begins to think big and mobilizes others to join it in finding innovative solutions to protect Syrians, right now."
"The carnage and displacement we are seeing in Syria will not magically come to an end. Leadership is needed to bring countries together in an urgent manner to stop Assad's bombs. Thousands of peaceful civilians are being murdered, week after week."
Kyle Matthews, senior deputy director, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Concordia University, Montreal

nadian Press Posted: Nov 15, 2014 6:29 AM ET Last Updated: Nov 15, 2014 10:07 PM ET

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• Stephen Harper had a showdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, telling the Russian leader to 'get out of Ukraine.' (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

• Stephen Harper had a showdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, telling the Russian leader to 'get out of Ukraine.' (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press) November 2014
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Canada, the country that talks softly and carries a big stick, while punching above its weight. The perennial peace-maker, sending its troops off to the United Nations on peace-keeping missions. Like the mission in Rwanda where peace was an illusion, and elusive enough that the peacekeepers were witness to an unstoppable genocidal slaughter. In a veritable blink of an eye, murder and mayhem overcame the capacity of an ill-equipped, insufficiently-numbered peace contingent to halt blood from flowing.

Just incidentally, Canada presents as a military match for the United Nations' impotence in striking a blow for peace. Striking that blow would of necessity have to be of the diplomatic variety, and one can see how successful that has been in the resolution of past conflicts by that great arbiter, the compromised United Nations. Canada is the world's second-largest country by geography. And stands 58th in the world as far as military force size is concerned.

So it would certainly have to depend on being viewed respectfully as an influential voice on international security issues. At the present time, Canada is incapable of proffering a military contribution of any significance in hopes of securing an international security environment that leads to a more generalized peace and security. Canada's public defence policy traditionally has been to lean on its influential and well-armed neighbour for defence of North America.

North America and Europe have just latterly fully become cognizant of how much the world has shrunk with the globalization of threateningly errant regimes elsewhere whose reach has suddenly become a matter of alarm in the advent of ballistic missiles technology so beloved by tyrannical regimes and seen as an unfortunate necessity by civilized, democratic nations. The fact that an Islamist nation like Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal is chilling enough.

That a lunatic regime like that of North Korea also has nuclear weapons gives slight pause to the alarm bells that slam our consciousness with the knowledge that the world's most eminent terrorist-mongering country dedicated to the demented religion of imperial jihad is on the verge of nuclear weaponry ownership should give a monumental stomach upset to the West, and it does, even while it deals with its angst by civilly agreeing Iran's sovereign 'rights' are paramount.

What to do with a rogue nation like the Russian Federation whose president's delusions of Soviet-power-and-hegemony resurging threatens eastern Europe? Well, Canada under its current government has demonstrated the courage of its convictions by confronting Russian aggression in Ukraine, by damning Iranian barbarity at the United Nations, and by hiking up its trousers to join its allies in NATO.

Prod the world's conscience, and mount the courage of Canada's convictions to assert NATO's resourcefulness in challenging the Syrian regime's butchery of its Sunni population to put a stop to the flood of refugees submerging Europe in the weight of their desperation? If Europe, struggling to accommodate the haven-seekers is not capable of finding the obvious solution, facing down Vladimir Putin, will Canada's blandishments help?

The armchair military strategists in Montreal feel confidence in their theory that Canada's stern admonition to the democratic West to put a halt to Assad's barrel bombs and thus stem the flow of death and refugees is a simple accomplishment readily attained. Beginning with a no-fly zone in Syria in protection of the targeted civilians to ground the barrel bombers. Convincing Vladimir Putin that Syria can be saved by exiling Assad to Moscow.

Mr. Putin is not readily intimidated, and certainly not by the now-nominally most powerful nation on Earth, and the most influential man on the globe, the Nobel Laureate Obama. But the pugnacious stance that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken with Mr. Putin, tersely informing him he needs to 'get out of Ukraine', is certain to humble the president of Russia. We must give it a try.

Vladimir Putin did not respond positively to Harper, the prime minister's spokesman said. (Steve Holland/AP)