Emergency debate on ISIL draws only handful of MPs | “Root Causes” and Government Stupidity

Interesting to see Conservatives invoking the Liberals R2P (Responsibility to Protect) initiative, which many conservative commentators have panned if memory serves me correctly:

Employment Minister Jason Kenney invoked the “responsibility to protect” doctrine to fight “genocide” against religious minorities in a sparsely attended yet spirited late-night debate Tuesday over Canada’s response to the Islamic State threat.

… In an extensive speech about the violence minorities face, Kenney took aim at “moral relativism” and cynicism, saying that supporting an existing military presence was the only effective response to the urgent situation.

“There are hundreds of thousands of girls who are facing serial gang rape in this circumstance in Iraq. There are children who have been beheaded,” he said, adding that persecuted families “don’t have time for ‘root causes” — a dig at a previous comment by Trudeau.

Kenney added that stopping ISIL from harming more people takes “hard power,” and couldn’t be done “with pleasant speeches, tents or humanitarian supplies.”

While I share his abhorrence of ISIS and similar groups, blindness or ignoring root causes leads to history repeating itself, and not calibrating the degree of intervention appropriately (admittedly hard to do, both substantively and politically).

Emergency debate on ISIL draws only handful of MPs | Ottawa Citizen.

Ottawa Citizen editorial demolishes the PM and Government’s logic in this regard (“We know (terrorists’) ideology is not the result of ‘social exclusion’ or other so-called ‘root causes.’ It is evil, vile and must be unambiguously opposed.”).

Have highlighted the money quote:

Are the Conservatives really arguing that terrorism, as an expression of pure evil, just springs up without explanation, like demonic possession? That any one of us might wake up tomorrow possessed of an urge to become a terrorist for no reason whatsoever? Surely there are reasons why one person takes up arms in an evil cause and another does not. To try to understand those reasons, and reduce their effect, is not to shrug at violence. It is in fact a moral duty.

Setting up these two perspectives in opposition – that terrorism has causes, and that terrorism is evil and must be opposed – might be time-honoured political strategy. But it’s wrong and dangerous rhetoric. One way to oppose terrorism is to understand it. The Conservative talking point implies that anyone who tries to figure out how to stop a kid from suburban Ontario from becoming a jihadi is, somehow, a terrorist sympathizer. It implies that any analyst who tries to understand the ebb and flow of propaganda within a territory is excusing violence. To sneer at any attempt to understand terrorism is a stupid approach to one of the world’s most insidious problems, and the Conservatives ought to know better. They do know better, but they’re trying to score points.

Canada can and must unambiguously oppose terrorism while trying to improve its understanding of how it operates and how its adherents recruit.

Editorial: Yes, terrorism has causes