John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL PETROU IN CBC NEWS
“It would be immoral for Canada to leave its ISIS members in Syria
“We should not make our problem one for the Syrian Democratic Forces to sort out”
"Allowing killers and sex slave-owners a comfortable life in Canada is not justice in the cosmic sense, even if it may be legally unavoidable."
The tone of some this piece, despite it asking Canada to do the right thing, is somewhat troubling for me, but far more troubling are some of the comments posted. The truth is that the whole phenomenon of ISIS is far more complex than is generally understood from the press.
First, many of those who went to join ISIS were just foolish young people doing what a lot of foolish young people always do. How many young men went to fight in various causes over decades, from, say, the Spanish Civil War to the IDF? There was a fair number of Canadians who enlisted for America’s Vietnam Holocaust. If they are Canadians, we have an obligation to allow them to return home.
Second, there is a huge amount of cynicism and dishonesty about ISIS. Yes, some of the more fanatical members it has attracted have done insane things, but then, I recall clearly so did large numbers of American soldiers in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. A number of ghastly mass killings and genuine atrocities and gross abuse of prisoners.
And at the times when America actually did get down to attacking ISIS in selected situations, instead of effectively helping them by destroying Syrian infrastructure as it mainly did, its bombing was so careless and massive, it may well have killed more civilians than ISIS ever did. Mosul and Raqqa were recipients of that treatment.
And just look at the IDF snipers shooting unarmed civilians every week in Gaza. More than two hundred have been killed and thousands wounded, many damaged badly for life by Israel’s illegal use of “butterfly” ammunition. I don’t know, but there are quite possibly some Canadian volunteers serving there. There certainly are in the IDF in general, but there is never a question raised about their eligibility to return home after serving in a military whose main job is occupation of several million people against their will, often using great violence against them, as at Gaza.
Recruiting these people for ISIS has also served American intelligence. As Edward Snowden explained, such operations identify potential sympathizers plus their contacts from countries all over, and then the security services have a record of them which they might not have had otherwise.
In fact, ISIS has largely served American interests. Many of the people who joined are just victims of an elaborate dark operation that appealed to their religious convictions or some form of nationalism or sense of adventure.
ISIS has never attacked anyone who wasn’t someone America and Israel dislike, and the main goal of the organization has been the destruction of Syria and the toppling of its government. Were ISIS a genuine independent phenomenon, a genuine fanatical jihadi-type group, its targets would have been, without question, Israel, the corrupt princes of Saudi Arabia, and any American outposts. Most assuredly that has never been the case.
So, who in fairness should be responsible for the crimes of ISIS? And, I should very much add, of al Nusra? I’m not against prosecuting any individual who can be proved to have committed atrocities, but we know that is extremely unlikely to happen with witnesses and documents scattered to the winds. Just as we know the people responsible at a distance not only won’t be prosecuted, they’ll never even be named. But under our laws, a Mafia Don ordering a killing is as responsible as the man pulling the trigger.
ISIS has been financed largely by Saudi Arabia, at least until the days it got such a foothold that it could steal on a large scale and “tax” those it occupied. In its early days, who do you think bought all the brand-new pick-up trucks running around the desert, the AK-47s, the food and fuel, and paid salaries? It represents a dark-op which got sometimes out of control, as is bound to be the case when dealing with the kind of people who join such gangs.
Just look at the Benghazi fiasco, something never explained to Americans and with good reason. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State under Obama, was running a secret operation to collect weapons and thugs in the chaos left in Libya after Ghadaffy’s murder so they could be sent to Syria to help create still another chaos. It just happened that some of thugs at Benghazi thought her ambassador, engaged in nefarious business, made a good, handy target. That’s how it is when you work with such people, trying to use them to your purposes.
American and Israeli weapons have been discovered in ISIS caches a number of times by the Syrian Army, just as they have for al-Nusra, another terrorist outfit supported by America and its allies.
Senior guys have been reported being helicoptered by Americans or Israelis to new locations at various times. Indeed, only this morning, there is a serious report of the ISIS leader, al Baghdadi, being transported by American vehicles between Iraq and Syria, despite countless past (phony) reports of his death.
Last, Canada just accepted a group of White Helmets as refugees. Despite misunderstanding and deception about that organization’s humanitarianism, it, in fact, has served the same dark interests. The White Helmets are affiliated with the cutthroats of al Nusra, and their main job has been to produce staged videos of (non-existent) gas attacks which were used to promote and defend American and British bombing in Syria. Even a senior BBC guy recently said the videos were clearly staged, although BBC itself was not happy about the observation.
