{"id":40870,"date":"2017-11-17T03:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T08:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40870"},"modified":"2017-11-16T10:17:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T15:17:46","slug":"canada-is-back-in-peacekeeping-sorta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/17\/canada-is-back-in-peacekeeping-sorta\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada is back in peacekeeping … sorta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Campbell<\/a> is not happy with the government’s “decision” on peacekeeping:<\/p>\n

It appears that today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced just about the \u201cbest thing\u201d for him and his Liberals in the long, long, long run up to the 2019 election campaign; but it\u2019s pretty much the worst thing he could do for Canada and the Canadian Forces and the UN. In fact: it appears to involve a handful of \u201cpenny packet\u201d commitments ~ a \u201cgrab bag\u201d one journalist said, none of which will do much good ~ being too small to even been noticed amongst the 75,000+ UN soldiers in Africa ~ and none of which will contribute materially to the Trudeau Liberal\u2019s quest for a second class, temporary, powerless seat on the worthless UN Security Council.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be very clear: Canada is not \u201cback\u201d ~ this is a far cry from the sort of traditional UN peacekeeping that Canada did in the 1950s, \u201960s and \u201970s and that Justin Trudeau and many, many Canadians imagined in 2015, and it is a far cry from what Canada could do if the government really wanted to help.<\/p>\n

[…] I suspect<\/em> that too many non-military voices in too many special interest groups argued for the \u201cpenny packet\u201d and \u201clet the UN help decide\u201d approach. My suspicion is that the UN simply doesn\u2019t know how to organize or manage a complex, logistical and\/or air transport mission, and the \u201ccivil society\u201d special interests<\/em> that want Canada \u201cback\u201d in UN peacekeeping have no idea at all about military matters or how to get the most bang for the buck.<\/p>\n

The good news for the Liberals is that it will the autumn of 2018, at the earliest, when \u201cnegotiations\u201d with the UN come to some sort of conclusion and, probably, early 2019 before Canada actually sends anyone into anything like harm\u2019s way \u2026 just in time for a campaign photo-op with the PM waving good-by to some female RCAF members in baby blue berets as they board a plane bound for somewhere. And, so long as the UN doesn\u2019t send any home in caskets the Trudeau government<\/del><\/font> campaign team will be happy. But it will give Team Trudeau another chance to smugly proclaim that \u201cCanada\u2019s back,\u201d and that\u2019s all that really matters in official Ottawa late in this decade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Campbell is not happy with the government’s “decision” on peacekeeping: It appears that today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced just about the \u201cbest thing\u201d for him and his Liberals in the long, long, long run up to the 2019 election campaign; but it\u2019s pretty much the worst thing he could do for Canada and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[362,6,5],"tags":[188,887,1068,691],"class_list":["post-40870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-cancon","category-military","tag-electionwatch","tag-justintrudeau","tag-peacekeeping","tag-unitednations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aDc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40872,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40870\/revisions\/40872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}