When will we learn in the Middle East?

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Why are they doing it?

Why does a seemingly normal young man from one of the richest and most democratic countries on earth suddenly renounce his country, his family and his entire belief system and fly off to a war-torn part of the world where public beheadings are street entertainment and savages smash ancient antiquities with sledge hammers to show the distain they feel for every aspect of world civilization?

Don’t expect an answer from me because I’m as bewildered as the rest of you. But I can relate what a grief-stricken Ottawa mother says about her son who died last year fighting for ISIL/ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Syria.

When Christianne Bourdreau was interviewed on CNN her voice quavered as she related how her son was recruited by ISIS while going through a troubling period in high school in Calgary. "It's so easy for them to get to our children, to access our children,” she said, adding the radicalization process is gradual and persuasive. "The way a lot of it happens is one main recruiter plants the ideology in their mind and the Internet reinforces that with the information that they can search up and other contacts that they can make easily online."

It happens in Calgary and it has happened in other Canadian cities with the latest federal report from Ottawa indicating more than 130 young Canadian men and women abroad taking part in terrorist activities and another 80 returned to Canada. That’s right – returned – and now that they’ve returned what might they do in their homeland, a homeland they totally reject and hate?

From what I’ve said above you might think I totally support Canada’s military action in the Middle East with six CF-18 jets sent to Iraq last fall to support American bombing raids in Syria. You might also think, I support Prime Minister Harper’s proposed Combating Terrorism and Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act otherwise known as Bill C-51.

Well, you’d be wrong because once again I see us falling into the fatal trap of thinking we can bomb the Middle East into democracy and turn violent jihadists

into kind and gentle folk by killing them and their women and children with our missiles, bombs and drones. When are we going to learn that this strategy, which has failed virtually every time it has been tried in the Middle East, doesn’t work?

And now on top of this we’re on the cusp of passing draconian legislation that will deprive us of our own civil rights and liberties while hundreds of our confused and alienated young men and women run off to the Middle East to join the enemy.

It’s like throwing the proverbial coin into the air and being surprised when it doesn’t come down the same every time, otherwise known as insanity.

Every time we drop a bomb, fire a missile or send another drone on a death mission over the Middle East it’s another victory for the jihadists because they know it will only “radicalize” their people to hate us even more. And now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, they’re radicalizing our own sons and daughters to go to Iraq and Syria to fight us! I say again – when are we going to learn? Jihadi John, the British ISIL member, who wields the sword chopping heads off our people who have foolishly and tragically gone to Iraq, must be laughing into his burqa.

Isn’t it time to bring our troops home and try another strategy?

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Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and occasional columnist for eKNOW.