A unified Kurdish state western interests because it would create a moderate majority-Muslim state that is largely pro-western
Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau could establish a legacy for himself by helping solve the problem of the world’s largest stateless nation. Trudeau should expend political capital on a newly energized foreign policy goal of unified Kurdish statehood. This state would serve Canadian and western interests. There are about 30 to 32 million Kurds. They are…
Compassion for the suffering of others not often shared by others in the world
The impact of the chaotic migration from the Middle East to Europe and beyond is more sensed than understood. How, for example, did the migrant crisis come to “dominate debate,” as a recent newspaper headline put it last week, in the Canadian election campaign? A beginning, if not the beginning, lay in U.S. President Barack…
Wanting to limit the number of refugees to preserve your way of life doesn’t make you a bad person
As hundreds of thousands of migrants flood Europe’s borders, some of us will recall Jean Raspail’s apocalyptic 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints. Fiercely controversial, Raspail’s story depicts an uninvited seaborne mass migration from the Third World to Europe, landing initially on the shores of the French Riviera. Unable or unwilling to turn it…
Without a concrete plan beyond airstrikes, we could find ourselves mired in war for years to come
Initially, I was convinced that the war against ISIS could be morally justified. ISIS, after all, is a malevolent force from which neither Iraq nor Syria is able to protect their people. The international community, therefore, had a responsibility to intervene. But beyond that, the moral waters get muddy. Both Catholic “just war” theory, with…