Juno News - February 19, 2021


Will Canadian troops stay in Iraq？


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

214.70058

Word Count

1,072

Sentence Count

18

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So we're just wrapping up a meeting of NATO defense ministers and during that meeting it
00:00:10.320 was expected that Canada would face pressure to reverse a projected drawdown of troops which are
00:00:15.260 currently deployed there to support a NATO mission in Iraq. Now that mission was started at the
00:00:20.980 behest of the Iraqi government where they basically asked NATO to come in and provide
00:00:25.080 advising and training and capacity building so that the Iraqi military and the Iraqi government
00:00:29.840 could handle things with regards to extremist groups or militias backed by Iran perhaps or other
00:00:36.420 sort of issues in enforcing sovereignty in Iraqi territory. Now there are two sort of main streams
00:00:41.660 which I think we should talk about in this video and I want to cover them very very briefly. The
00:00:45.620 first one is NATO itself and its role in these types of missions and the second is the history of the
00:00:51.440 Middle East and Iraq and why we even have a need for such a mission in that country. Now NATO as you
00:00:56.320 know the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was really started to counter Soviet aggression or
00:01:00.780 perceived aggression during the Cold War so it's immediately after the Second World War. Now the
00:01:05.960 organization originally started very small mostly European countries and expanded and is now up to
00:01:09.880 about 30 countries and so the question really remains what is the organization's purpose because
00:01:15.260 there is no Cold War at the very least in the same way that there was previously and there's no
00:01:20.040 more Soviet Union to counter there's no Warsaw Pact there's no you know threat of nuclear war at any
00:01:25.740 moment in the same way that existed during the Cold War so a lot of people have questioned the
00:01:30.140 purpose of NATO. Now Donald Trump has also criticized a number of countries and member countries of NATO
00:01:36.000 for not paying their fair share. Now there's an idea that countries pay two percent of GDP at the very
00:01:41.540 least to support their militaries and therefore be able to participate in NATO and Canada is not one of
00:01:46.840 those countries that has been paying that two percent. There's been a lot of criticism of such
00:01:52.120 and it remains a question on a number of fronts. Do you believe that Canada should be a part of NATO?
00:01:57.340 Where do you stand on Canada's defense spending? And there are a number of things of that nature
00:02:01.860 with regards to whether or not you even think Canada should be in Iraq in the first place as
00:02:05.880 part of such a mission. So that's sort of the first thing to digest but secondly why do we need a
00:02:10.840 mission of this type in Iraq? What's been going on and what's at issue in the Middle East that causes
00:02:16.380 so many so many problems as we constantly read about in the news or throughout history at the very least
00:02:21.020 recent history. So I want to go back to and if you've watched my last video you will recall an
00:02:26.280 agreement that took place during the sort of end of the First World War called the Sykes-Picot
00:02:30.800 Agreement and this basically divided up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire into areas of control. So there
00:02:37.760 would be areas of control under the French, under the British and a little bit under the Russians
00:02:42.040 and this ended up in what we see as the current map where a number of countries were simply created
00:02:48.680 and these countries did not necessarily reflect who lived there, did not necessarily reflect the
00:02:53.880 religious group or ethnic groups or maybe even language groups, it didn't reflect necessarily the
00:02:59.420 Ottoman provinces or regions that were in that area previously and how that was administered and so a lot
00:03:07.020 of the issues internal to some of these countries specifically with regards to ethnic groups, you may have
00:03:12.100 heard of the Kurds or you know Sunnis and Shias, different you know religious or ethnic groups,
00:03:16.000 different streams, these different groups may not necessarily fit you know so so nicely into into a
00:03:23.440 modern nation state because they had never previously been part of the same group and so
00:03:27.720 some of that issue really extends from this agreement where a number of these groups were all lumped
00:03:33.040 together into a new box that was then called Syria or then called Iraq and so that is I think some of
00:03:39.340 the issue at hand and so overall the two main parts what do you think Canada should do with regards to
00:03:44.520 NATO, what is our role in the Atlantic organization, what is our role in defense, you know should we
00:03:50.460 increase defense funding, these are some of the questions you have to ask before you even get
00:03:54.320 into whether or not Canada should be in such a mission in Iraq or in any other country where this
00:03:59.940 may occur and second what is going on in the Middle East and a lot of it has to do with some of these
00:04:05.600 things stretching back all the way to Sykes-Picot and who lives there and who does not live there.
00:04:10.220 Now the Middle East just as a sort of you know wrap-up the Middle East is a very different place
00:04:15.040 than Canada, it's a very different place than the West and I think it's very safe to say that if
00:04:19.420 Canada if we're talking about you know someone from out West has a very different maybe outlook or even
00:04:25.020 maybe a different culture than someone who lives in Toronto or you know in the Maritimes then it's
00:04:29.380 very safe to say that we in Canada have a very different culture and a very different outlook than
00:04:33.100 what goes on in the Middle East and I think that is one of the things we need to start off when we're
00:04:37.540 looking at those countries at who lives there at the dynamics and how we're going to get involved
00:04:41.720 and how if we are going to get involved what is the best way that we can do that to you know have
00:04:46.160 the most success possible. So you know for True North I'm Sam Ashkenazi. Thank you so much for
00:04:51.140 watching this video. As always there's a lot to discuss but I hope you came away with some very
00:04:55.680 interesting things to think about and thank you so much for watching this video. Have yourselves a great day.