Parry Sound-Muskoka MP Tony Clement said he is in full support of the Trump administration’s bombing of an airbase in western Syria in retaliation for a chemical attack last week.
The US bombing targeted the Shayrat airfield in Homs, from where it is alleged Syria’s Assad-led regime deployed a chemical attack against the opposition-held northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing an estimated 80 civilians, including women and children, while leaving many others injured and gasping for air.
While Syria’s Assad government has denied launching the chemical attack, US intelligence is indicating otherwise. “So Justin Trudeau said yesterday that he was given information that convinced him that it was the government of Syria, and I accept at face value what Mr. Trudeau is saying,” said Clement, who spoke on the issue during a telephone interview on Saturday.
Clement said he agrees with what he referred to as the measured response by the United States against “the illegal and immoral use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians, which is against international law, it’s completely contrary to any international agreement on how war should be waged,” adding that Trump followed-up on a promise made by the Obama administration declaring the use of chemical weapons as a red line the international community would not let Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cross.
Evidence that Assad may have also used chemical weapons in 2013 did not prompt military retaliation by the Obama administration as initially promised; instead Obama worked out a deal in which Assad agreed to get rid of his stock pile of chemical weapons, which he is alleged to have used this week.
But fear that a weakened Assad administration will empower groups such as ISIS has enabled Assad’s regime to carry on a reign of terror for years, propped by countries such as Russia, China and Iran’s own interests in the region.
The ideal is to eliminate ISIS from the equation and then have a diplomatic solution that can transfer power away from Assad to a moderate group of people that are representative of the Syrian people. That would be the ideal solution. Now, we know that Russia supports Assad and we know that there are other middle-eastern forces that would like to see Assad go – so it is a very tricky area, I think those voices that are saying we should tread carefully are absolutely correct MP Tony Clement
Clement said he thinks ‘most civilized people would agree’ that using gas on any population is unconscionable and said he is fully in support of further intervention with the end goal of ridding Syria of not only Islamist extremist groups but also the Assad regime. “He’s a menace to his own people and there is a doctrine called Duty to Protect where if a regime is in violation of international law by perpetrating war crimes on its own people, then civilized countries have a duty to intervene. That’s what the Tomahawk missiles were all about. Hopefully it has the desired impact.”
Yet given the number of players in that region, Clement cautioned that further actions must be thought out carefully. “The history of the Middle East is full of unintended consequences of people that wanted to do good and ended up doing worse things than were there before, so you definitely have to tread carefully,” he said, adding, “Clearly doing nothing doesn’t work.”
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