I look at it this way. There is a danger in the narrative, because you have the Assad regime that has killed 200,000 people. It's responsible, I think, for the 200,000 or maybe it has blood on its hands for at least 150,000 of that. The reality is that there are many within the region who are very skeptical about the western intervention against ISIS. They say, “Why is it that suddenly you're rushing here because of two unfortunate and horrible and horrific decapitations of these two western journalists, yet the blood of 150,000 Arab Muslims was basically cheap and valueless?”
ISIS has killed 1,200 people. That's not to discount the fact that those are 1,200 people that matter, but in the big scheme of things, people see the real devil here as being the Assad regime. So you're really losing the hearts and minds, and we need to make sure that it's emphasized. I'm all for military support in countering ISIS, but you need to also have this not being in sectarian language. It is not useful for us to talk about us countering ISIS because they're hurting minorities. No. If you do that, you perpetuate the myth that this is a war against Sunni Islam, which is not true. We need to talk about ISIS being a medieval, horrible organization that is at risk of engulfing the region. I would say, having come from the region, that from the Gulf to the Levant, people keep saying to me, “I don't see the threat of ISIS, but I do see the threat of the Assad regime, because the Assad regime is sending two to three million people our way.”
That really reverberates if we're talking about Canadian reputation in the region.