True, but Bear also has naive assumptions like ISIS will be eradicated.
Trudeau’s ISIS policy gets an assist from Obama—and Harper
The Prime Minister didn’t just escape harm inflicted by a jilted ally (though he still must remain nervous about domestic Canadian political reaction, which naturally will parse these things differently from the way any foreign power does). He received a positive boost from a choreographed succession of American political figures. It was objectively harder for the Conservative Opposition to criticize Trudeau at the end of the day than it had been at the beginning.
First up was Peter Cook, the Pentagon spokesman and stand-in for Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who has been portrayed as the bad cop to Secretary of State John Kerry’s Trudeau-hugging good-cop softie on the Canada file. What’s significant is that Cook didn’t just shrug and accept Trudeau’s training-and-relief-but-no-fighters stance, he flagged it as a model for other U.S. allies to emulate. “The Canadian announcement is the kind of response the secretary’s been looking for from coalition members,” Cook said at the daily Pentagon briefing, “as the United States and coalition partners push to accelerate the campaign against ISIL.”
After that, remarks from U.S. ambassador Bruce Heyman (“I was pleased“) and, in a paraphrased readout of a phone conversation with Trudeau, from Obama himself (“The President welcomed Canada’s current and new contributions“) were gravy.
Justin Trudeau's ISIS policy gets an assist from Obama—and Harper
