Daily Archives: August 26, 2021

Politics Insider for Aug. 25: Even Liberal MPs are not sure why we're having an election, the term Toolemania enters the lexicon, and Jagmeet Singh's momentum numbers

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Star columnist Chantal Hebert has a look at the landscape as we make our way through the second week of the campaign, and finds reason for the Liberals to be nervous. She notes that consistency has taken a back seat to the manufacturing of a wedge, and wonders why the Liberals wandered into this optional election.

Over time, mirrors tend to replace sounding boards. As an aside, this is the first Trudeau campaign that does not find his former principal secretary Gerald Butts at his side. It may also be that over the past 20 months, the Liberals have found the necessity of having to accept opposition input to advance their agenda so unbearable that they cannot see beyond the inconvenience of minority rule. There certainly is a disconnect between the importance many Liberals privately attach to achieving a majority next month and the overall positive impression of minority governance many voters hold. But whatever the reasons, the current casting does not play to Trudeaus strengths or to his partys advantage.

Nervous Liberals: The polls and momentum have Liberal supporters nervous, Abbas Rana reports in the Hill Times.

They can recover, but theyre going to [have to] make some real progress quickly, said [pollster Frank] Graves. And the possibility of losing altogether outright is something which was unthinkable a month ago, is now very much a possibility. I dont think its the most likely possibility, but its a possibility. So yes, they should be definitely concerned.

Even Liberal MPs are not sure why we are having an election, they anonymously tell Rana.

In interviews withThe Hill Timesthis week, six current and former Liberal MPs, three campaign officials, and pollsters said the key reason why their party is shedding support is that the leadership has not been able to make a convincing case to Canadians why they need a fresh mandate. Sources said that after about a year and a half of COVID-19, coupled with on-again, off-again lockdowns, Canadians want to enjoy their summer and are not happy that an election is on.

In the National Post, Colby Cosh wonders if Canada is on the verge of Toolemania. The Tories are doing better than expected with young people.

Conservative Leader Erin OToole, who is a full year younger than Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau but would probably admit to seeming 15 years older, has a not actually microscopic lead amongst voters aged 18-34 and a wider one in the 35-49 band. We all know the basic reason this is possible: the NDP and its leader Jagmeet Singh are, at the moment, doing pretty well in those groups, and taking votes away from the Liberals.

Money for housing: Justin Trudeau was likely aiming at young voters when he popped into Hamilton on Tuesday to roll out a housing affordability plan. CBC has a story.

The aggressive planbillions of dollars in new funding, measures to curb the practice offlipping homes, efforts toblockforeign nationals from buying homes for two years and new regulatory measures to police exploitative real estate agentscomes at a time when Canadians are telling pollsters that housing is one of the issues they care about most. The three-point program includes commitments to unlock home ownership through new government funding, a plan to build more homes to address supply constraintsand measures to establish and protect new rights for buyers.

He also promised atax-free account that would allow Canadians under 40 to save $40,000 toward their first home and withdraw it tax-free when they buy.

In Macleans the redoubtable Justin Ling takes a deep dive into Conservative, NDP and Liberal housing promises and concludes that the Liberals care not pushing as hard to tackle housing affordability as the NDP and Tories.

While its always easier to craft a plan when youre in opposition, both the NDP and Conservatives are taking seriously the idea that we need many, many new homes. The Liberals are, clearly, not. And its not hard to figure out why: Flooding the market with homes will mean prices of existing homes stop increasing so rapidly. Thats bad news if you banked your future on permanent housing price growth.

Health battle:OToole offered choice in health care on Tuesday, promising not to stop provinces allowing people to pay for faster access to health care, a day after the Liberals vowed to claw back cash from premiers that do that, the Globe reports. Scott Moe condemned the Liberals for saying they would penalize Saskatchewan if it continues to allow people to pay out-of-pocket for MRIs. In that province,for-profit clinics can charge individuals for MRIs if they provide an equal number of free scans to people on the public waiting list.

OToole supports that kind of thing: I support universal access in our system, public and free. And I also support provinces making sure that they can offer more choice, faster service and less waits for their citizens.

Trudeau does not:There are penalties for private delivery of services that we have brought in over the past [few] years in a number of different cases. We will continue to stand up for a public, universal health care system, unlike Erin OToole.

Trudeau took time from the campaign trail to participate in a virtual G7 meeting over Afghanistan, CP reports. He saidCanada is prepared to keep its military personnel in Afghanistan after an Aug. 31 American deadline. Earlier, he said he is not having a hard time managing the crisis from the campaign trail, the Globe reports.

Singh tackles LTCs: While OToole and Trudeau were trading attacks over health care, Jagmeet Singh went to Mississauga, where he promised to put an end to for-profit long-term care, Global reports. He spoke about the horrors of the homes during the pandemic, where some of the worst failures happened in for-profit homes, but didnt have details on exactly how the federal government could shift them to public hands.

We can figure out a way to make sure this is better using the Canada Health Act the same way we did when we tackled private hospitals. When asked how much it would cost for the federal government to take control of all the long-term care facilities across the country, Singh said, We cant afford not to act, though he didnt directly answer the question in terms of the projected price tag.

Numbers: If thats not election news for you, have a look at Abacuss big release from Tuesday, which has lots of interesting stuff on how voters are changing their intentions. Bruce Anderson notes that if Tory numbers go up, the Liberals might be able to persuade soft New Democrat and Green supporters, a familiar dynamic in a Canadian election.

Based on our momentum numbers, Mr. Singh likely had the best week with Mr. OToole not far behind. Mr. OToole seems to have made a lot of progress over the first week as his positives are up 6-points in a week but he still has a wide affinity gap that he will need to close quickly. The NDP are inching up, especially in Ontario, but the Conservatives are still stuck below 30% in our tracking. This data also shows that much of NDP and Green support is soft, and many might be persuaded to vote strategically if the Conservatives appear in contention. By a 66-point margin, soft NDP and Green supporters would prefer some form of Liberal government rather than a Conservative government after the election is over.

Stephen Maher

More here:

Liberal supporters are nervous, O'Toole's lead amongst young voters, and Singh's good week - Maclean's

In retrospect (which is of course always wiser), it might well have made more sense for the Nato forces that expelled the Taliban from Kabul in 2001 to have settled for a regime of regional and tribal warlords with a weak central government rather than aspire to the creation of a unitary liberal parliamentary democracy there.

From 1996, the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, in which the Taliban received support from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, was a protracted struggle in which the United States eventually intervened (in the aftermath of 9/11) and drove the Taliban from power in 2001.

The period of Taliban power was not simply a period of subjugation of women but was a regime of extreme brutality against both men and women utilising starvation and massacre against their opponents, political and religious. When the Taliban enjoyed Saudi backing, Osama Bin Laden brought thousands of al-Qaeda fighters into the country; and it was from there that he organised 9/11.

Many have written in recent days of the difficulties, if not futility, of seeking to sow the seeds of liberal democracy in stony cultural soil. Assuming that liberal democracy is the natural or inevitable outcome of human political development or civilisation is, I think, a major error. It can never be taken for granted. It must be guarded, nurtured and cultivated. It depends like many forms of plant life on irrigation and soil conditions to survive or prosper.

Religious fundamentalism is one of the soil conditions that threatens the existence of liberal democracy. So too do extreme ideologies of nationalism and Marxism. Liberal democracy has largely emerged in the countries where it exists after a protracted struggle against Christian fundamentalism described as the enlightenment, rather than in societies dominated by Islam.

This reflection raises a number of questions. Are western enlightenment values exclusively Christian in origin or an inherited character? Some writers claim that the demise of organised ecclesial Christianity in Europe poses an existential threat to the existence of European civilisation as we know it. Is a secular society inherently weak or vulnerable if it is not possessed of historic religion-derived antibodies to fight off alien illiberal and undemocratic political and religious ideologies? Do we risk throwing out our vital political immune responses if we install a politics based solely on sterile secularism?

The conventional answer is that a truly liberal, democratic society must accommodate diversity that the fabric of a coherent liberal society is woven from multi-strand fibres and is not a mono-filament weave. And with that I agree. A problem with the extremes of woke culture is that it seeks to impose a code of thought and speech, instead of acknowledging the right to differ and the right to see the past and, indeed, the future differently. In that regard, hard-line woke culture tends towards totalitarianism of thought.

While we ponder the decline of religious ecclesial practice among European Christians and its likely long-term effects, we will have to reflect on issues of cohabitation with the Muslim world. Irish people dont mind if Muslim women cover up in public so long as that is their free choice. They do object to young girls being made subject to arranged marriages in Ireland where their parents are of South Asian origin precisely because that is not their free choice.

Would we accord Irish constitutional protection for religion to any preachers in Ireland with more extremist views in relation to the punishment of blasphemers or apostates abroad? Does advocacy of killing become legitimate just because the victim lives elsewhere or because it is justified or supported in the opinion of some by verses in the Old Testament or the Koran?

We face a future of friction between the civilisation equivalents of tectonic plates. A good deal of Islamic activism has been financed by oil wealth. Much of the Islamic world is facing into a darker post-hydrocarbon world where increased desertification threatens their homelands. Climate change is a challenge for more than the liberal West.

Afghanistan was not and could never be the forward bastion of liberalism. But the contest between liberalism and religious or ideological fundamentalism seems permanent.

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Afghanistan was not and could never be the forward bastion of liberalism - The Irish Times

MISSISSAUGA, ON, Aug. 25, 2021 /CNW/ - After 10 years of an intensive and frustrating investigation into the Ontario Liberal Government, Fraud Investigator Gerry Jutsun has completed his decade long investigation into the Dalton McGuinty government and the Kathleen Wynne government from the period of 2009 until their demise on June 7, 2018.

Former Premier Kathleen Wynne with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (CNW Group/JMG Publicist)

The Liberal government frauds exposed, relate to three (3) fundamental Ministries which are the Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG), the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education. These 3 Ministerial frauds commenced under Premier Dalton McGuinty with the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Usurpation and Contamination of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario, and the Ministry of Finance. Premier Kathleen Wynne continued with the massive frauds in Daycare licensing within the Ministry of Education and also further compounding frauds continuing with the corruption of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario within the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Finance.

Fraud Investigator Gerry Jutsun took it upon himself to notify all government Ministers and alerted them to a pernicious and systemic cabal within their respective Liberal Government Ministries. This included Finance Minister Charles Sousa, Education Ministers Liz Sandals, Indira Naidoo-Harris and Mitzie Hunter; and four (4) Attorney Generals with Chris Bentley, John Gerretsen, Madeleine Meilleur and the last Liberal Attorney General with Yasir Naqvi. Premier Kathleen Wynne was duly informed and when Gerry Jutsun reached out to Premier Dalton McGuinty on Thursday, October 10, 2012, he suddenly announced his resignation on the following Monday, October 15, 2012.

After 15 years of unfettered reign with multiple successive scandals, the Liberal government was deposed on June 7, 2018 when Doug Ford defeated Premier Kathleen Wynne. Dalton McGuinty has since left politics, but Kathleen Wynne is a sitting MP in the Ontario legislature and has expressed her intentions to retire after the June 2, 2022 upcoming election.

Story continues

As a result of the Liberal government and Premiers McGuinty and Wynne's abject failure and refusal to investigate the incontrovertible evidence of massive frauds and systemic corruption presented to them by the Fraud Investigator, including written attestations and personal meetings from 2010 until 2018; Gerry Jutsun has commenced a Statement of Claim against the Ontario government and the government of the day under Premier Doug Ford, albeit for the Civil and Criminal torts perpetrated by the preceding Liberal government. The claim cites damages for $15 Million dollars for various Civil and Criminal torts, which includes but is not limited to Slander, Libel, Defamation, Public Misfeasance, Trespass, Assault and Obstruction of Justice inter alia.

The claim with title proceeding Gerald Evarist Jutsun aka Gerry Jutsun v. Her Majesty the Queen by Right of Ontario (HMQRO) and with court file number CV-21-00666610-0000 has been served on the Ministry of the Attorney General and the current Conservative Attorney General, with the Horourable Doug Downey. At present the Crown Defendant is intending to defend the claim, however additional time is being afforded by the Plaintiff Gerald Jutsun, so that he can deliver his final concluding Investigative Audit Fraud Report (IAFR) to the Attorney General of Ontario, pursuant to Proceedings Against the Crown rules.

His final report will examine and define exactly how the Superior Court of Justice was Usurped and Contaminated and by specific embedded Lawyers, Sheriff's and Judges. Post to the delivery of his meticulously detailed IAFR and juridical analysis within, the Crown Defendant can then decide if they wish to conduct their own investigation into the corruption of the Courts, defend the action or settle the claim.

Similarly, daycare lawsuits have commenced and which Gerry Jutsun initiated his first claim for his daycare called Tiny Town Daycare and where he sued the Liberal Ministry of Education for $26 Million dollars on Tuesday April 8, 2014. The case was publicized in the mainstream media with the Toronto Star on May 9, 2014. The case was put before Justice Beaudoin in December 2014, and wherein Justice Beaudoin dismissed his claim, but invited him to return with a new claim along with more daycare claimants and a plethora of inculpatory evidence against the Ministry of Education. Gerald Jutsun has now completed his 8 year daycare fraud investigation and refers to the criminal enterprise as the "Liberal Daycare Organized Crime Syndicate".

He is preparing his new claim for Tiny Town Daycare to be served on the Ministry of Education, along with dozens of additional daycare owners and which has already commenced in court with Virginia Conrads and Tiny Amigos Limited v. HMQRO, with court file #CV-19-621582. The oppressed daycare claimants are all former daycare owners who did not pay the cash bribes for government daycare licenses, but were attacked and shut down. Fraud Investigator Gerry Jutsun never paid the requisite cash bribes for his daycare licenses; but was cautioned to cease and desist his meritorious investigation into the Liberal Daycare Organized Crime Syndicate, or else he would face strong legal actions. No legal reprisals ever came from the Liberal Ministry of Education.

What is still perplexing and unresolved by Gerry Jutsun, is where he believes over $10 Million dollars in Cash Bribes for provincial daycare licenses has been stashed and sequestered, most likely offshore. He did alert then Finance Minister Charles Sousa of the facilitation of daycare licenses with Cash Bribes, but Charles Sousa failed to investigate the cash bribes occurring under his watch, and then ultimately disavowed any knowledge of Fraud Investigator Gerry Jutsun during the 2018 election. All Investigative Audit Fraud Reports are also delivered to FINTRAC - the Financial Transactions Reports Analysis Centre in Ottawa. It would seem obtuse that Finance Minister Charles Sousa would distance himself from the Fraud Investigator who is a reporting agent to FINTRAC.

A protest at Queens Park is being planned during the election by the victims of the preceding Liberal government frauds, and which will focus on current sitting MP Kathleen Wynne, but which imposes a duty of care to restore all fraud victims and provide redress by Premier Doug Ford's Conservative government.

Prime Minister hopeful Erin O'Toole is promising tough anti-corruption laws, but this has not been defined or expanded upon for protecting the average Canadian. However Fraud Investigator Gerry Jutsun states that it certainly should start with the reformation and restoral of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario and the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. With daycare and childcare as the number one priority for this Federal election, Fraud Investigator Gerry Jutsun states that you cannot have a safe and protected childcare system in Canada, while massive fraud and corruption has infected the government daycare licensing processes.

As Gerry Jutsun states it, "...redress and reform are needed to cure the dysfunctional and corrupted daycare processes that have festered under the Liberal government stewardship".

The question is whether the Conservatives have the political will and steely determination to make the necessary reforms and restore the victims of the Liberal crimes with redress and restitution. Further fraud reports and lawsuits will be disclosed in the media as the evolution of the largest frauds within the history of Canada unfolds.

Mr. Gerry Jutsun may be contacted at FSI Fraud Security Investigations and Jutsun & Company Law Associates via email at gjutsun@fsifraud.com and gjutsun@jutsunlaw.com or by phone at 647.708.9069

SOURCE JMG Publicist

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2021/25/c2713.html

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Fraud Investigator Releases 10 Year Investigation on Liberal Government Frauds - Yahoo Finance

How does one change an entire culture from a republic, to an autocracy, or even to socialism?

First and foremost, patience is essential. Like 30 or 40 plus years of patience. Patience that is fortified with a steady, slow progress of infiltration.

The infiltration of four pillars of our society is necessary; academia, media, the judiciary and finally, the halls and offices of government.

It began in the classrooms of our universities. Just a few with very liberal ideas to begin the process of indoctrination of the young minds as they begin their experiences of independence from parental day-to-day supervision. Not a difficult task, but one that takes time. Patience will win out though, for those who are hooked continue the indoctrination of their friends. Just a few years.

The schools of journalism, law and political science are fertile grounds for continuing the mission of change. This all takes time and patience.

After a few years, young journalists who have accepted the idea of change as being their whole purpose of being, begin to spew their newfound philosophy over the airways and in print.

At the same time, many young law students are being prepared for the roles which they will play in this evolution. But just being lawyers isnt enough. They have to occupy the judiciary, where they can bring about liberal outcomes with their court decisions. Patience, more patience.

Later, many of those students enter the field of political science. A broad field, comprised of, as you might guess, academia, journalists and judiciary. Now, they are proposing our laws through their academic think tanks, making our laws through our lawmakers, and enforcing our laws through our judiciary. And the media constantly reassures us that all of it is in our best interest.

Changing a country doesnt happen overnight. It takes years of preparation, and a lot of patience.

We are watching the rewards of all that patience.

Read this article:

Letter to the Editor: Indoctrination begins with just a few liberal ideas - The Franklin Sun

The Talibans victory in Afghanistan is being described not only as an undoubted blow to the USs pride and prestige but also a repudiation of the approach to foreign policy known as liberal interventionism. This approach is far more ambitious than simply looking after the nations security in a hazardous world. It seeks to create a more congenial security environment by leading distressed countries to stability and prosperity by defeating illiberal elements and introducing democratic forms of government.

According to critics on the left, this was always a neo-imperialist project, seeking to impose alien norms on countries without regard for their cultural fit. It was a product of the post-Cold War globalist hubris, as if the triumph over communism permitted Western countries to reshape the world along their own ideological lines and to suit their economic interests. A different critique was developed by realist theorists of international relations, who warned against a misplaced idealism that led to meddling in places where Westerners were not wanted and which they could not properly understand, while distracting policymakers from their responsibilities to look after core national interests.

Amid the good riddance and I told you so contingents there are those who point to the achievements of Western interventions and defend the motives behind them. The alarm at the return of the misogynist and remorseless Taliban, and the desperation of so many Afghans to leave, is a reminder that for all that has gone wrong there is much to be said for making even modest progress towards a tolerant, liberal society. Others worry that if the lesson of Afghanistan is for the West to stick to the narrowest definition of self-interest, then that will mean the richest and most powerful nations sit and watch as terrible things happen around the world without them lifting a finger to help.

The competing claims about the meaning of liberal interventionism and its application need to be scrutinised with care. It was never as coherent or consistent an approach as is now being suggested. Western governments began to limit their expectations for interventions a decade ago, preferring to confine their contributions to special forces, drones and air power, and avoiding keeping substantial land forces in countries where they could appear as armies of occupation. The reason Kabul fell so swiftly was that the US had already wound down its military commitment. Moreover, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were the exception rather than the rule. Until the campaigns launched under the heading of the war on terror, interventionism had some notable successes.

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The chronology of interventionism can be neatly divided into three separate decades 1991 to 2001, 2001-2011, and 2011 to now. The first of these began in April 1991 with support for the Iraqi Kurds. The rebellious Kurds had regularly been persecuted by Saddam Husseins regime. After Iraqi forces had been pushed out of Kuwait, the Kurds rose again and faced a merciless repression. This time, however, the region was still full of Western media and troops. The Kurds plight could not easily be ignored. After some hesitation, the US, UK and France established protected safe havens to allow them to return to their homes.

Within months this was followed by the start of wars in the former Yugoslavia, as Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia broke away from the Serbian-led government, fomenting vicious civil wars marked by ethnic cleansing. Western interventions here were supported by UN Security Council resolutions and were presented as humanitarian in motive. By following the restrained approach of UN peacekeeping forces, they were also initially tentative and ineffectual. It was only after the massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in July 1995 by Serb paramilitaries, with Dutch peacekeepers being pushed aside, that a more robust approach was adopted, taking on Serb forces directly. This led the next year to the Dayton peace accords which kept Bosnia as a unitary state, although with a Serb part.

The last of this series of wars was in Kosovo. This was part of Serbia, although only a minority of the population was Serbian. Nato, anxious to avoid another Srebrenica, warned the Serb leader Slobodan Miloevic that suppression of the Kosovars would invite a harsh response. When the suppression resumed in March 1999 this triggered an air campaign, initially on a small scale but eventually turning into something more substantial, with direct strikes on targets in Belgrade. It lasted until June when Miloevic agreed to withdraw his forces from the province. In this case there was no unanimity on the Security Council, as Russia opposed Natos action.

The Kosovo War was the backdrop to Tony Blairs Chicago speech, which the prime minister delivered in April 1999, just before a Nato summit in Washington where the faltering campaign in Kosovo was high on the agenda. It is now taken as a seminal statement of the interventionist doctrine. It is worth noting that, contrary to what this speech is assumed to have said, Blair was explicit that one state should not feel it has the right to change the political system of another or foment subversion or seize pieces of territory to which it feels it should have some claim. He described the most pressing foreign policy problem we face as identifying the circumstances in which we should get actively involved in other peoples conflicts. This accepted that not all situations that appeared to demand a response would get one.

Heroes welcome: ethnic Albanians greet US Nato troops in Gnjilane, Kosovo, June 1999. Credit:Ami Vitale/Getty Images

Five considerations were suggested, which I drafted. Are we sure of our case? Have we exhausted diplomatic alternatives? Are there feasible military options? Are we prepared for the long haul? And is the action in the national interest? It is perhaps worth noting that, at least in my mind, they were meant to be restrictive, answering the accusation that Nato was giving itself carte blanche to intervene anywhere at will. These are still questions worth asking when a new intervention is proposed.

Whatever the importance attached to Blairs speech, in retrospect more controversial at the time was his lobbying of President Bill Clinton to get him to reverse his opposition to putting ground forces into Kosovo. It is important to recall how wary the US was of these operations. Past experience was hardly encouraging. In addition to the painful memories of Vietnam there were also those of the 241 American marines engaged in a peacekeeping mission who were blown up in Beirut in October 1983 (along with 58 French paratroopers in a separate attack). As the wars in Croatia and Bosnia intensified the Americans sought to stay clear.

To demonstrate its humanitarian credentials, in 1992 the US agreed to help get food and medical supplies to beleaguered parts of Somalia, then succumbing to a civil war. This effort got caught up in a wider war, leading to the Black Hawk down incident in Mogadishu in October 1993, when 19 US Rangers were killed. This made Clinton even more anxious to avoid similar commitments, especially in Africa, which is why he took no action to stop the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, something he later bitterly regretted. Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 people were killed by Hutu extremists, came to be cited as Exhibit A in the case for interventionism, an example of what can happen if the West decides to do nothing to prevent or halt a developing tragedy.

Clinton was persuaded that he could not ignore developments in Bosnia and Kosovo, but he remained a reluctant intervener, confining the US contribution largely to air power. His reluctance was more than shared by the American military, also scarred by Vietnam. Its commanders wanted to stick to proper soldiering and preparations for big wars against major powers without being diverted into what they saw as constabulary duties and social work. This was also the view of President George W Bushs administration when it came to power in 2001. Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, derided Blairs Chicago speech.

In Europe, however, there was a contrasting view. The interventionism of the previous decade was judged to have been on balance successful. Although he had not been toppled directly by Nato, Miloevic had been unable to hold on to power in Serbia. Meanwhile Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo were starting to recover from their past traumas and beginning to be integrated into European institutions. An opportunistic British action in Sierra Leone in 2000, which brought some stability to the country, was added to the list of successes. A new norm highlighting the responsibility to protect was being developed. In all of this Bush showed little interest.

With al-Qaedas attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, the next decade of interventionism began. A cautious approach to international engagement was jettisoned in favour of an expansive one. Instead of focusing on the specific threat posed by al-Qaeda and other Islamist organisations, Bush decided to declare a global war on all terrorist groups. Out of fears that somehow terrorists might get hold of chemical or even nuclear weapons, he concluded that this campaign required taking out Iraqs leader Saddam Hussein, who was undoubtedly a continuing nuisance but had no role in 9/11. Elsewhere Islamist groups began to commit their own outrages in support of al-Qaeda, leading to numerous separate counterterrorist operations, including within Western countries. Only in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, did the US and allies commit forces to substantial land campaigns.

In both cases the rationales for intervention related to national security. In Afghanistan the objective of the invasion in October 2001 was to eliminate al-Qaeda. As the Taliban government refused to unconditionally hand over Osama bin Laden it became the target. At first the allies were anxious to avoid sending a large army, so CIA agents and special forces worked with the Afghan Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban, calling in American air power to assist. It was well into the campaign before it dawned on Washington that a new government was needed for Afghanistan.

In Iraq in 2003 the US hoped to follow the same formula, until it realised that the anti-Saddam forces were too small to cope with the Iraqi army. In this case the explicit American objective was regime change, yet here too they had only thought through the toppling part of the process. The plans for forming a new government and administering Iraq were woefully underdeveloped.

[see also:Afghanistans plight and its contested future are a reassertion of the brutal realities of geography]

Neither of these campaigns therefore began as liberal interventions. With both, the Bush administrations original intention was to find local leaders to take over the government and let them get on with it. Eventually, it realised that any new government would need help building up its own armed forces to deal with the resurgence of hostile groups. As the security situations deteriorated, the new governments struggled to function and to establish their legitimacy. Their weakness meant that the Americans and their allies, especially the British, could not walk away. They found themselves stuck, fighting determined adversaries and taking significant casualties, with economic recovery faltering and corruption rampant. The gains in human rights were often at best modest. Public opinion at home became disenchanted, yet there seemed to be no way of bringing these wars to a satisfactory conclusion.

By the end of this second decade Iraq was showing signs of stability. The insurgents had overreached themselves and more US troops in 2007 had helped improve the security situation, at least temporarily. After a torrid spell in Basra the British were able to withdraw in 2009. That year President Barack Obama (with vice-president Joe Biden opposed) was persuaded that a surge in American troops might achieve comparable results in Afghanistan, but he put a time limit on the effort and it eventually petered out. The only strategy left was to attempt to build up the capacity of the Afghan government, including its armed forces. Obama also declared the Iraq War over and pulled out the bulk of American troops.

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This was the Wests position in early 2011 when the Arab Spring was gathering momentum. The wave of protests, which began in Tunisia, was initially a hopeful development, in which local dictators came under pressure from popular movements campaigning for more democracy. Sadly, the results did not match the hopes of the crowds. In Egypt the revolution got Hosni Mubarak out of government. After he was replaced by a figure from the Muslim Brotherhood, the army mounted a coup and put its own man in power. In Yemen the turmoil led to an intensification of an ongoing and bloody civil war. But the most important cases, in terms of the history of Western interventionism, were those of Libya and Syria.

President Gaddafi of Libya responded to popular protests by violent means. In March 2011, when it appeared that rebels in Benghazi were about to be massacred, Frances President Sarkozy and the British prime minister David Cameron, with a doubtful Obama coming in behind, agreed on emergency air strikes to provide a degree of protection. The strikes continued under Nato auspices and with UN backing (the Russians believed they were misled by the resolutions wording) as the emboldened rebels moved against Gaddafi. He was eventually killed in October. Whatever the hopes that a relatively small and oil-rich country might get a competent government in place quickly, the aftermath was disappointingly chaotic. A nasty regime was toppled without the insertion of Western armies, but with no presence on the ground they could do little to stop armed militias fighting each other.

The situation in Syria was even worse. President Bashar al-Assad defended his regime with extreme violence. While Western countries willed his departure they would not will the means to make this happen. They gave arms and assistance to some of the many rebel groups fighting him, but were hampered because a number were Islamist extremists. In 2012 Obama said that if he saw chemical weapons being used against civilians that would be a red line, but when the evidence came the next summer he held back. In this he was influenced by Camerons loss of a parliamentary vote that would have authorised UK participation in any strikes against Syrian targets.

In 2014 Islamic State stormed into Iraq. The group was based on the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda which had gained strength in Syria. The larger and better-equipped Iraqi security forces fled just as the Afghan forces would run from the Taliban in 2021. Isis, however, did not get as far as Baghdad. This time the Americans moved to stop the group, first with the Kurds as allies. Eventually the Iraqi security forces regrouped. Supported by American air power they pushed Isis back, culminating in 2017 in a destructive but eventually successful battle for the city of Mosul. This confirmed what had become a preferred model for interventions: indigenous ground forces, supported by special forces, drones and air strikes.

Pockets of resistance: anti-Taliban forces in Bazarak, Panjshir province on 19 August 2021. Credit:AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Although Isis was repelled, the speed with which it had emerged had demonstrated the potential consequences of removing the props with which the US had held up shaky regimes. Nonetheless, Western leaders continued to look for the exit. Despite the Talibans growing strength, President Trump made clear his desire to get out of Afghanistan. In early 2020 he authorised a deal with the Taliban, over the heads of the Afghan government, that effectively set up the group to take over the country as the Americans departed. Joe Bidens presidential campaign was conducted on the basis that he would end this forever war.

In 2013 France had successfully acted against an Islamist insurgency in Mali, but now President Macron is trying to work out how to extract a large force in this part of Africa without the original problem returning. And Biden now has to decide whether to go ahead with the planned withdrawal of remaining US troops from Iraq at the end of the year.

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The era of liberal interventionism did not therefore end suddenly in August 2021. It is not yet over, as some interventions are still under way, and there will be new ones in the future, albeit probably on more modest scales. There will always be some pressure for them to be liberal, as Western governments do not wish to be seen to be backing regimes that suppress human rights, though of course for their own strategic reasons at times they do. They can put pressure on those they are supporting to allow a free press, education for women, open elections and so on. But one of the lessons from the past three decades, including in Afghanistan, is how difficult it can be to install a friendly government; they might make liberal noises but often lack the necessary capacity and legitimacy to cope with hostile forces.

What has come to an end is the period when there would be a serious interest in committing a large army into anothers civil war, but that has been the case for more than a decade now. In overseeing such extensive military action twice, George W Bush was the aberration. Neither his predecessors nor his successors were keen on the idea.

Once external forces are put into a country to stabilise it there will always be concern that when they are removed instability will return, especially if the original security problem has not been resolved. Future interventions are therefore more likely to need a capable and authentic government in place and worth backing, and not one that has to be created from scratch.

Military action will consist largely of air power and drones. These unmanned vehicles, controlled from thousands of miles away, able to loiter above targets, providing intelligence but also capable of mounting strikes, have become the preferred weapons of counterterrorism campaigns. It is a salutary thought that if 9/11 had happened a few years later, the US might not have bothered about the Taliban but relied instead on drones to find and assassinate Osama bin Laden.

Without large armies in the field, interventions are less likely to attract opposition at home. But this will also impose limits on what they can achieve. Power comes from controlling territory, and a lack of presence on the ground will make it harder to shape local political institutions and develop local security forces. Regime change was never essential to the interventionist project and will become even less likely now, unless a regime has collapsed of its own accord and measures need to be taken to deal with the resulting anarchy.

A turn to more modest and occasional interventions will be welcomed by some, tired of long and apparently futile campaigns. Yet, that will leave many people around the world caught in cycles of insecurity, poverty and despair with climate change adding to their number.

Many conflicts persist with only desultory attempts from the international community to bring them to a halt or address their causes. Even when local powers have stepped in, as has been the case in sub- Saharan Africa, the problems have often been compounded more than resolved. Western powers have had to be choosy hence the Chicago criteria and some of their choices have been better than others. Russia has managed a successful, although hardly liberal, intervention in Syria, but lacks the resources to rebuild the country. The Taliban will now struggle with a broken economy.

There will still be occasions when the application of Western military power can make a difference. There also remains, of course, plenty that can be done by non-military means, for example providing development assistance and investment in infrastructure. As we face a tragic reminder of the limits to military interventions, it might make sense to keep in mind what can be done without the use of force.

Lawrence Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies at Kings College London and author of The Future of War: A History (Penguin)

[see also:Rory Stewart interview: Why Afghanistan marks the end of liberal interventionism]

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Last of the forever wars: Afghanistan and the limits of liberal intervention - New Statesman

Voters in three Liberal-held federal seats in metropolitan Sydney remain worried about climate change despite the pressing frustrations and uncertainties associated with the Delta outbreak, according to new electorate-level polling commissioned by an activist group.

New seat polls commissioned by Climate 200, an organisation supporting independent political candidates committed to achieving a science-based response to climate change, suggest global heating is the number one issue of concern for voters in the electorates of Wentworth and North Sydney.

In the electorate of Mackellar on Sydneys northern beaches, climate change ranks number two on a priority list. Economic management remains the number one issue for Mackeller, with climate change at two and management of the Covid-19 pandemic three.

The list of priorities that poll respondents were asked to rank were economic management, healthcare, the handling of the pandemic, climate change and the environment, education, and the treatment of women.

In the seat of Wentworth, climate change was ranked first, with Covid ranking second and economic management third. In North Sydney, the climate was first, economic management second, and Covid third.

The polls also suggest the base level of community support for an independent political candidate in the seats currently held by Liberal moderates ranges between 10% and 16%.

That level of support among respondents doubled when people were asked whether or not they would support an independent like Zali Steggall who took the seat of Warringah from the former prime minister Tony Abbott in 2019.

There has been a debate since the 2019 election about whether Australias national political polls are accurate, and individual seat polls are not always reliable.

The polls in the three Sydney electorates, taken in the middle of August, report sample sizes of more than 600 respondents, and the pollster UComms says the surveys margin of error is plus or minus 4.2%.

While individual seat polls in Australia have a very chequered record, a number of national opinion surveys, including the Guardian Essential poll, suggest Australian voters have maintained their concern about Australias lack of substantial action on climate change even as the pandemic has dominated everyday life since early 2020.

The Liberal incumbents in the three seats, Dave Sharma, Trent Zimmerman and Jason Falinski, are acutely aware that their constituents are focused on climate action, and have been vocal during Scott Morrisons attempted pivot in the direction of a net zero pledge ahead of the Cop26 in Glasgow in November.

Under sustained pressure from moderates in his party room, and from Australias allies particularly the United States and the United Kingdom to increase Australias level of ambition on climate action, the prime minister says he wants to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible and preferably by 2050.

He has also hinted Australia might update its current 2030 target ahead of Glasgow. But Morrisons attempt to shift his government is complicated by resistance from National party MPs, with some declaring they will not tolerate any firm commitment by the prime minister to net zero by the middle of the century.

Simon Holmes Court, convenor of Climate 200, said the new polling suggested that climate-focused candidates were viable in these [Liberal] heartland seats.

A pro-climate crossbench holding the balance of power is the shortest and surest path to ensuring that the next parliament ends Australias lost decade on climate change and makes real inroads on restoring integrity to our political system, Holmes Court said.

All else remaining equal, voting in three more pro-climate independents at the next election would force either major party to deliver the change Australians want.

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Voters in Sydneys Liberal heartland more worried about climate than Covid, polling suggests - The Guardian Australia