Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has made a huge mistake. He has made allegations in a manner which he has not been able to back. There are two possibilities here, either he was shooting from the hip and he does not have the evidence to support the accusations he made against the Indian govt or there is something there, in which case he needs to explain why his govt was sheltering a terrorist with blood on his hands.
#WashingtonDC #Canada #Pentagon
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#WashingtonDC #Canada #Pentagon
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00:00 My name is Michael Rubin. I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
00:05 and a former Pentagon official.
00:06 Prime Minister Trudeau, I think, has made a huge mistake. He has made allegations in a manner
00:17 which he hasn't been able to back. There's two possibilities here. Either he was shooting from
00:22 the hip and he doesn't have the evidence to support the accusations he made against the
00:27 Indian government or there is something there in which case he needs to explain why his government
00:36 was sheltering a terrorist with blood on his hands. Well, as a former consumer of intelligence,
00:41 I can say that oftentimes the intelligence we see, whether it's a telephone intercept or something
00:47 else, isn't as black and white, isn't as cut and dry as oftentimes politicians want it to become.
00:54 I mean, certainly that was the case with regard to the Iraq war. So when you have a situation like
00:58 this, perhaps Prime Minister Trudeau raised the issue, but there wasn't necessarily consensus
01:04 on what it meant. And regardless, let's not fool ourselves. Hardeep Sin Nijjar was not simply a
01:20 plumber any more than Osama bin Laden was a construction engineer. He had blood on his hands
01:26 through multiple attacks. And therefore, while Secretary of State Blinken may, after the fact,
01:33 say that the United States will always stand against transnational repression,
01:37 we're actually being hypocritical if Secretary Blinken makes that statement because after all,
01:43 what we're talking about isn't transnational repression. We're talking about transnational
01:47 terrorism. And what the United States did to Qasem Soleimani and what the United States did to Osama
01:52 bin Laden is really no different than what India is alleged to have done in this case.
01:58 I'm not sure that the allies are convinced with Trudeau's theory or that they interpret
02:04 the importance of the matter to the same degree that Justin Trudeau does. First of all, let's
02:10 give one analogy. When Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul, the Turks were able to provide
02:19 intelligence support right away, which is why the world rallied around Saudi Arabia in this case.
02:26 But Justin Trudeau, again, he seemed to have shot from the hip. He hasn't been able to release
02:31 any definitive intelligence. And as time goes on, it raises the question about whether there's any
02:36 there there when Justin Trudeau says, trust me, no one trusts him in the best of times,
02:41 all the more so against the backdrop of an election campaign he's presently losing.
02:46 And so this is the reason why there is such great doubt or caution on the part of the United States
02:53 and the other Five Eyes community. Well, frankly, there's a much greater danger for Canada than
02:58 India. If Canada wants to pick a fight, frankly, at this point, it's like an ant picking a fight
03:05 against an elephant. And the fact of the matter is India is the world's largest democracy.
03:09 It's far more important strategically, arguably, than Canada is, especially as concern grows with
03:18 regard to China and other matters in the Indian Ocean Basin and in the Pacific. So first, there's
03:25 that. Second of all, again, while Justin Trudeau might want to make this a case of human rights,
03:32 the fact of the matter is the Nijar isn't isn't a model one wants to use for human rights.
03:38 Nijar may have been involved in the assassination of a rival Sikh leader just a year ago.
03:46 At the same time, he has blood on his hands through multiple attacks. He entered Canada
03:52 with a fraudulent passport. And the fact of the matter is this is no Mother Teresa we're
03:57 talking about. And frankly, many in the United States security community, and I believe actually
04:02 many in the Canadian security community, probably understand that Justin Trudeau has gone too far.
04:08 So this isn't a fight he wants to have. I suspect that the United States doesn't want to be pinned
04:12 in the corner to choose between two friends. But if we have to choose between two friends,
04:17 increasingly, we're going to choose India on this matter, simply because the Nijar was a terrorist
04:23 and India is too important. Our relationship is too important. Justin Trudeau probably isn't long
04:29 for the Canadian premiership. And then we can get rebuild the relationship after he's gone.
04:35 What's your...
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