It was an unspeakably cold day in Ottawa ten years ago in February on the 15th in 2003 when a word-wide movement to protest the anticipated war against Iraq took place. I decided I would go to support the anti-war protest taking place in downtown Ottawa. It wouldn't have been the first anti-war protest that I would have attended. I liked to think I did it in memory of my mother who was an inveterate marcher for peace.

I recall watching Colin Powell - then the American Secretary of Defence, a man who had wide credibility as someone who resisted waging war unless it was really necessary, having been co-opted into the role of frontman-and-explainer at the United Nations for his administration - in a televised bid to convince the UN that what his country was about to undertake was required to ensure that the tyrannical Saddam Hussein did not have the opportunity to use his weapons of mass destruction. And explaining in minute detail with accompanying graphics the mobile laboratories the U.S. laid claim to proving Saddam Hussein was involved in producing weapons of mass destruction. The claim that the Iraqi Baathist regime was busy with an alarming chemical and biological weapons program justified the anticipated invasion.

It seemed clear that the U.S. had done its work in disrupting al-Qaeda's stronghold in Afghanistan as guests of the Taliban, when a coalition of NATO forces spearheaded by the United States, responded to the terrorist attack on the U.S. of September 11, 2001. It seemed clear that George W. Bush was hell bent on drawing Iraq into the cross-hairs of his avenging reaction to that atrocity on American soil, even though there was abundant evidence that there was no connection between the brutal regime of Saddam and the sinister machinations of al-Qaeda.

In any event, there I was, bundled up against the cold, trying to preserve body heat, among a crowd of other well-meaning citizens. And there were, among those who travelled to that downtown destination to be part of a righteous peaceful demonstration to convince the Government of Canada to remain uninvolved in this venture to bring an invasive war to a foreign country that posed no threat to us, even while it was governed by a viciously murderous tyrant, those standing on the periphery marching alongside, holding aloft signs that bore the hallmarks of Hamas and Hezbollah, nuclear-arms-seeking Iran's terrorist affiliates, naming Israel as the world's most dangerous, war-mongering nation.

Now, as we stand on the cusp of an entirely new revolution in world affairs, where the viral disease of fascist Islamism is spreading inexorably throughout the Middle East, northern and western Africa, which has begun its iron grip on an immense geography, with the added threat of having implanted tentacles throughout Europe and North America, Canada is once again confronted with the need to make a decision whether to become involved in the struggle against fanatical Islamism, to join France in its war on al-Qaeda affiliated terror groups infiltrating throughout the region, setting the stage for growth and eventual spread that will be more difficult to extricate from that vast geography.

After Canada's long, painful involvement in Afghanistan and the losses sustained there, against the view of the future that appears as though it has all been in vain, along with the debacle that became the outcome of the Libyan intervention resulting in its spillover into northwestern Africa, there is a conflicted mindset.

It has become imperative that we recognize the threat that ideological, violent Islamism poses. We are not left with many options other than to understand that if we do not respond there will be more atrocities, more tragedies, and greater infiltrations more difficult to respond to and effectively turn back, and that the West will inevitably be involved, however unwillingly, because we already have become a part of the invasion, the infiltration, the recruitment of homegrown young Muslims to the greater glory of 'pure' Islam, to result in a universal Caliphate and the death of our own set of values, concerns and imperatives.