The situation in Iraq is ugly and as the campaign against ISIS progresses pressure to expand our military involvement will likely grow. Parliamentary debate will be critical to keep things in check; and this works best when no single party has the moral high ground. On this, so far, so good.Of course, the party leaders insist that the spaces between them are immense, especially between the government's willingness to engage in combat and the opposition parties' call to supply arms or engage in non-combat roles. And there are important differences here.But as the debates of the past week have made clear, these differences are less profound than our leaders suggest. It doesn't much matter whether Canadians are dropping the bombs, supplying the guns or training the soldiers. There is a moral continuum here and if we are in it, we are part of it.To find a really different view of the situation, we must look outside Parliament. Perhaps the best example is former UN ambassador Robert Fowler's piece in last Saturday's Globe. It rebuts not only Stephen Harper, but Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau and even Elizabeth May. Indeed, it can be read as an indictment of Parliament's take on the issue.Fowler's willingness to say what no one in Parliament will say puts the conflict in a very different light. He challenges readers to consider the situation with the same ruthless rigor and consistency as ISIS. To defeat the enemy, we must think like the enemy.ISIS aims to establish a caliphate in Iraq. It puts few conditions on how to achieve this, with death and destruction being very admissible costs. It has also demonstrated a ferocious will to carry out its plan.If we are going to war with ISIS, Fowler believes it should be on terms no less committed or ruthless. We should come at the task with a resolve that is as singular as theirs. We must be ready, willing and able to do what it takes to “excise the jihadi malignancy.” It will not be pretty.In the end, however, Fowler doubts that Canadians have such resolve: “We seem incapable of making the case, even to ourselves, that if these guys really represent a threat to our way of life, then it behooves us to do the nasty necessary to eradicate that threat.”As we cannot or will not entertain the measures required, he concludes, the only thing is to withdraw—completely—leaving behind nothing that could make the enemy stronger, neither weapons nor aid. Our half-hearted efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan—both military and humanitarian—are the regrettable causes of our current grief. Partial action of any kind is worse than none.Fowler's piece is a brilliant channelling of the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's will to power. If we are to choose war, Fowler might say, let us do it in the full light of day. The scope of this option makes it impossible not to notice how bunched up around the moral centre our political leaders are. If their differences seem significant from within Parliament, comparing them with Fowler shows us how little moral space they actually occupy.I think this is a good thing. Far from a weakness, our unwillingness to play Fowler's game is exactly what distinguishes us from ISIS. He seems to have lost sight of the fact that our way of life cannot be saved by compromising or abandoning the values on which it rests. Tolerance, respect and liberty are not tribal values, but universal values. While Fowler rightly notes that ISIS—and much of the world—do not see them as such, the real point is that this is how we see them.Fowler also underestimates the capacity of societies like our own to match the kind of bloody-mindedness his plan requires. Our liberal values stand in tension with a residual tribalism that lies not far below the surface. So far, the impulse to respond to ISIS in kind has been checked by our revulsion at being no different from it.But if the current campaign takes a turn for the worse, these tensions may surface. War is the perfect environment for demagoguery and we owe it to ourselves to guard against it. In fact, we are eminently capable of thinking like our enemies. Indeed, a great fear in going to war is precisely that we will. The really frightening side of Fowler's view is how openly it invites us to unleash our darker nature, while liberalism has worked for three centuries to rein it in.From this viewpoint, our leaders' disagreements over the mission are not a bad thing, even welcome. It means no one has captured the moral high ground, and we should be glad of it. This is a time when they should occupy it jointly. To hold the moral centre now is to resist the extremes toward which Fowler calls us—it is to refuse to think like our enemies.Crowding around the centre is the right place to be.Dr. Don Lenihan is an internationally recognized expert on democracy, public engagement, accountability and service delivery. Since 2009, he has been Senior Associate at Canada's Public Policy Forum in Ottawa. From October 2013 to April 2014, Don served as Chair of the Ontario Open Government Engagement Team. The views expressed here are those of the columnist alone. Don can be reached at: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at: @DonLenihan