Well-Said!

Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I find myself thinking about the sad state of the world today, a state infinitely exacerbated by the current politics of the failed American Empire. Indeed, I had planned this morning to discuss at some length some of its spillover effects into our own country, not least of which is evident in the current incompetent and decidedly demagogic direction of the Conservative Party under Andrew Scheer. To suggest that Trump is responsible for this would be inaccurate and facile, but the permission the Orange Ogre has granted to the bigoted and the simple-minded to trumpet and revel in their ignorance is undeniable.

Although I am not really developing that theme today, I want to take a moment to make the following observation before getting to my purpose. That there was plenty of gutter politics under the old Harper regime is unquestionable, but I was initially a bit surprised that the Con Party under its new leader, Andrew Scheer, has embraced such a robust continuation of the same divisive themes; currently, the Omar Khadr compensation is the subject of his demonization. But then I realized that the kind of political 'narrowcasting,' the playing to the base at the expense of any pretense of representing Canadians in general, has gotten new life, given that Trump is making an art of it in the U.S.: Galvanize the base, ensure their blind, reflexive loyalty by appealing to their worst instincts, and make certain their hatreds and prejudices are so stoked that they vote.

What is, however, missing from the cynical calculations of Team Trump and the Scheer Stooges is the assumption that other people on both sides of the border, people of sanity, deliberation and a highly-developed sense of fair play, will sleep while the rabble have their way.

The following letters from today's Star give me hope for that quieter, but very potent, segment of our respective populations:

Re: Justin Trudeau had a choice on Khadr settlement, Opinion, July 26

In answer to federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s emotionally overwrought attack on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to make a payment to Omar Khadr in respect of the heinous behaviour of several Canadian governments responsible for his illegal incarceration at Guantanamo Bay, I can find agreement with one statement: “Principles are worth fighting for.”

Principles set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms apply to all Canadians. That is indeed a principle worth fighting for.

Sadly, Mr. Scheer and his like-minded followers believe they have a right to apply those Charter rights selectively. This emotional response is the same as that exhibited by the government of the day’s delegitimization/incarceration of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, and the denial of entry to Jewish refugees prior to the war, to name just two examples of demonizing, hate-mongering behaviour of Canadian governments.

Nevertheless, there are many Canadians, I believe a majority, who reject that past behaviour and agree with the current government’s payment to Mr. Khadr.

Indeed, the former Conservative government led by Stephen Harper approved a similar payment to Maher Arar. I do not recall Mr. Scheer sanctioning interviews to discredit the Harper government with U.S. news outlets or writing columns to the Star to evoke hatred against Maher or Harper.

That he engages in this behaviour now reveals his need to mimic the political rants so disgraceful south of the border. It demonstrates that he will make self-serving political decisions that benefit only some Canadians, but not all. Who is next to lose their Charter rights? Be careful, it could be you.

Liz Iwata, Pickering

Andrew Scheer says the Supreme Court ruled that Omar Khadr’s rights were violated and that the Conservatives recognized and accepted that finding.

His inconvenient truth is that the Supreme Court issued its finding in January 2010, and Khadr was repatriated in September 2012. It appears to have taken the Conservatives 2-1/2 years to accept the finding. Khadr then spent a further 2-1/2 years in prison before being finally released on bail in May 2015, after the government failed in a last-ditch attempt to deny bail.

Yes, the settlement was a Liberal decision. But the actions of the Conservative government were a large part of the decision.

Cheryl Adams, Toronto

Although Andrew Scheer has some counterpoints to the Omar Khadr debate worth discussing, he unfortunately leaves out one pressing detail to his entire argument: Khadr was a child soldier and his rights as a Canadian were violated, period.

No matter how much the Conservative Party spins this debate, it’s a strong and valid point that will always rise to the surface.

Bobby Leeson, Brampton

Canada's Ted Baxter

If you are old enough, you will likely have very fond memories of the Mary Tyler Show, you know, the one set in a TV newsroom staffed with an array of memorable characters. Perhaps most memorable was the station's newsman, Ted Baxter, played by the peerless Ted Knight. His antics, both on the air and off, fueled by a less than ample intellect, ensured continual amusement.



Whenever I see former newsman Peter Kent, I cannot help but think of Ted Baxter. Also of limited intellect and ability, Kent parlayed his genetic shortcomings into a post-news career in politics, where he shone dimly in the Harper government, reaching his nadir as anti-Minister of the Environment, championing as he did the development of Alberta tarsands.

Not content to rest on his 'achievements', Kent has now decided to do his civic duty to the U.S. by alerting them to the compensation awarded to Omar Khadhr via a Wall Street Journal article.

The item began with a description of Khadr killing an American army medic, Christopher Speer, when he was 15 years old and fighting alongside al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

It explained how Khadr won a court fight in Canada, was repatriated there, released on bail and then sued the Canadian government for $20 million.

The Conservative MP criticized the Trudeau government for settling with Khadr, while the victim's family got nothing.

By Monday afternoon the issue was the No. 1 story on the Fox News website.

The Fox News item quotes Kent's op-ed under the headline: "Gitmo Lottery: Canada makes millionaire out of terrorist who killed U.S. soldier."

As reported by The Globe, Kent's mischief had its intended effect:

“This story is repulsive,” said a Fox News host. To which former pizza entrepreneur and presidential candidate Herman Cain replied: “It is a pathetic interpretation of the law. Canada basically rewarded a murderer.”

The good folks at Fox, like the ravenous dogs they are, took Kent's bait, as you will see in the link.


Personally, I don't care what the Americans think of us. What I do care about is that a simpleton like Peter Kent feels compelled to try to fight a divisive issue in the U.S., where opinion and outrage seem to matter far more than the rule of law. In doing so, he is stoking more Canadian outrage, leading more and more people into some very, very dark waters.

Wading Through The Hysteria

About five years ago, I wrote a blog entry about a book that had a great impact on my understanding of the child soldier. Here is an excerpt from it:

I suppose I might feel differently about Omar Khadr if I hadn't read a particular book, A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah. It provided indelible insights into both the realities of the child soldier's world and the possibilities of redemption and rehabilitation. It should be read by everyone who is quick to judge and condemn Khadr.

Now 31 years old, Beah, a very bright, articulate and talented writer effectively conveyed in his memoir the horror of his experiences as a child soldier, conscripted into the army at the age of 13 to fight the rebels in Sierra Leone, although the bloody, inhumane behaviour of each side made them virtually impossible to distinguish.

I suspect it is the kind of world that Kadhr is very familiar with, uprooted as he was from Canada by his fanatical father at a young age and moved to Pakistan and Afghanistan to become part of Al Qaeda’s jihad against the West.

Facts and research are probably our strongest weapons against the hysterical and the politically opportunistic. And the facts surrounding the Omar Khadr compensation for the violation of his Charter Rights while incarcerated in Guantanamo are readily available.

In discussing the outrage emanating from some quarters about Khadr, the Star's Shree Paradkar writes:

When it became known last week that Canada was to issue an apology worth $10.5 million to former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, a Canadian, it came to many as a no-brainer.

After all, it aligned with Canadian values of freedom, ethics and social justice.

Morality aside, it wasn’t as if the government had a choice.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Khadr three times after his lawyers took the case to court, and in 2010 had unequivocally stated that Canadian officials had violated Khadr’s human rights under the Charter and that his treatment “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”

There was no chance of the government winning the $20 million civil suit Khadr’s lawyers had launched in 2004.

She goes on to us remind of some of the facts of Khadr's life:

It didn’t seem possible that any Canadians would look askance at making reparations with a man whose life has been shaped by repeated betrayals: his father Al-Qaeda fundraiser Ahmed Said Khadr who took him, an 8-year-old boy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, his mother Maha Elsamnah who supported this, the American military who instead of treating him as a child soldier (he was 15 when captured), detained, tortured and subjected him to an unfair trial, and Canada that — under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin’s Liberals and Harper’s Conservatives — abandoned him in the illegal hellhole that is Guantanamo Bay.

The Star's Michelle Shepherd, who wrote Guantanimo's Child and co-directed a documentary with the same title, can be considered an expert on the case. In today's Star, she also reminds us of some facts that the rabid right chooses to ignore:

... the main claim in Khadr’s $20-million civil suit is that Canadian officials violated his rights when they interrogated him in Guantanamo in 2003 and 2004, knowing he was a minor, without legal representation and had been subjected to torture.

A unanimous Supreme Court ruling in 2010 said they had.

The firefight in which U.S. soldier and medic Speer was killed, perhaps by Khadr or perhaps by someone else, is not the issue, but there are some interesting facts surrounding it:

Medics (unarmed civilians) have always been considered “protected persons” in conflict. Since the drafting of the Geneva Conventions, killing a medic is punishable as a war crime. But that is not what the Pentagon considered Speer. [Indeed, he was a decorated soldier and the medic on his elite Delta Force team.] And it was not what Khadr was prosecuted for.

Khadr was charged under the Military Commissions Act, drafted by the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which introduced an offence called “murder in violation of the laws of war.” Despite the deaths of thousands of U.S. service members in Iraq and Afghanistan, Khadr remains the only captive charged with killing a soldier.

Also writing in the Star, Azeezah Kanji says,

It is “absolutely wrong” that the U.S. re-wrote the laws of war at Guantanamo to retroactively criminalize its enemies: a laws of war of international law, which forbids prosecuting people for criminal offences invented after the fact. Khadr was charged as a war criminal for allegedly killing American soldier Christopher Speer — but killing an enemy soldier in combat is not a war crime. Under the international laws of armed conflict, soldiers can be killed because they are allowed to kill.

Khadr was accorded all the vulnerabilities of being a soldier, but none of the privileges. As senior officials in the Obama administration pointed out at the time, if Omar Khadr could be convicted of war crimes for “murdering” Sgt. Speer, then so could the CIA for its drone operations in countries such as Pakistan. But this was victor’s justice, meted out only against the vanquished.

And here is one more fact that the ideologues, ranters and opportunists choose to ignore but bears repeating:

Canada’s compensation to Khadr is not an act of largesse; the Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly found that Canada violated Khadr’s rights, and the UN Convention Against Torture obliges states to provide recompense to victims of abuse. (The convention also requires states to prosecute officials complicit in torture, which Canada has so far failed to do.)

None of this will likely make any difference to those who see Omar Khadr as some kind of demon, but for the rest of us, i.e. those who seek to develop informed opinions rather than indulge in mindless screeds, these facts are really the heart of the matter.