Khadr deal was ‘oblivious to law, disrespectful to our values’
Omar Khadr deserves a second chance but the circumstances do not warrant paying him anything for it
In a recent column written by Thomas Walkom (July 18, “Khadr deal recognizes Ottawa went too far in war on terror”), he endorsed the “Omar Khadr deal,” which he said was a sign of the times, marking “the belated recognition that Canada went overboard in the war against terror.”
In doing so he misses the point entirely. While there is a very legitimate argument that we may have, as he says, gone overboard in this regard, we were, in fact, committed to that struggle. Our national policy supported the effort. Activist judges and the retrospective musings of politicians cannot change that fact. I suspect, however, that in pushing for the deal they delighted in trying to rewrite the facts and, to a certain extent, thumb their collective noses at the Americans, suggesting that we knew better all along and this is our way of getting back at you for dragging us into that quagmire.
All too often in their world, current popular narrative triumphs over facts. Those facts present an unquestionable account. Numerous young Canadians risked their lives, some losing them, others disabled for life, resisting a force that not only deliberately murders the innocent but believes in a society where there is no free speech, no right of assembly, no democracy, where women are degraded and subjugated, as a matter of policy, to subservient status and where every conceivable restriction, from denial of basic education to what one can wear, is imposed on its populace.
Canada resisted the forces advancing these positions. Khadr and the others did not, preferring to support them actively and violently. Their actions were ones of treason. It is not a matter of interpretation. This fact does not change because of contemporary political thought respecting the merits of the policy of that time.
The deal’s proponents speak with such certainty as to our liability. Really? The Geneva Convention had no application in this instance. Further, Canada was not required to extricate him from custody. Such an option is a matter of discretion, to be exercised when and where the government believes the circumstances are warranted.
As to the Charter, its application can be limited or removed with its “notwithstanding clause.” It might have been suggested that treason and the killing and maiming of soldiers allied with us might have justified imposing such a
limitation. You won’t hear that from this government, however, concerned as they are with some perverse interpretation of what it sees as fairness, I fail to share that effete sense of self-righteous indignation so manifest on the Ottawa cocktail circuit and among its political class who speak as if our blameworthiness is without question. Yet, let us give this manufactured high ground to those who delight in this view. Let us forgive Khadr from any guilt. Let us equally absolve his family and Taliban colleagues. It is Canadian actions that are to blame after all. Where does that leave us on damages?
It is said that he who comes seeking equitable relief must do so with clean hands.
How clean were Omar Khadr’s hands? Did joining a terrorist organization dirty them any? Did attempting to kill Canadian military personnel sully them? Did fighting for a system of values at total odds with the ones he later and conveniently sought to use to advance his claims make them any less blood stained? Did killing one person and disabling another mean anything? It would seem none of these things mattered. What were Mr. Khadr’s intentions when he went to Afghanistan? Were they honourable ones in keeping with Canadian values? Surely intentions should matter in the determination of what is just and proper?
It was said he was too young at age 15 to be responsible. Why then do we feel comfortable charging countless Canadians of that age for lesser offences?
If Khadr suffered any misfortune, he was its principal author and his deeds its proximate cause. Make no mistake about it. This deal had nothing whatever to do with the proper application of law. At its core was a politics of the most venal variety. One that denies discourse and debate and instead engages in the subterfuge offered by delusion.
This government may suggest
its hand was forced but do not for a moment accept such a canard. It was from the outset the directing hand and mind, if you will, of the entire enterprise. Its actions and not the supposed violation of Mr. Khadr’s rights represent the greater threat to our Constitution and the system it upholds. The Constitution was used as a crude club to hammer at past policies, seeking to undo their legitimacy in support of a competing agenda and set of priorities.
Khadr deserves a second chance. If he is reformed he should be welcomed back into Canadian society and accorded all the rights of every Canadian. However, the circumstances of his actions and subsequent imprisonment (for them) do not warrant paying him anything.
This deal was oblivious to law, disrespectful to our values and, perhaps most telling, an insult to the thousands of Canadians, past and present, who struggled to build a society where those values flourish.
It is a good and decent society of equally good and decent people. No greater measure of that goodness can be found than in the fact that Mr. Khadr, once an exponent of its destruction, is now welcomed back into it.
“The Geneva Convention had no application in this instance. Further, Canada was not required to extricate him from custody.”