…or sending your underage daughter over to babysit at Vic Toews’ house?
Your choice. Personally, given the security at airports these days, I’d take my chances with Khadr, and would welcome the conversation I might have with him if he didn’t choose silence and the in-flight movie.
The latest Conservative objections to repatriating him, as they had promised the Americans they would, appear to have been scripted by faux-journalist Ezra Levant. His latest effusion is a scurrilous attack on Khadr, repeating every known canard about this former child-soldier. The testimony of a certain Michael Welner looms large in that book, and has been accepted more or less uncritically by some , and it is that testimony for which Vic Toews has suddenly discovered a crying need. It is no coincidence that this became public immediately after Khadr’s lawyers threatened to go to court to force the issue of his repatriation.
Who is Welner? An Islamophobe who wanted settlers to stay in Gaza as a bulwark against “Islamo-chaos.” He didn’t approach young Khadr with an open mind, to put it mildly. Check him out. Good grief, here’s Jonathan Kay on the matter. Case closed, and securely locked.
Were I an American official, I would be more than a little confused at this point. “Didn’t we have a deal?” I can hear them ask. Deal? With the Harper government? May as well ask it to respect the rule of law. Most Canadians will, at this point, shake their heads sadly at the Americans’ charming naivete.
Our fellow-citizen Omar Khadr was fifteen years old when he found himself in the middle of a firefight in Afghanistan, after which he was captured. He may not even have thrown the grenade that killed an American soldier during the battle.
But he’s brown, and Muslim, so he must be guilty of something. Too many Canadians, judging from the dreck one turns up in on-line comments threads, want him kept out for those reasons alone. His guilt is assumed.
That guilt is based upon a coerced plea bargain that worked like this: plead guilty to murder, terrorism and anything else we can dream up, and you can go home in a year. Plead not guilty, and, by God, we’ll bury you for life.
That forced confession was enough even for Warren Kinsella, judging from a recent love-in with SunTV’s Brian Lilley, to which I shall not link. How does it morally differ from a confession obtained under torture?
Such questions do not concern Vic Toews, of course. He’s too busy throwing red meat to the baying dogs who constitute the Conservative base. And shaming us all internationally as he does so.
